Innovation leadership

With new technologies and processes, it is necessary for organizations to think innovatively to ensure continued success and stay competitive.

[2][3][4][5][6] to adapt to new changes, “The need for innovation in organizations has resulted in a new focus on the role of leaders in shaping the nature and success of creative efforts.

While an existing product is being changed and/or improved upon, characterizing it as a value-added innovation, outside-the-box thinking, research, and risk-taking are now required since it is being introduced into a new market.

Exploratory innovation refers to the generation of novel ideas, strategies, and solutions through the use of strictly open behaviors exhibited most often by transformational leaders.

Some studies have shown that explorative and exploitative innovation require different structures, strategies, processes, capabilities, and cultures.

Exploratory innovation requires flexibility, opportunism, adaptability, and for leaders to provide intellectual stimulation to their subordinates.

The behaviors exhibited are believed to achieve the desired creative outcome from employees through the application of individualized consideration, charisma, and inspirational motivation.

For example, in one study of the innovation practices at AXA Insurance in Ireland, the CEO John O’Neil engaged in transformational leadership behaviors and introduced the “MadHouse” program that combined workers from different departments and levels of the organization to work together in a creative way.

Wolfe (1994),[18] as cited by Sarros, Cooper, & Santora, (2008)[4] has pointed out that one antecedent factor for innovation is organizational culture.

Likewise, Isaksen, Laver, Ekvail & Britz (2001) [19] concur that innovative endeavors fail without a supportive climate.

[20][21] The idea of a single leader using different leadership behaviors originated in path-goal theory, and has been associated with the framework underlying innovation leadership, which also allows the creation of a work environment conducive to innovative thinking—which is the cognitive process of generating novel and useful ideas.

However, in a study by Jean Lee (2008),[24] only the loyalty aspect of LMX (LMXL) was shown to be related to innovativeness.

Organizational culture refers to an organization's deep structure, normative beliefs, and shared behavioral expectations.

This level of encouragement points to the concepts of transformational leadership and LMX that emphasise the importance of the interactions of supervisors and subordinates in innovative performance.

Individuals’ perceptions of the availability of resources may lead to increased beliefs of the likelihood that the ideas they generate have a possibility of reaching the implementation stage.

Creative people have expertise on the subject requiring innovation and tend to use work as a source of identity.

Creative workers are also commonly characterized as highly valuing their autonomy; additional dispositional attributes include openness, flexibility, cognitive complexity, self-confidence, dominance, and introversion.

[46][47] The patterns of characteristics creative workers exhibit typically allow them to confidently explore alternative ideas under ambiguous conditions.

These include expertise in the domain, creativity, ability to carry out transformational leadership behaviors, planning and sense-making, and social skills.

[52] During this stage, a leader needs to promote a safe environment for employees/team members to voice novel ideas and original thinking as well as provide workers with the resources to do so effectively.

[9] Research has also found that leaders who engage in unconventional behaviors, associated with transformational leadership, were seen as stronger role models and, as a result, increase creative performance in their subordinates.

For example, the founders of Google have been known to wear capes and jump-shoes around the office,[53][54] thus inspiring more outside-the-box thinking in their employees.

The organizational innovation (implementation) box represents taking those prototypes, sketches, or simulations and testing, evaluating, and possibly mass-producing them.

Critical potential paradoxes that are often faced by leaders of innovation have been provided by Hunter, Thoroughgood, Meyer, & Ligon (2011).

This paradox illustrates the difficulty leaders have in providing their employees with the autonomy they must be creative, while fostering team cohesion (or closeness) to facilitate idea sharing.

A leader must also be careful not to encourage too much cohesion, as it may discourage group members from disagreeing (even constructively disagreeing) with fellow group members in an effort not to offend them or “rock the boat.” The Vision Autonomy Paradox highlights the dilemma a leader faces between providing structure and guidance to a team with respect to the vision of the goal, while at the same time stepping back and providing the team with enough autonomy, especially considering the fact that creative workers highly value autonomy.

The Restriction Freedom Paradox underscores that innovation leaders need to allow employees enough time to develop creative endeavors and provide the resources to do so.

[9] Outcomes of innovation leadership include inspiring employees to the create and implement novel ideas for products, services, and technologies.

[3] Companies that use innovative leadership include 3M, which lets employees work on a project of their choosing for 15% of their time.

[54] Zappos employees are allowed to “radically” decorate their cubicle and are encouraged to laugh and have fun at work impromptu in-office parades.