10: Designing Leadership for Innovation

Innovation is widely considered critical for organization’s success. We know that innovation happens in the presence of certain values and behaviors, hence it is a question of culture. Culture in turn has one critical influence: the leaders of an organization. That is why understanding how to design leadership for innovation should be of interest to anyone who wants to improve their organization’s innovation performance.

While leading by example is generally the best way to establish the desired values and behaviors, it is not in every leader's ability and comfort zone to exhibit the kind of leadership that emulates innovation. Therefore, I have started to differentiate between “leadership of” and “leadership for” innovation. Each has a different skill and mindset, and a different role to play in making innovation happen.

This chapter starts by looking at the drivers behind the context of the twenty-first century to answer the question: “Why innovation matters more in the twenty-first century than ever before?” This is followed by an introduction of a framework that focuses on areas where innovative companies do something different from their less innovative counterparts. The chapter continues with some insights on why organizations and their leaders struggle with embracing innovation before taking a look at “leading of” and “leading for” innovation and introducing the concept of “ARTISTIC Leadership.”