Five Strengths of Innovation Leaders
Highly innovative leaders need to share a clear vision, practice effective communication, and make a commitment to roll imagination into reality.
Highly innovative leaders need to share a clear vision, practice effective communication, and make a commitment to roll imagination into reality.
The key to innovation success is simple---innovation is nothing without exploration and exploitation.
Over the past few months I have been spending time with a range of Australian companies, getting to better understand their business models and approaches to innovation. While there is plenty of good news for Australian businesses and their innovation practices (see my previous article), there is a justified sense of concern around maintaining sustained, robust growth in the face of digital and exponential disruption.
Over the past few months I have been spending time with a range of Australian companies, getting to better understand their business models and approaches to innovation. After working with US / European organizations for many years, it’s been refreshing to see the actions and impact of innovation in this market.
We often talk about the role of innovation in an age of constant, radical disruption, as defined by the 4th industrial revolution. Within this new environment, innovation leaders should play an essential role in helping the organization thrive and drive growth.
What innovation lessons can we learn from Hannibal, one of history’s most illustrious generals? In this piece based on a chapter from Paul Sloane’s ‘Think like an Innovator’, we’ll look at how Hannibal’s battle strategies and tactics can apply to innovation today - from using new and unexpected resources, to outflanking your competition, to understanding the importance of networking.
Alongside the annual Innovation Leaders analysis of large organizations’ performance, we also identify upcoming companies that are seen as potential future catalysts for change. While these are organizations that are yet to achieve global scale, they are already making significant impact. They are the companies that are inventing new technologies, applying new business models and creating value in new ways that may well have significant global influence in the years ahead. Some are new ventures; others have been around for a few years and are building momentum.
The latest Innovation Leaders research shows that there is an increasing number of high-growth companies that are prepared to take greater risk and make big bets. Rather than focus just on incremental growth, they are being bolder and are seeking to develop more radical innovation opportunities. Despite requiring significant investment and offering no guarantee of success this approach has been transformational for some. Where and why is this happening and what has changed that has made this approach more common?
Bottom-up innovation is fueled by many ideas initiated by employees, as opposed to top-down innovation, which is fueled by a strong vision - often by the company’s founder. Bottom-up innovation leaders are entrepreneurial, supported by management’s emphasis on creativity and a can-do culture, and often share these eight attributes.
Business these days might as well require us to be tactical geniuses because it’s like navigating a field of landmines. One wrong step can completely blow you out of the water. The risks obviously aren't keeping everyone at bay, as new leaders are rising to face the challenges during these fast-paced, turbulent times. To help them on this quest, great leaders and managers of today share their most valuable management and innovation tips.
Humans are innately concerned with what makes up the creative inventors among us. We want to know how to cultivate our inner innovator and nurture those qualities that will serve us both as individuals and as employees.
Authenticity and innovation are two of today’s biggest corporate buzzwords. They are often considered as separate values, but in reality they have much in common and in this article we will examine the areas of overlap and potential leverage benefits.
In the past year or so corporate innovation leaders have clearly taken an “ecosystem” perspective to their innovation activities. What this ultimately means is that they view all of their program’s activities as a connected whole and driving towards higher-level goals, often aligned with broader cultural change.
Based on our work with pioneering enterprises in Silicon Valley and around the globe we have learned a great deal about what makes innovation prosper. This article reveals some surprising insights on how prepared our institutions are to successfully compete for the future.
Innovation leaders today don’t have an easy job. Tasked with bringing Innovation to their organization, they often face a variety of interpretations of innovation throughout the organization, a lack of comprehensive understanding of what innovation really entails, and what it requires to truly embed innovation in a way that it sustains itself.