Leadership and Innovation

Who's Job is it?

Engaging people across all levels of the company has many advantages including:

• Greater involvement in the business and a willingness to follow through on new initiatives – this works to build enthusiasm and ownership
• Inspiring people to be searching for new and better ways, knowing they will be listened to
• Collecting real information from the interface with the customer.
• Building a sense of team within the business
• Taking some of the pressure from the top management.

Making it happen
The CEO of one of the most innovative businesses in the services sector in Asia has a KPI on all divisional mangers that 10% of each successive year’s revenue shall come from new and innovated products. Such is this company’s commitment to innovation, and it works. They achieve this by leveraging staff knowledge through the formation of cross functional innovation teams spread throughout the business.
These teams have a mandate to work using the proven tools of “Innovation” and “Opportunity Capture” to forever create and explore new ideas, pass these through a first evaluation filter, (referred to as the “Technology Diffusion”) then package and present them to senior management.
This process works, is systematic and simple so long as the staff have the right tools, a strong mandate and the ear of management.

Finally – remember this simple message
“Those organisations that fail to innovate will ultimately fail to exist and the extinction horizon these days is approaching just five years and narrowing!”

http://sbr.com.sg/media-marketing/commentary/its-all-about-leadership-and-innovation

Leadership and Innovation: Relating to Circumstances and Change

Innovation takes place at different levels from modest improvements on an existing product or process to dramatic and even historically significant breakthroughs in how we relate to the world. In all cases, the capacity to innovate will be a function of our commitments, what we want to accomplish and our relationship with the circumstances we perceive we are in.
If we are resisting or coping, we see no innovation and whatever change we generate will be as a reaction to the circumstances and part of the process by which those circumstances persist.
When we are responding or choosing we are in a position to innovate and will do so naturally and consistently as a function of what we observe to be possible or what we observe is missing in our perspective of the world. Change based on this view is likely to be an improvement on what already exists.
When we are bringing forth or creating we are not only in a position to innovate but are predisposed to do so. Further, in these ways of relating to circumstances, we have few if any limitations on what we can imagine and generate. We are likely to be generating breakthroughs or even creating entirely new spheres of possibility.

6 ways of relating to change associated with different leadership models, intentions and views of circumstances http://www.innovation.cc/discussion-papers/selman.pdf