Clicky

Innovation Leaders Turn Creative Ideas Into Action - Ideas for Leaders
Idea #588

Innovation Leaders Turn Creative Ideas Into Action

This is one of our free-to-access content pieces. To gain access to all Ideas for Leaders content please Log In Here or if you are not already a Subscriber then Subscribe Here.
Main Image
Main Image

KEY CONCEPT

Many companies recognize the importance of innovation yet continue to be ineffective innovators. The reason: their leaders lack the right skills to encourage, manage and implement innovation. Recognizing that innovation requires a structured process, multiple perspectives, silo-busting boundary-free and polarity thinking are important first steps.  


IDEA SUMMARY

Whether developing new products or services, refining internal processes, or creating disruptive business models, innovation is the key to sustained competitive advantage. Many companies, however, are unable to meet their innovation goals. In a recent Center for Creative Leadership white paper, authors David Magellan Horth and Jonathan Vehar cite a survey of 500 leaders in which 94% acknowledged that innovation was important, but only 14% believed their organizations were effective at innovation.

Perhaps the greatest challenge of innovation is not creativity but implementation. Innovation efforts fail unless companies have leaders with the right skills to manage the innovation process, balance conflicting priorities and attract the range of contributions required for successful innovation. As much as two-thirds of the innovation climate in a company is defined by leadership behaviours, according to recent research. In short, innovation leadership is not coming up with creative ideas, it is turning those ideas into actions.

There are, however, challenges to such implementations — challenges that according to Horth and Vehar can be overcome through what they call the three foundations of leading innovation.

The first foundation of leading innovation is to manage the tension between the pressure of day-to-day priorities and the importance of finding ways to create new opportunities. The second foundation is to embrace the constancy of change. Change is difficult, and everyone in the organization must be prepared for its constant presence. Leaders themselves must be agile, which means letting go of the status quo. The third foundation is to take an enterprise-wide perspective. The best ideas will come from cross-collaboration and input from all areas of the organization — not from a few selected ‘creative types’.


BUSINESS APPLICATION

Horth and Vehar offer the following guidelines as starting points for leaders who want to become more effective innovation leaders:

  • Understand that roles and capabilities for innovation vary by leadership level. Individual leaders focus on developing creative ideas and solutions. Team leaders manage the processes and resources. Middle managers champion the projects. Functional leaders manage the pipeline of new products, processes and services. Executive leaders shape the culture and vision.
  • Focus on a structured innovation process that guides the organization through the four steps of innovation: understanding the challenge, generating ideas, developing solutions, and implementing the innovation.
  • Gather a variety of perspectives. For example, professor Gerard Puccio of the State University of New York at Buffalo developed four thinking profiles for innovation that parallel the four phases of innovation above: clarifiers explore the challenge, ideators generate ideas, developers craft and plan solutions, and implementers put solutions into practice.
  • Work across boundaries. Given the variety of tasks, and the variety of perspectives required to accomplish those tasks, innovation leaders must break down the silos, connecting people and resources across boundaries.
  • Embrace polarities. Polarity thinking replaces traditional, mutually exclusive ‘either-or’ thinking with a ‘both-and’ mindset. For example, innovation leaders don’t believe a choice must be made between delivering immediate results and championing a new process: both priorities are possible.

  • SHARE


REFERENCES

Innovation: How Leadership Makes the Difference. David Magellan Horth, Jonathan Vehar. CCL® White Paper (January 2015). 

Ideas for Leaders is a free-to-access site. If you enjoy our content and find it valuable, please consider subscribing to our Developing Leaders Quarterly publication, this presents academic, business and consultant perspectives on leadership issues in a beautifully produced, small volume delivered to your desk four times a year.

FIND OUT MORE HERE

Source

Idea conceived

January 1, 2015

Idea posted

Feb 2016
challenge block
Can't find the Idea you are after?
Then 'Challenge Us' to source it.

SUBSCRIBE TO IDEAS FOR LEADERS AND ACCESS ALL OUR IDEAS, PODCASTS, WEBINARS AND RECEIVE EXCLUSIVE EVENT INVITATIONS.

For the less than the price of a coffee a week you can read over 650 summaries of research that cost universities over $1 billion to produce.

Use our Ideas to:

  • Catalyse conversations with mentors, mentees, peers and colleagues.
  • Keep program participants engaged with leadership thinking when they return to their workplace.
  • Create a common language amongst your colleagues on leadership and management practice
  • Keep up-to-date with the latest thought-leadership from the world’s leading business schools.
  • Drill-down on the original research or even contact the researchers directly

Speak to us on how else you can leverage this content to benefit your organization. info@ideasforleaders.com