Innovation remains the key to strong economic growth for corporations of any size and so needs to be a integral part of any future looking strategy. However, simply having a ‘gut’ feeling about the need and expressing a desire from the top for more innovation is not enough. It needs strong leadership and real commitment from the CEO down to the business unit managers and that commitment needs to be tangible and regularly refreshed. At the top of the organization, the leadership team needs to fully understand what innovation means within the context of their organization and markets; both in terms of what the innovation needs to produce and how the organization needs to achieve it. Only by building this level of understanding will they be able to articulate the vision, formulate and implement the correct strategy and create the inspiration that will lead to success.

While vision and inspiration from the leadership is an absolutely essential part to the innovation process, so is the commitment of real resources, including personal time by the CEO and top management with the innovators on a regular basis. It can be surprising how much of their own personal time and effort innovators will put in when they see and believe in the honest interest, support and commitment of the top brass. However those at the top also need to proactively ensure that the management cadre at all levels and across all corporate boundaries realize that it is a team effort and that everyone is truly on board. Indifference and parochialism are some of the greatest killers of innovation, so contradictory personal or local interpretations of the vision and strategy need to be prevented and any structural or geographic tribalism need to be broken down to create open flows of knowledge and ideas.

Leaders also need to ensure that the innovation activities are focused, planned, persistent and regularly monitored. This requires input and support from all the major functional areas of an organization; marketing, sales, support, finance etc. Too many programmes fail because they fail to understand the markets, true costs or corporate capability to deliver the product or they loose focus and fail to achieve milestones and remain within budgets. Again, ensuring this level of focus and support is available to the innovators demonstrates the commitment of the leadership to the innovation process.

Creating valuable innovation is more than just a strategy and process issue for an organization; it is often a systemic cultural change and needs outstanding leadership that has in-depth understanding of the issues, demonstrates passion for innovation and give persistent attention and nurturing in order to create and sustain the kind of organization that constantly creates ground breaking ideas and efficiently converts them into deliverable value for the organization and its customers.