Innovation leadership is a philosophy and technique that combines different leadership styles to influence employees to generate creative ideas, products, and services. A key role in innovation leadership practice is the leader of innovation. David Gliddon (2006) develops a competence model of innovation leaders and establishes innovation leadership concepts at Penn State University.
As an organizational development approach, innovation leadership can support the achievement of organizational or group missions or visions. With new technologies and processes, organizations need to think innovatively to ensure success and stay competitive. to adapt to the new change, "The need for innovation within organizations has resulted in a new focus on the role of leaders in shaping the nature and success of creative endeavors." Without innovation leadership, organizations tend to struggle. This new appeal for innovation represents a shift from the 20th century, the traditional view of organizational practice, which does not encourage innovative employee behavior, until the 21st century view of assessing innovative thinking as a "potentially powerful influence on organizational performance."
Video Innovation leadership
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To have a clear understanding of what involves innovation leadership, we must first understand the concept of innovation. Although there is some controversy about how it can be defined, through a general consensus in the literature, it can be described as new ideas of viable products being operated. It includes three distinct phases, all of which are dynamic and repeatable (constant):
- Idea Generation
- Evaluation
- Deployment
Both types of innovation include exploration innovation, which involves generating new ideas, and value-added innovation, which involves modifying and improving existing ideas. The resulting idea should be useful to be considered innovative. Innovation should also be confused with creativity, which is merely a generation of new ideas that may not need to be operated - though these words are sometimes used interchangeably in the research literature when talking about innovation leadership. Innovation leadership is a complex concept, because there is not a single explanation or formula for a leader to keep up with innovation. As a result, innovation leadership includes different activities, actions, and behaviors that interact to produce innovative results.
Added Value Innovation
Exploratory innovation and value added require different leadership styles and behaviors to succeed. Value-added innovations (PwC, 2010) involve the purification and revision of existing products or services and typically require minimal risk taking (compared to exploration innovations, which often involves taking big risks); in this case, it is most appropriate for a leader for innovation to adopt a transactional leadership form. This is because transactional leadership styles do not use open-ended leadership behaviors such as encouraging employees to experiment and take risks, but prefer to use closed leadership behaviors that do not condone or value risk taking. Companies whose innovative leaders use transactional leadership for value added innovation purposes include Toyota Motor Co., General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co.; examples of value-added innovations of these companies are like making improvements to existing cars by making it faster, more comfortable, and getting better mileage.
Sometimes value-added innovation may require a completely new way of thinking and the possibility of taking new risks. An example of this scenario can be illustrated through Aspirin; this is an existing product, traditionally used as an analgesic to reduce pain and pain, but has been introduced into new markets and in contrast to expanding its use to help prevent heart attacks and reduce the formation of fat clots. In this example, the use of existing products has been reworked and introduced into new markets. While existing products are being modified and/or improved, characterization as a value-added innovation, outdoor thinking, research, and risk-taking are now needed as they are being introduced into new markets. In this case, the transformational leadership style is the more appropriate style to use.
The innovation leader should measure whether (and how much) risk and radical thinking engage in value-added innovation to determine which leadership style will be used in a situation. Leaders must be flexible - able to change leadership behavior when necessary.
Exploration Innovation
Exploratory innovation refers to the generation of new ideas, strategies, and solutions through the use of the most open behaviors most often demonstrated by transformational leaders. The cornerstone of exploration innovation is characterized by search, discovery, experimentation, and risk taking. It is the organization's focus to generate new ideas, products and strategies; in contrast to exploitative innovations, which focus on building and expanding existing ideas. Some studies show that explorative and exploitative innovations require different structures, strategies, processes, abilities, and cultures. See Climate/Innovative Organizational Culture. Exploratory innovation requires flexibility, opportunism, adaptability, and for leaders to provide intellectual stimulation to their subordinates. In this innovation approach, the leadership style that is mainly used is transformational. The behaviors shown are believed to achieve the desired creative outcomes of employees through the application of individual considerations, charisma, and inspirational motivation.
For example, in a study of innovative practices at AXA Insurance in Ireland, CEO John O'Neil was involved in transformational leadership behaviors and introduced the "MadHouse" program that combines workers from different departments and organizational levels to work together in creative ways. The results of this experiment after six months were 150 new business ideas for products and services. Explorative innovation and value added are often referenced together, but there is little research showing the interaction between the two. However, there is an understanding that in some circumstances, 'balance' must be achieved to achieve superior employee performance. For example, not all novel ideas are implemented, and may be resurrected later. Organizations may need to change gears and adopt exploitative strategies to revise and refine ideas to fit current needs.
Maps Innovation leadership
Innovation Leadership Foundation
Innovation leadership has its roots in path-goal theory and leader-member exchange theory. Certain elements in an organization are also required for innovation leadership to succeed. Wolfe (1994), as quoted by Sarros, Cooper, & amp; Santora, (2008) has shown that one of the antecedent factors for innovation is organizational culture. Likewise, Isaksen, Laver, Ekvail & amp; Britz (2001) agrees that innovative efforts fail without favorable climates. Introduction of this supportive organizational culture/climate includes creativity, autonomy, resource and pressure encouragement. Additional basic elements for innovation leadership include creative work, creative workforce, and specific leader attributes.
Roots in Path-Goal Theory
The basis of the path-goal theory uses the same leadership view, in this case it supports different types of leadership (eg, participatory, supportive) behaviors, such as innovation leadership. However, it relies on employees and environmental factors to be effective. The idea of ​​a single leader using different leadership behaviors comes from path-goal theory, and has been linked to the underlying framework of innovation leadership, which also enables the creation of a work environment conducive to innovative thinking - which is a cognitive process of generating new and useful ideas.
Creating this kind of work environment through innovation leadership involves open-ended leadership behaviors that resemble some of the leader behaviors proposed by the Path-goal theory - for example, upward influences and supportive/attentive behavior. In innovation leadership, this behavior encourages the creative team to generate as many new ideas as possible and leads to the evaluation and implementation of these ideas.
Roots in Lead-Member Exchange Theory
Lead-member exchange theory (LMX theory) is one of the building blocks of innovation leadership. It follows the same idea as Path-goal theory and innovation leadership, that multiple leadership styles are needed in managing many subordinates but taking it one step further. LMX involves adopting a unique leadership style for every employee. Previous studies have shown that LMX theory has been shown to have an effect on innovation. Studies also show that leader-member exchange relationships can predict significant organizational and behavioral variables including higher job satisfaction and higher work performance.
Basu and Green (1997) find that innovative behavior is related to the quality of leader-member exchanges where high quality exchanges include contributions from leaders and followers. However, in a study by Jean Lee (2008), only aspects of LMX (LMXL) loyalty were shown to be related to innovation. Leadership styles, transformational (positively related) and transactional (negatively related), are found to have an effect on innovation.
Culture of Innovative Organizations/Climate
Several studies have shown evidence of organizational culture as a mediator of the relationship between transformational leadership and innovation and organizational performance. In other words, for transformational leadership to influence organizational innovation, organizations must have a strong innovative culture in addition to leaders with a transformational leadership style.
Organizational culture refers to the organizational structure, normative beliefs, and expectations of shared behavior. This culture is fairly constant and can affect relationships between organizations. Climate refers to the way individuals perceive the extent to which organizational culture affects them. Both are basically interrelated. One proposed model for assessing the creative environment within an organization includes the following dimensions:
Impulse Creativity
The impulse of creativity is the dimension most often mentioned in the literature. It operates on three main levels, each level containing many aspects.
Organization Boost
The first level is the Encouragement of the Organization. It involves a risk-taking boost and idea creation from all levels of management, fair evaluation and support of new ideas, recognition and awards of creativity, and the idea of ​​collaboration flowing throughout the organization. Each of these is just as important as the organizational aspect aspect but the third aspect, the recognition and the reward of creativity, may have an adverse effect if the sole purpose of engaging in an activity is to get rewarded.
Supervisory Oversight
The second level, Supervision Oversight, highlights the role of supervisors and project managers in clarity of objectives, open interaction between superiors and subordinates, and supervisory support of team work and ideas. This level of encouragement refers to the concept of transformational leadership and the LMX emphasizing the importance of supervisory and subordinate interactions in innovative performance.
Job Boost
The third level of encouragement is the Working Group on Encouragement. The diversity in team members' background and the openness of ideas influence creativity because individuals are exposed to new and unusual ideas and such exposure has been shown to have a positive effect on creative thinking.
Autonomy
Autonomy is believed to cultivate creativity because research has revealed that individuals produce more creative work and experience increased intrinsic motivation when they have a sense of control and ownership of their work and ideas and they consider themselves to have a choice in how their goals are achieved, whether the goal is given to them by their superiors or chosen by themselves.
Resources
Resources have been suggested to be directly related to creativity within the organization. Individual perceptions of resource availability can lead to increased confidence in the likelihood that the ideas they generate will likely reach the stage of implementation.
Pressure
Little evidence of the pressure dimension shows a rather paradoxical effect. Some pressure levels can have a positive effect if the pressure stems from the challenging and intellectual nature of the task itself, increasing intrinsic motivation. However, if the pressure experienced is felt extreme it can counteract the creativity. Amabile et al. (1996) identifies two forms of pressure: excessive workload pressure and challenges. They suggest that the former must have a negative influence on creativity while the latter must have a positive one.
Organization Impedimation of Creativity
Although there is little research on the work of environmental factors that undermines creativity, several studies have shown that these barriers include internal strife, conservatism, and rigid formal management structures within the organization. This dimension is seen as working against autonomy and tends to have an inverse effect because individuals can sense a more controlling environment.
Creative Jobs
Creative work can happen in any job but more specifically can occur in jobs where there are complicated and unclear problems that require innovative solutions. The fact that creative issues do not clearly make creative work uncertain, and may involve risky efforts. It is also a job that requires a lot of resources, demands, and times that require high levels of motivation and often requires cooperation. This type of work should also involve the generation of new ideas and implementation of new ideas and requires expertise from the workforce.
Creative Work
Creative work is needed for innovation leadership to be successful. Creative people have expertise on subjects that require innovation and tend to use work as a source of identity. Therefore, they are highly motivated intrinsically by the opportunities and recognition of professional achievement. Creative workers are also generally characterized as highly appreciative of their autonomy; Additional dispositional attributes include openness, flexibility, cognitive complexity, self-confidence, domination, and introversion. The pattern of characteristic of creative workers shows usually allows them to confidently explore alternative ideas in ambiguous conditions.
Attributes/Characteristics of Leaders
Successful leadership innovation requires a leader with certain characteristics. This includes domain expertise, creativity, the ability to perform transformational leadership behaviors, planning and making feelings, and social skills. Innovative leaders can be hired and hired through professional networks and referrals or alternatively found through succession planning, which involves identifying innovative leaders already employed within the organization.
Type of Innovation Leadership Style
In addition to this foundation, various styles play an important role in innovation leadership, each of which is used at different stages of the innovation process or for different types of innovation (value-added vs. exploration). The often-associated leadership styles include transformational leadership, transactional leadership, and Ambidextrous leadership. The type of leadership most closely related to innovation is transformational leadership.
Main Activity Leadership Innovation
Idea Generation
As noted above, different styles and behaviors of leadership may be more appropriate at different stages of the innovation process. Current research supports the idea that in the process of idea generation, innovation leadership requires a leader to use a more transformational leadership style. During this stage, a leader needs to promote a safe environment for employees/team members to voice new ideas and original thoughts and provide workers with the resources to do so effectively. The study also found that leaders who engage in unconventional behavior, associated with transformational leadership, are seen as stronger role models and, as a result, improve creative performance on their subordinates. For example, Google's founders have been known to wear robes and jump boots at the office, thus inspiring out-of-box thinking in their employees. This open leadership behavior conveys that unconventional and unconventional ideas and behaviors are not only accepted but also encouraged.
Evaluation and Implementation Ideas
In addition to providing a climate for idea generation, innovation leadership also requires leaders to ensure that the idea-making process does not overshadow evaluation and implementation processes. During this leadership phase, leaders must support multiple ideas while discarding other ideas and incorporating supported ideas into production. The role of the leader must shift from a transformational style to a more transactional style of leadership, which involves more direct and critical of the resulting ideas. A leader now needs to ensure that constructive discussions about innovative ideas occur among their subordinates. It serves to evaluate the usefulness of each idea, eliminating what does not seem feasible for the organization or purpose, and encouraging people who seem to be worthy of entering the production stage. Leaders must adopt what is known as a closed leadership behavior to achieve this. Instead of stimulating the generation of ideas, leaders must shift the focus from generating new ideas toward refining existing ideas to achieve progress toward goals, and ultimately implementing ideas. This challenge balances a different style of leadership when it is precisely called the paradox of the generator evaluator. It is important to consider ambidextrous leadership roles, because a leader must be able to shift between leadership roles and styles when needed to successfully lead to innovation. The paradox of innovation leadership is discussed below.
Leadership and Influence Innovation
Depending on the type of leadership style adopted by innovation leaders, leaders may have direct or indirect influence on your employees.
Direct Effects
Forms of immediate influence in leading innovations include:
- provide creative feedback and suggestions to employees
- provide employees with clear and concrete goals
- allocate organizational resources (ie research and development expenditure) to implement ideas
Indirect Effects
Indirect effects get the same results without providing explicit guidance to employees. These types of influences include:
- build a climate that supports creativity within the organization
- acts as a role model for innovative thinking
- gives employees recognition and recognition for innovative thinking
- team recruitment and composition (ie gathering teams with the special skills needed to think innovatively, or hiring employees with creative personalities without planning what they do).
Proposed Models for Innovation Leadership
The proposed model for innovation leadership has been a model of multilevel process of innovation, which uses direct and indirect leadership in the innovation process mentioned above to promote the innovation process. In the model, the influence of leadership does not directly affect individual creativity (generation phase) and team creativity (evaluation phase) process. The influence of leadership directly affects the team's creativity process (evaluation phase) and organizational innovation process (implementation stage). The individual creativity box (generation phase) in the model represents an individual process that generates the initial idea or idea and suggests it to their team. The team's creativity box (evaluation phase) represents the team process taking the idea, making changes and refining it to the point of making prototypes, formalized sketches, or simulations. Organizational innovation boxes represent prototyping, sketching, or simulating and testing, evaluating, and possibly mass-producing them.
Two very important key features of this model should be mentioned:
- The three stages of innovation (idea-making, evaluation, and implementation) are inseparable from one another.
- Stages in the model can not be viewed in "lock-step mode", which means that there are back and forward effects and activities affecting each of the three stages. For example, ideas are created, discussed, and tested only to give feedback to the system, starting the process over again. Arrows forward and backward between individual creativity and team creativity, forward and backward arrows between team creativity and organizational innovation, and arrows from organizational innovation to individual creativity visually represent this key feature.
Innovation Leadership Paradox
The leadership of innovation is complex, as can be seen from Hunter & amp; The Cushenbery Model (2011), and there is often a paradox that requires leaders to strike a balance between two conflicting roles (eg encouraging innovative ideas vs. limiting innovative ideas to include only the most feasible and useful ideas for the organization). Balance must be achieved, not only in their leaders and behavior, but also between the conflicting interests of the parties involved. This includes conflicts of interest between leaders and employees/teams, between leaders and situational/contextual factors, and between employees/teams and organizations. The critical potential paradox often faced by innovation leaders has been provided by Hunter, Thoroughgood, Meyer, & amp; Ligon (2011).
Paradox Internal/Localized
Internal/local paradoxes involve conflicting roles experienced in leaders.
Dual Membership Paradox
The Paradox of Dual Expertise postulates that a leader must possess or acquire domain expertise while at the same time acquiring the leadership skills necessary to manage his employees and resources.
Evaluation of Paradox Generation
The Generation Evaluation Paradox determined that a leader should encourage a supportive climate to generate new ideas and think outside the box when evaluating these ideas and realize that not all creative ideas are useful and many may even fail (while not too critical and negative of those ideas).
Team Level Paradox
Team level paradoxes involve conflicting interests between leaders and employees/teams
Creative Personality Cohesion Paradox
Creative Personality Cohesion Paradoxes are based on research findings that creative workers generally value autonomy and, as a result, often prefer to work alone. This paradox illustrates the difficulties facing leaders in giving autonomy to their employees, they must be creative, while developing team cohesion (or closeness) to facilitate the sharing of ideas. A leader must also be careful not to encourage too much cohesion, as it can prevent group members from disagreeing (even constructively disagreeing) with fellow group members in an attempt not to offend them or "wiggle the boat."
Paradox Vision Autonomy
The Vision of Autonomy The paradox highlights the dilemma facing a leader between providing the structure and guidance to the team with respect to the vision of purpose while at the same time stepping back and providing the team with sufficient autonomy, especially given the fact that creative workers are highly autonomous. When leading to innovation, providing an overabundance structure can generate reactions from employees who feel their autonomy is taken from them.
Limit Freedom Paradox
The Restriction Freedom Paradox underscores that innovation leaders need to allow sufficient time for employees to develop creative endeavors and provide resources to do so. At the same time, leaders must be careful to put enough pressure that they are still motivated to complete the task and do not provide too many resources that have a "lethal effect" on creativity.
Situational Paradox
Situational Paradoxes involve conflicting interests between leaders and situations they face.
Intrinsic Extrinsic Paradox
The Intrinsic Extrinsic Paradox states that instead of providing more available extrinsic motivation tools such as bonuses and salary increases, leaders must provide intrinsic motivation, which generally comes from within employees, to their employees. This paradox is based on the finding that intrinsic motivation is a key factor in facilitating creativity and extrinsic motivators can inhibit creativity or have an unclear relationship with creativity.
Local Long-Term Paradox
The Local Long-Term Paradox argues that innovation leaders must maintain their innovative advantage by watching and exploiting potential opportunities, even with the risk of putting ideas above or even eliminating ideas that he has previously inspired in the team. Leaders must also be able to develop flexible enough teams to be passionate about ideas that might have replaced their own ideas that their leaders have facilitated, inspired and supported. This is where the paradox is most clearly seen.
Collaborative Competition Paradox
The competition collaboration paradigm involves leaders who develop open external relationships with other organizations to discover potential innovation opportunities, while ensuring the emerging ideas of organizations are protected in a competitive environment.
Paradox Stiffness Feedback
The paradox of feedback stiffness involves leaders who seek out and use customer and client feedback and feedback on innovative efforts to some extent, while maintaining control of the vision and not letting the feedback dictate them - because clients and customers often criticize innovations since early.
Paradox Success Failures
The Failure of Paradox Success is the idea that innovation leaders must ensure a safe organizational culture that is willing to embrace risks and failures while at the same time ensuring that the organization also produces successful products and services despite embracing risk and error.
Additional Paradox
Additional paradoxes identified by Hunter et al. (2011) which does not directly involve a leader but what is worth mentioning is the paradox that occurs between the team and the organization. These include the Insularity Cohesion paradigm, the Champion Evaluator paradox, and the Paradox of Creativity Costs.
Results
The outcomes of innovation leadership include inspiring employees to create and implement new ideas for products, services, and technology. In addition, these new ideas can also be used to solve problems within an organization. What is illustrated is that innovation driven by innovation leadership can be translated across industries and can be used for many purposes. Ultimately, inspiring and initiating organizational innovation through innovation leadership can serve to advance the organization to the next level.
Real World Examples of Innovation Leadership
Companies that use innovative leadership include 3M, which allows employees to work on projects they choose for 15% of their time.
Similarly, Google allows employees one day of the week to work on their own projects.
Zappos employees are allowed to "radically" decorate their booth and are encouraged to laugh and have fun at work at the parade office.
See also
- Innovation
- Leadership
- Leadership study
- Organizational development
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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