Innovation Leadership

Abstract

Innovation leadership is a relatively new concept in the study of leadership. Its purpose is to create an organizational environment that is conducive to innovation, and the method it uses to achieve this goal is to combine elements of various leadership styles into a coordinated approach that encourages the creative development of new ideas, experimentation with and evaluation of those ideas, and implementation of the ideas where appropriate. Innovation leadership is a style that supports members of an organization in taking the risks necessary to explore novel approaches and to adapt them to practical applications.

Overview

Innovation is the production of a new idea, process, or manner of using an existing idea or process. Innovation implies an awareness of the practical applications of the idea or process. It is not enough simply to think of something new; there must also be some pathway to implementation (Kohanov, 2013). This need for practicality has given rise to a conceptual distinction between two different types of innovation. Exploratory innovation involves having a breakthrough idea, while exploitative innovation takes this one step further and finds an application for the idea.

Innovation leadership developed out of the confluence of two separate theories regarding how organizations can encourage creativity and original thinking. One of these theories is known as "path-goal theory." Path-goal theory influenced the development of innovation leadership because path-goal theory advises leaders to concentrate not on developing a single leadership style, but on becoming proficient at several different styles so that the leader may choose the style most helpful to a particular situation or work group (Hemlin et al., 2013). This approach recognizes that the creative forces needed for an organization to develop the capacity to innovate cannot be predicted or prescribed. Each person's creative process is different and is triggered in a variety of ways or under different circumstances. Within the path-goal frame of reference, a leader's role is to support the efforts of employees and work with them collaboratively to understand the leadership style that will be most conducive to releasing their own creative forces (Vasan & Przybylo, 2013).

The other theory that innovation leadership grew out of can be seen as an evolutionary step forward from path-goal theory and is called "leader-member exchange theory." Leader-member exchange theory takes from path-goal theory the idea that a leader must master multiple leadership styles and be able to switch between them as needed and extends this down to the level of the individual employee. This means that a leader operating from the perspective of leader-member exchange theory needs to be aware of the individual needs of each person in the organization, so that the leader may tailor his or her style to support their performance (Jones, McCormick & Dewing, 2012). Thus, under path-goal theory, a leader might realize that staff in Department A work best under a servant leadership model in most situations, while staff in Department B tend to respond more positively to a charismatic leadership style.

In contrast, leader-member exchange theory requires a leader to be aware of the most effective leadership styles to adopt with each particular person in both departments—a much more difficult task. One issue that is often raised regarding leader-member exchange theory is that if it is not implemented skillfully, it can actually erode trust in the leader, as members of the organization begin to question whether any of the leader's styles are truly authentic or are simply being put on for their benefit. This has been referred to as the "chameleon paradox," because the leader's ability to adapt to individual expectations about leadership styles can sometimes backfire (Lindgren, 2012).

Innovation leadership takes into account this and other strengths and weaknesses from both theories, and takes a slightly different direction. Instead of the leader focusing on practicing the leadership styles preferred by teams or individuals, the innovation leader's goal is to arrive at the right combination of styles that will create an innovative environment within the organization. In other words, the focus of the leader is shifted from the needs of individuals or groups to the needs of the organization as a whole.

Weather is a frequent metaphor used to describe innovation leadership: Many different atmospheric conditions must interact in just the right way in order to produce a thunderstorm, and in the same way, many different organizational factors must interact to allow innovation to coalesce (Hill, 2014). Earlier thinking about innovation suggested that leaders should focus on one or two organizational factors in order to produce creative output; this, however, is akin to trying to produce a thunderstorm by only manipulating the humidity but ignoring other factors such as temperature and wind speed. A leader operating from this frame of reference might be adept at tuning in to the needs of individual employees but fail to understand how the employees' interactions with one another might be inhibiting innovation. Innovation leadership seeks to look at the big picture of organizational dynamics, concentrating not on individual influences but taking a more holistic approach to the organizational climate.

Further Insights

Research has identified several factors that, if present in the organization's environment, tend to support or inhibit innovation. One supportive factor is the amount of encouragement individuals receive for their creative efforts. This encouragement can come from coworkers, supervisors, or the organizational culture as a whole. Before one can begin to think creatively, one must feel that doing so is an act that will be perceived in a positive, or at the very least neutral, light.

Organizations and individuals can set a tone that convey this attitude toward innovation by concentrating not so much on the success or failure of projects but on what has been learned from them, regardless of the outcome. This strategy makes clear to everyone that the most important work of the organization is continuing to try new things, rather than playing it safe and only engaging in work with a high chance of success (Vasan & Przybylo, 2013). "Safe" projects may result in fewer sleepless nights, but they also rarely result in innovation.

The Role of Resources. Other factors that influence an organization's innovation are the availability of resources and the amount of pressure placed on those within the organization. Resources can take many forms, from support staff to physical materials to overtime wages (Bouteligier, 2013). There is a widespread perception that there is a direct, linear relationship between the availability of resources and an organization's ability to innovate, meaning that the more resources one has available, the greater the chances for innovative outcomes. A number of studies have shown that this is true but only up to a point, beyond which continuing to add resources produces a smaller and smaller beneficial effect.

To explain this leveling off of benefits, some have suggested that a certain degree of scarcity of resources can actually promote creativity, by forcing people to look for non-obvious solutions. An oft-cited example is the achievement of the first powered flight by the Wright brothers. Although others with greater wealth and scientific knowledge were trying to be the first to invent a powered flying machine that could carry a human passenger, the Wright brothers were the first to accomplish the deed (Echeverría, 2012).

The Role of Pressure. A similar leveling-off phenomenon can be seen in the amount of pressure placed on an organization's members. The conventional wisdom suggests that a reasonable amount of pressure is a positive influence on those pursuing innovation, as it inspires them to draw upon their innermost resources to see problems in a new light and achieve more than they might under less demanding conditions. This type of pressure, however, often develops from internal sources rather than external ones; that is, individuals place pressure on themselves to do the best work they possibly can, in order to live up to their own expectations and to earn the admiration and gratitude of their friends and family.

Extrinsic pressure comes from outside, for example, one's boss or social factors, such as the pressure to develop a vaccine to prevent the suffering of large numbers of people. Extrinsic pressure can also be a strong motivator, but it is frequently associated with negative outcomes for employees' mental and physical health (Hill, 2014). Regardless of whether pressure to innovate arises from within or from without, there comes a point at which the application of additional pressure achieves no measurable gains and may actually diminish performance. As with resource availability, it is possible to have too much of a good thing. Excessive pressure decreases creativity because the pressure itself and the concomitant fear of failure begin to dominate the consciousness of the employee. Instead of thinking about creative solutions to a challenging problem, people begin to think only of how difficult the problem is and what consequences they will face if they do not find a solution.

The Four-Level Model. One development in the literature regarding innovation leadership has been the so-called four level model, which suggests that there are four different contexts or types of innovation that can occur in an organization: operational, transformative, market-based, and categorical (Wang, 2012). Each of these types of innovation can produce value for an organization, but each has its own particular requirements and limitations. Operations-based innovation usually involves new ways of accomplishing tasks that are already known and well understood; while not as attention grabbing as some breakthroughs, operational innovations can nevertheless profoundly change the way others experience the organization and its services.

Market-based innovation differs from operational innovation because it is more visible to those outside the organization. While operations-based innovations often do their work behind the scenes, market-based innovations happen out in the open and thus attract attention from customers and others outside the organization (Kohanov, 2013). This can both help and hurt the innovation process, because while the additional attention can provide greater motivation to achieve, it can also increase the risks of failure for those implementing the innovation and place them under too much pressure.

Categorical innovation is a type of market-based innovation that takes knowledge that is already in the public consciousness and applies it in a new way or in service of resolving a completely different type of problem. For example, the realization that magnetism, a well-understood concept from physics and chemistry, could be used to store information on magnetic media by changing the magnetic fields of particular locations on the media was a categorical innovation because it took knowledge from one field and found a new application for it in a completely different field.

Finally, transformative innovation is the most dramatic form of innovation, and typically involves a brand new realization that causes all of society to look at the world in a new way. An example of a transformative innovation is the invention of the telegraph, which almost immediately made the world seem like a much smaller place, because instead of needing weeks to send a letter across the country, people on opposite sides of the nation could communicate with one another almost instantaneously. Before much time had passed, the effects of the innovation of telegraphy were felt throughout society, as rich and poor alike began to communicate over vast distances with relative ease.

Viewpoints

Innovation leadership has proven difficult to model conceptually. A number of stages have been identified as characteristic of most innovative leaders, but there is no consistent order in which the steps must be performed. Instead, the steps can essentially proceed in almost any order, creating a process that doubles back on itself, repeats, cycles through steps repeatedly, or even skips steps entirely. The major steps are idea creation, idea analysis, and idea implementation (Leonard, 2013).

Once an idea is created and shared among the work group, the members of the group analyze it to assess its strengths and weaknesses and to determine whether or not it could be brought to the implementation stage. In some cases, the analysis will lead to an implementation strategy, and implementation will begin. In other cases, analysis of the idea may reveal that it is not practical for implementation. It also happens that the analysis process sometimes results in the creation of a new idea, which is then subjected to analysis in its own right. As frustrating as this nonlinear process is for theorists to describe, it is derived from the nonlinear nature of innovative thought itself, which frequently takes intuitive shortcuts to solve challenging problems (Bouteligier, 2013).

An interesting question that arises in the leadership literature concerns the likely course that innovation leadership may take. Leadership theory is often criticized for its perceived susceptibility to following trends and responding to complex issues with superficial platitudes, so there are those who view innovation leadership with a gimlet eye, anticipating that after a few years its novelty may wear off and permit it to be replaced with a new theoretical perspective. The point is a valid one, and yet the course of society and the economy seems to be one that continues to place greater and greater value upon innovation, so there is also an argument to be made that innovation leadership has many years of relevancy ahead of it, as both theoreticians and practitioners continue to search for more effective ways to encourage those they lead to produce groundbreaking ideas.

Terms & Concepts

Exploitative innovation: Innovation that seeks to find an application for a new idea.

Exploratory innovation: Innovation that has a breakthrough idea as its goal.

Leader-member exchange theory (LMX): A theory, sometimes referred to as "vertical dyad linkage," seeks to describe the ways in which leaders form relationships with members of their team. LMX studies such relationships during the course of three phases: role taking, role making, and routinization.

Organizational culture: A means of describing how people in an organization behave and why they behave that way. It also inquires into the meaning of the behavior to the actor and to others in the organization. For example, an organization may have as part of its culture the feeling that no one should ask for help on a project.

Path-goal theory: An antecedent of the concept of innovation leadership. Path-goal theory suggests that the way a leader behaves is dependent upon how her subordinates perform and how satisfied they are with their roles. Under this theory the leader conforms her own behavior to complement that of her subordinates.

Bibliography

Bouteligier, S. (2013). Cities, networks, and global environmental governance: Spaces of innovation, places of leadership. New York, NY: Routledge.

Echeverría, L. M. (2012). Idea agent: Leadership that liberates creativity and accelerates innovation. New York, NY: American Management Association.

Hemlin, S., Allwood, C. M., Martin, B. R., & Mumford, M. D. (2013). Creativity and leadership in science, technology, and innovation. New York, NY: Routledge.

Hill, L. A. (2014). Collective genius: The art and practice of leading innovation. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press.

Jones, T., McCormick, D., & Dewing, C. (2012). Growth champions: The battle for sustained innovation leadership: the growth agenda. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Kohanov, L. (2013). The power of the herd: A nonpredatory approach to social intelligence, leadership, and innovation. Novato, CA: New World Library.

Leonard, J. (2013). Innovation in the schoolhouse: Entrepreneurial leadership in education. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Lindgren, M. (2012). 21st century management: Leadership and innovation in the thought economy. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

Vasan, N., & Przybylo, J. (2013). Do good well: Your guide to leadership, action, and social innovation. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Verganti, R. (2016). The innovative power of criticism. Harvard Business Review, 94(1), 88–95. Retrieved December 21, 2016, from EBSCO online database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=111889895&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Wang, C. V. (2012). Technology and its impact on educational leadership: Innovation and change. Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference.

Suggested Reading

Coutere, B. D., & Horth, D. M. (2016). Innovation leadership. Training Journal, 12–15. Retrieved December 21, 2016, from EBSCO online database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=120019369&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Edison Stevenson, J. (2012). Breaking away—A new model for innovation leadership. Employment Relations Today, 39, 17–25. Retrieved March 22, 2015 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=77908000&site=ehost-live

Hender, J., & Henley Management College. (2003). Innovation leadership: Roles and key imperatives. London, UK: Grist.

Hender, J., & Henley Management College. (2004). Innovation leadership: Key roles in context. Henley-on-Thames, UK: Henley Management College.

Porter-O'Grady, T., & Malloch, K. (2010). Innovation leadership: Creating the landscape of health care. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett.

Schweitzer, J. (2014). Leadership and innovation capability development in strategic alliances. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 35, 442–469.

Weberg, D., & Weberg, K. (2014). Seven behaviors to advance teamwork: findings from a study of innovation leadership in a simulation center. Nursing Administration Quarterly, 38, 230–237.