Leadership and Innovation:
Learning from the Best
In surveys of most innovative companies, firms like
Apple, Google, Microsoft, or Virgin regularly top
the ranks, and stories of their emblematic leaders are
recurring topics for management books and maga-
zines. But what do Steve Jobs, Larry Page and Sergey
Brin, Bill Gates, and Richard Branson have in com-
mon? What do they do that steers innovation in
their companies? Are they the sole drivers of inno-
vation leadership? And is there a direct link between
the innovation capability of a firm and the charisma
of its leader? After all, companies such as Toyota,
3M, Samsung, and Logitech are also recognized for
their innovation capabilities, even though it would
be more difficult to put a face on their innovation
leadership.
Learning from the experience of some of the most
innovative companies, we describe the common
traits that characterize innovation leaders but also
show the multiple facets of innovation leadership.
Innovation leadership involves different roles and
abilities across organization levels and strategic ori-
entations, and along the organization and innova-
tion life cycle. Overall, innovation leadership is too
diverse to be left to single individuals; it must be
embedded in the organization. © 2010 Wiley Peri-
odicals, Inc.
Innovation can be defined as marketable invention:
the act of generating an idea and transforming it
into a new product, service, solution, or business
model that can be sold to customers. Managing
innovation involves developing a vision and a strat-
egy, setting up the processes that will material-
ize it, and creating the organizational conditions
and culture that will facilitate the emergence of
ideas and their implementation. Creativity, innova-
tion strategies, development processes, knowledge
Global Business and Organizational Excellence • DOI: 10.1002/joe.20308 • January/February 2010
ROLAND BEL
management, and learning organizations, as well as
innovative cultures, have long been topics for man-
agement books and academic literature on innova-
tion. But to some extent leadership behavior has
been identified by many researchers and practition-
ers as one of the most, if not the most, important
driver of innovation.1 Innovation leadership’s role
is about inspiration—generating ideas, a vision, and
a strategy—and design—building an organizational
structure and a flexible culture as well as the speedy
processes that support them (see Exhibit 1). And
without great innovation leaders, there is no inno-
vation. What would Apple be without Steve Jobs?
Microsoft without Bill Gates? Dell without Michael
Dell? Google without Larry Page and Sergey Brin?
Or Virgin without Richard Branson?
What Is an Innovation Leader?
The process of innovation is commonly viewed as
being organized in two key steps: idea generation
and conceptualization (the “front end”) and prod-
uct development and launch (the “back end”). The
first phase is full of uncertainty and requires creativ-
ity and vision. The second phase requires discipline
and efficiency, and, very often, time is of the essence.
These two steps obviously require different kinds of
leadership but are inseparable and complementary
in determining the success of the new venture. A
front-end leader who does not consider the concrete
implications of its technology’s choice for the fea-
sibility of the new product is likely to end up with
major issues at the implementation stage. A back-
end leader who loses sight of the strategic vision
and objectives of the new product is likely to end up
with a market failure (e.g., a “me too” product).
A good innovation leader is characterized by the
ability to excel on the apparently conflicting skills

c 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com)
47
 Exhibit 1. Innovation Leadership: The Driving Force
Innovation leadership
Idea, vision,
strategy
Organizational structure and culture
of creativity and discipline. Innovation leaders have
a strong ability to recognize opportunities and to
develop them.
A Common Profile for Innovation Leaders
Successful innovation leaders are characterized by
a set of common attributes, identical skills and
abilities, and a combination of breadth and depth,
which makes them generalists and specialists at the
same time. Jean-Philippe Deschamps, a long-time in-
novation management practitioner and consultant,
gathers from many discussions with top innovation
leaders and senior executives that innovation lead-
ers share the attributes described in the next six
subsections.2
A Mix of Emotion and Realism
This is the unusual combination of creativity (to
foster the emergence of ideas and concepts) and
discipline (to lead the process of development and
market launching). Deschamps reports the opinion
of Ad Huijser, a former member of Philips Group
management and CEO of Philips Research: “You
always need creativity in innovation, so [. . .] inno-
vation leaders [. . .] are creative, but in a balanced
way. They are not creative every day with a new
idea because you cannot lead an organization to-
wards innovation if you change the direction every
48 January/February 2010
Processes
day.” After creativity comes the time for discipline
and implementation.
The Acceptance of Uncertainty, Risks, and Failures
By nature, innovation involves risks and uncertainty.
A good innovation leader is not so much the one
who knows the key success factors but the one who
handles risks successfully. And guiding an organi-
zation for innovation implies accepting this uncer-
tainty but also learning from failures (see Exhibit 2).
William McKnight, founder and former president
and chairman of the board of 3M, used to say,
“Management that is destructively critical when
mistakes are made kills initiative. And it’s essen-
tial that we have many people with initiative if we
are to continue to grow.”3 The well-known story of
3M’s Post-it notes is a good illustration of how an
initial “failure” (microsphere adhesive, a nonstick-
ing glue) can turn into a huge commercial success.
Exhibit 2. Innovation, Risks, and Failures
Risks/ Errors/
Innovation Uncertainties Failures
Initiatives Learning
DOI: 10.1002/joe Global Business and Organizational Excellence
Leaders in innovation do not stigmatize failure but
tolerate it and learn from it. They encourage their
staff to take risk and learn from their failures. Steve
Jobs and his team of innovators provide multiple
examples. The Macintosh was born from Lisa, an
earlier product that flopped; the iPhone was the re-
sponse to the failure of Apple’s original music phone
(developed with Motorola), and its recent comput-
ers are using technology from NeXT, a company
Steve Jobs founded in the 1980s that almost failed
and was later acquired by Apple.
A High Degree of Passion
Have you ever attended a new product presentation
by Steve Jobs? It is not a new product presentation;
it is a show. Steve Jobs has a passion for computers
and computer design. When speaking about it, he
always uses words such as “amazing,” “awesome,”
“cool,” or “extraordinary.” Showing passion and
enthusiasm for new products or features also gener-
ates passion for people around him, so passion, like
blood, circulates into the “veins” of Apple’s organi-
zation and shapes its culture.
The Willingness to Proactively Search for External
Technologies and Ideas
Curiosity and the willingness to use what has been
discovered elsewhere are key attributes of today’s
innovation leader. The development of the “knowl-
edge economy” has seen the spread of knowledge
worldwide, and the time is gone when Bell Lab-
oratories was locking its engineers away to come
up with new ideas and was basing its new prod-
ucts on their inspiration. Now is the time of “open
innovation” or “network innovation,” and the not-
invented-here syndrome is pushed out of every lab-
oratory. Pharmaceutical companies spend a third of
their research and development (R&D) budgets on
externally sourced technologies and research part-
nerships. A company like Apple, once viewed as
an intrinsic innovator, is in fact leveraging exten-
sively on external technology: the iPod concept was
originally brought in by an external consultant.
It used off-the-shelf components combined with
Global Business and Organizational Excellence DOI: 10.1002/joe
proprietary ingredients and was designed to work
with iTunes software, which was also brought in.
Good innovation leaders know how to mix their
own ideas with outside technologies and then add
their own twists. Mike Ramsay, cofounder and for-
mer CEO and chairman of TiVo (the revolutionary
view-on-demand TV company) inserted two funda-
mental principles in the company’s charter: (1) not
to reinvent the wheel and to do things internally
only if it adds value, and (2) to partner and cooper-
ate openly with the best partners available.4
Thousands of ideas lead to hundreds of concepts
that generate tens of projects that give few market
successes.
The Courage to Stop Projects, Not Just to Start Them
Thousands of ideas lead to hundreds of con-
cepts that generate tens of projects that give few
market successes. As a project moves from the ini-
tial idea to the next phases, cumulative investment
grows, and wise companies have set up stage-gate
“funnel innovation” processes to select the projects
most likely to succeed. The most difficult decision to
make for an innovation leader is to stop a project.
There are always good reasons not to kill a project:
it meets net present value (NPV) or return on in-
vestment (ROI) goals, an important customer wants
it, the CEO wants it, it’s Franck’s project, it might
be the project that saves my bacon, good managers
can meet stretched goals (and I’m a good manager),
and so on.5 Great innovation leaders know that they
have to sacrifice projects more likely to fail as early
as possible, so as to focus efforts and resources on
the most likely winners. Ad Huijser, former research
star at Philips, gives the following comment: “Lead-
ership is pulling the plug. . . .This is, of course,
only one part of leadership; the other one is start-
ing things! But starting is easier than stopping in a
research environment. Stopping is what really asks
for making choices, and that means taking a risk
January/February 2010 49
 because you may be stopping something of value.
Therefore, stopping projects asks for more leader-
ship than starting projects. . . . A creative environ-
ment, for me, is an atmosphere in which creativity
can flourish, but at the same time it is constrained
by budgets, by manpower, etc. So, if you want to
create new things, you have to stop other things.”6
A Talent for Attracting Innovators and Building
and Steering Winning Teams
Innovation leaders recognize that innovation is a
team effort because it requires a number of various
capabilities to make it happen. Daniel Borel, chair-
man of the board at Logitech, mentions that “the
r Skills and abilities. For successful innovation
great leader is one who is able [. . .] to build a team
with people who have a different psyche of one ver-
sus the other, get them to work together, share the
same language for the sake of the customer.”7
An effective innovation leader ensures that the orga-
nization will secure its desired outcomes by creating
win-win systems that reward the right behaviors and
performance.
In addition to those attributes, innovation leaders
share the following common traits:
r Will and humility. Despite commitment, re-
sources, structure, and processes, there is still a
role for serendipity in innovation, and innovation
leaders understand that focus on innovation does
not guarantee success. They are also aware that
past successes are not a recipe for future accom-
plishment. A usual way to deliver innovative so-
lutions on a sustainable basis is to constantly fight
against arrogance (we know better) and against
complacence (business as usual, why bother?).
After a five-year study in eleven great compa-
nies, Jim Collins8 discovered that these compa-
nies had in common what he called “Level 5”
leaders—CEOs who showed humility and will
50 January/February 2010 DOI: 10.1002/joe
at the same time. Collins cites Darwin E. Smith
(former CEO of Kimberly-Clark), Colman M.
Mockler (former CEO of Gillette), and Charles
‘Cork’ Walgreen III (former CEO of Walgreens)
as examples of leaders who produced great results
by showing an unwavering resolve—relentlessly
sticking to their objectives—while putting the
company first, showing ambition not for them-
selves but for their company. These are not the
kind of CEOs appearing regularly on TV talk
shows or on the covers of magazines. More-
over, these Level 5 leaders also have the talent
to choose their successor and leave behind them
a company that would be great without them.
leaders, the above characteristics are comple-
mented by a group of common capabilities.
Empirical studies have shown that six sets of
leadership skills and abilities positively influence
organizations’ success rates in implementing
change and driving innovation.9
r Ability to coach: this involves inspiring others
to be at their best and remaining future-
oriented, establishing a collegial partnership
with employees and serving employees in im-
plementing change and innovation activities.
r Ability to reward: “the things that get re-
warded get done.” An effective innovation
leader ensures that the organization will se-
cure its desired outcomes by creating win-win
systems that reward the right behaviors and
performance. But, given the nature of innova-
tion, those rewards systems need to be flexible
and gradual, valuing small contributions,
milestones, and incremental change (“small
victories”).
r Ability to involve and support others: con-
necting with employees, soliciting feedback,
and offering a high level of support facilitates
employees’ involvement and commitment,
which is critical to successful innovation and
change implementation.
r Ability to promote teamwork and collabo-
ration: innovation is a collective endeavor.
Global Business and Organizational Excellence
 Structuring workgroups to support collabora-
tion is critical. This involves designing them so
that members who have diverse background
and skills can communicate, interact, and
constructively challenge each other’s ideas.
r Ability to communicate: communication is
an effective tool for stimulating employees
involved in innovation. The innovation
leader must constantly share her vision to
drive employees’ efforts toward the “right”
direction. This includes giving feedbacks and
reinforcement, so that employees keep the
focus and sustain their motivation.
r Ability to motivate: with innovation, a
leader’s ability to persuade and influence
others to work in a common direction is
imperative. This means organizing and fos-
tering a motivating environment (i.e., one
that supports and rewards new ideas and
develops job satisfaction, equity, organiza-
tional commitment, effective communication,
freedom, flexibility, and resources). There is
no doubt that the informal, freedom-oriented
environment of most Silicon Valley firms is a
critical motivation factor for their employees
and a key success factor of their innovation
capability. Moreover, fostering a motivating
environment includes the ability to attract and
retain individuals who are passionate about
their work and intrinsically motivated.
A recent empirical study10 has shown that the
abilities to communicate appropriately and
to motivate others have the most significant
influence on a leader’s ability to effectively drive
innovation and implement change.
r Specialist and generalist. A senior Japanese
innovator at NEC, once asked to define the
profile of innovative managers his company was
trying to attract, used the following metaphor:
“We don’t want ‘potatoes,’ i.e. people who have
a lot of breadth in terms of their functional or
discipline coverage but no depth! . . . We don’t
favor ‘carrots’ either, those specialists or experts
who build a lot of depth in their chosen field but
Global Business and Organizational Excellence DOI: 10.1002/joe
have no breadth, because they choose to remain
in their narrow area. . . . What we are looking for
are ‘mushrooms,’ i.e. individuals who combine
a breadth of interests and knowledge with some
depth in a number of areas. These are the kind
of managers to whom we entrust our critical
innovation projects.”11
The innovation leader must be like a mushroom:
with a deep stem—that is, a strong—technical—
base and a large head able to reach out to other
areas in order to comprehend all aspects of the
new venture. But, being humble, the innovation
leader knows his/her limits. Therefore, successful
innovation leaders usually let other leaders grow
around them, which complements their spectrum
of competencies with their own perspectives (see
Exhibit 3 on page 52). Diversity fuels innovation.
Jeffrey Immelt, driving the innovation efforts at GE,
decided to bring innovation leaders from outside
(especially in marketing) to fuel its company with
new ideas, stimulate new thinking, and challenge
existing paradigms.
Different Types of Innovation Leadership
Even though innovation leaders share common char-
acteristics, we argue that different types of inno-
vation leadership are required at different levels of
the organization, for different strategies, at differ-
ent phases of the organization’s evolution, and at
different stages of innovation, and depend on the
characteristics of the team members.
Innovation Leadership and Organization Level
The higher in the organization, the more power-
ful the leader is to promote and drive innovation.
Examples abound, such as Steve Jobs at Apple or
Richard Branson at Virgin, where leaders at the top
have inspired entire organizations. And the critical
role of CEOs in directly influencing organizational
innovation12 and leading the innovation process and
culture13 has been demonstrated. But innovation
does not come only from the top: it can be initi-
ated anywhere in an organization, even at the lowest
January/February 2010 51
 Exhibit 3. Innovation Leader: A Mushroom
levels, and companies such as 3M have shown that
“bottom-up” innovation can sometimes be more ef-
fective than “top-down” innovation. Whirlpool’s
former CEO Dave Whitwam once characterized
his company’s global innovation strategy as “in-
novation from everyone and everywhere.”14 Marc
Benioff, the chairman and CEO at Salesforce.com,
an innovative software company, considers that
the CEO’s role is to lead the company to develop
new models—business, technology, and leadership
models—that will drive innovation to fuel growth
and profitability.15
At the highest level, the primary role of an innova-
tion leader is to be a sponsor for innovation. This is
the IDEA phase, which agglomerates the following
set of attributes.
r Inspiring: articulating a vision that people can
identify with and that can generate excitement
and commitment. Henry Ford’s “a car for
everyone” or Bill Gates’s “one PC on every
desk” are archetypical examples of visions that
are clear, challenging, meaningful, motivating,
and credible.
52 January/February 2010 DOI: 10.1002/joe
r Driving: leading the people who make innova-
tion happen. This involves being a role model
by demonstrating one’s own involvement and
energy. Steve Jobs at Apple is an excellent
example of leading by example.
r Enabling: this includes the ability to listen,
understand, and show empathy for the individ-
uals involved, as well as to show confidence in
their ability to perform and meet the challenges.
The objective here is to enable employees to
be innovative. Paul O’Neill’s vision for Alcoa,
based on quality, safety, and innovation, was
supported by extensive personal contacts and
his presence at regular meetings or task forces
(and sometimes on video tapes), where he
constantly reaffirmed his encouragement to team
members.
r Advising: guiding and coaching the teams and
organizational units that are involved in inno-
vation. Companies such as Nokia, Johnson &
Johnson, and Kimberly-Clark have established
venture or advisory boards made up of the
CEO and top-level managers, whose role is to
pull together internal and external knowledge
and advise innovation teams by evaluating
Global Business and Organizational Excellence
 opportunities, guiding innovation efforts, and
approving strategic investments.
A charismatic style involves communicating with
vision, energizing, and accelerating innovation pro-
cesses, while a strategic style consists of using
power to innovate, committing employees to innova-
tion, and enabling employees to be innovative. But
with innovation, those styles have limitations and
risks.
These characteristics correspond to what is generally
called charismatic and strategic leadership styles.16
A charismatic style involves communicating with vi-
sion, energizing, and accelerating innovation pro-
cesses, while a strategic style consists of using power
to innovate, committing employees to innovation,
and enabling employees to be innovative. But with
innovation, those styles have limitations and risks.17
In particular, a strong charismatic leader may create
unrealistic expectations, generate dependency or a
reluctance to disagree, and provoke the disenfran-
chisement of next levels of management. Moreover,
the leader’s time, energy, expertise, and competen-
cies are necessarily limited. Thus, if driving innova-
tion from the top is necessary, it is seldom sufficient,
and the solution to these problems requires a more
instrumental and interactive18 style of leadership, in-
volving more leaders in the organization. Those may
be technical champions (inventors or team leaders
responsible for an invention) or business champions
(representing the broader market or user perspec-
tive) or technological gatekeepers (collecting infor-
mation from various sources and passing it on to
the relevant people). In other words, sponsors re-
quire champions, and an idea requires ARMS to be
effectively implemented. Those ARMS are provided
by other innovation leaders, lower in the organiza-
tion, exerting the following attributes:
r Advocating: promoting and defending a vision at
a higher level. In a bottom-up innovation pro-
Global Business and Organizational Excellence DOI: 10.1002/joe
cess, ideas are generated by individuals down in
the organization and compete for resources. They
require champions to defend them and obtain the
organization’s commitment and an allocation of
resources. In a top-down innovation process, top
management will need relays in the organization
to champion competing ideas and challenge their
own opinions.
r Rewarding:using rewards—both positive and
negative—to encourage desired innovation be-
haviors. At 3M, a company that has institutional-
ized innovation, product inventors are rewarded
with seed capital that allows them to develop
their new product ideas. After securing seed capi-
tal, the product champion is allowed to assemble
a venture team to develop the product. As the
venture achieves certain revenue goals, the team
members receive raises, promotions, and recogni-
tion. One such recognition is the “Golden Step”
award, given if the new product is launched and
reaches a revenue goal of $4 million worldwide.
At another cutoff, a separate business unit is cre-
ated and the product champion is given the op-
portunity to head it. Another recognition is the
Carlton award, given to technical employees who
have made major contributions to 3M through
fundamental technical innovation.
r Managing linkages: (a) internally to ensure that
innovation-related activities in various parts of
the organization are strategically aligned and co-
ordinated. At Hewlett-Packard, innovation coun-
cils are involved in removing internal roadblocks
and developing coordination processes across
units; other companies, such as SRI International,
create cross-group solutions teams, made up of
managers from different business units and whose
role is to pursue opportunities that lie between or-
ganizational boundaries and combine the compe-
tencies of various units; (b) externally to bring
external perspective inside, tap into ideas, re-
sources, and technologies from the outside, or or-
ganize co-innovation with partner organizations
for new solutions or systems. Companies such as
BMW have established Thought Leader Resource
January/February 2010 53
 Exhibit 4. Innovation Leadership Roles: IDEA and ARMS
Networks with key expert individuals—called
“associates” in the case of BMW—from external
laboratories, universities, research institutions,
consulting firms, and contract manufacturers.
These innovation leaders are part of a knowl-
edge network that can be tapped at any time on
the latest technology trends and innovations, and
provides recommendations about specific issues,
challenges, and opportunities.
r Supporting: providing teams with the necessary
resources and structuring tools to implement in-
novation. At Hewlett-Packard, innovation lead-
ers participate in innovation councils, whose role
involves evaluating projects and ensuring that
each project has sufficient sponsorship, resources,
and support.
Innovation requires IDEA (to generate energy, cre-
ate commitment, and direct individuals toward the
vision) and ARMS (to ensure that people really do
act accordingly). The first function is normally de-
voted to the CEO or—given the limitations of one
single individual—to the top management, requiring
visible empowerment and adequate composition of
54 January/February 2010
the top management team. The second function ne-
cessitates a broader set of individuals and the exten-
sion of innovation leadership responsibilities toward
the senior (operating) management team, involving
managers one or two levels down from the execu-
tive team. Hence, innovation leadership must reside
at both levels in the organization (see Exhibit 4).
IBM and Whirlpool both illustrate this dual local-
ization of leadership. At IBM, Lou Gerstner (for-
mer IBM CEO) is generally credited with inspiring
and driving the turnaround of IBM from a strug-
gling hardware manufacturer toward a leader in IT
services and e-business. But Dave Grossman, a pro-
grammer, played a key leadership role. Frustrated
by the previous situation, he assembled a coalition
that championed the new idea and brought it into
practice. At Whirlpool, former CEO David Whit-
wam provided the vision of “Innovation for Every-
one and Everywhere” and took on the role of “chief
innovation officer.” The top management team was
in charge of driving the innovation efforts. Jeff Fettig
(former COO and then CEO) was appointed as the
chief architect of innovation, while Nancy Snyder
DOI: 10.1002/joe Global Business and Organizational Excellence
was the global vice president of innovation, leading
the innovation efforts across the company together
with the top 25 officers in charge of driving and
enabling innovation diffusion and new growth ac-
tivities in their business units. The next level of man-
agement had a different role. New leadership roles
were created, called regional vice presidents/general
managers of innovation, supported by regional in-
novation boards (i-boards) and innovation teams
(i-teams) and innovation mentors and consultants.
I-boards met monthly and were in charge of cham-
pioning new projects, removing barriers, and man-
aging linkages across entities, as well as overseeing
funding of new ideas and ventures. I-teams were
in charge of advocating new ideas and generating
strategic insights. Part-time innovation mentors and
full-time innovation consultants were fostering in-
novation, coaching and supporting would-be inno-
vators, and helping them push their ideas forward.
They also managed linkages with the company’s di-
visions and monitored and managed the pipeline
process.19
Different Leaders for Different Strategies
There are different typologies of innovation, but
essentially innovation can be characterized by its de-
gree (radical vs. incremental) and by its scope (prod-
uct, process, service, solution, system or business
model). This defines four generic types of strategic
focus20 for innovation (see Exhibit 5).
Arguably, those different strategies require different
types of focus.
r Improved products need team sport coaches,
focusing on challenging, setting goals, and
measuring.
r New products require no-nonsense sponsors with
a focus on nurturing, challenging, and empower-
ing. Howard Schulz at Starbucks or Steve Jobs at
Apple are archetypical of this category of leaders.
r New solutions need orchestra conductors who
focus on interpreting, orchestrating, and integrat-
Global Business and Organizational Excellence DOI: 10.1002/joe
Exhibit 5. Innovation Strategic Focus
DEGREE
New System
Radical
“product”*
Improved
Incremental Solution
“product”*
“Product”* With partners
SCOPE
* Here “product” means product, process, or service
ing, as was the case for the development of IBM
Solutions (combining hardware, software, and
consulting services) or Nestle’s Nespresso.
r New systems, such as TiVO’s TV recording on
demand, or iTunes/iPod’s music distribution sys-
tem require pragmatic architects, focusing on vi-
sioning, partnering, and master planning.
Can Innovation Leaders Scale? Innovation Leadership
and Organization’s Stage
Innovation leadership is not immutable: skills, style,
and habits have to be adapted as the organiza-
tion evolves. In start-ups and small companies,
true innovation leaders have a dual role. They
must be charismatic—leading innovation and lead-
ing the people who make innovation happen—
and instrumental—creating an environment than en-
courages innovation. But as the company gets larger,
the “one-man show” reaches limitations. Examples
abound about entrepreneurs and leaders who did
great at starting a business but failed to adapt their
leadership capabilities to the needs of their grow-
ing business. Four characteristics that work well for
leaders of start-ups or small businesses can become
liabilities as the company grows larger:
January/February 2010 55
 r Loyalty to comrades. Blind loyalty to people who
were at the start of the business can become a
liability when it becomes large.
r Task orientation. A pure “hands-on” style when
the company is small becomes ill adapted when it
becomes larger. Ratan Tata, the executive chair-
man of Tata Motors, a huge Indian conglom-
erate, has managed to keep an entrepreneurial
management style while not engaging in micro-
level operational details. He regularly meets on
some projects with his senior executives as well
as his management team and workforce, listens
to their reports, shares his views and thoughts,
and at the end generally asks what support is re-
quired from him and the Board to complete the
pending work successfully. But he does not in-
terfere with their actions and rather offers trust
and confidence that they will deliver the required
results.
r Single-mindedness. This can be an asset when
driving a vision for a radical innovation, but the
lack of a broader view may become a problem
when the company grows.
r Working in isolation. When the organization gets
larger, the number and importance of stakehold-
ers increases. The success of future innovation
depends on satisfying the diverse needs of em-
ployees, customers, suppliers, and other external
groups. Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart
Stores Inc., initiated a process to stay in touch
with the real world. Every week, starting on Mon-
day, senior executives travel around the world to
visit Wal-Mart and competitors’ stores and meet
with employees, customers, and suppliers. They
gather direct information unfiltered by hierarchy.
On Friday, back in the corporate offices, they dis-
cuss what they have seen and on Saturday, they
hold a videoconference with thousands of store
managers where they share their observations and
provide directions for the following week.21
Through listening and seeking input from others,
successful leaders are able to change their habits and
adapt their behavior as their company evolves.
56 January/February 2010 DOI: 10.1002/joe
Innovation Leadership and Stages of Innovation
Even though innovation leaders must be able to per-
form both in the front-end and the back-end phases
of innovation, their style of leadership must evolve
during stages of innovation.22 Visionary leadership
is necessary at the beginning of the innovation pro-
cess, then a participative leadership style is needed
to get the employees involved, followed by transac-
tional leadership.
Innovation Leadership and Characteristics
of Team Members
Innovation leadership style may be sensible not only
to the stage of team development but also to indi-
vidual characteristics of team members.23 The leader
should adapt his or her style to the individuals, in
particular to their needs (e.g., autonomy) and abili-
ties (e.g., self-efficacy),24 and more than one style of
leadership is effective for the functioning of teams.
For example, five leadership factors are considered
to be relevant for the efficiency of self-managing
teams (e.g., R&D teams with dependent tasks and
job autonomy): consideration, initiating, charisma,
participative or consultative, and coaching.25
Innovation Leader or Innovation Leadership?
Toward Embedded Leadership
Leadership has long been viewed as a solitary cre-
ativity exercise, and individuals such as Leonardo da
Vinci, Louis Pasteur, Benjamin Franklin, and Steve
Jobs have been seen as innovation geniuses who gen-
erated and implemented breakthrough ideas on their
own. But more recently, research and actual prac-
tice have shown that in complex organizations and
environments, an individual leader is not sufficient
to drive successful innovation efforts.
Through listening and seeking input from others,
successful leaders are able to change their habits
and adapt their behavior as their company evolves.
Global Business and Organizational Excellence
r Critical mass. When MGE UPS Systems, a leader
in power protection devices for computers, was
confronted with the lack of innovation in their
French R&D laboratory, they decided to inject a
dose of leadership. They sent a seasoned leader
from their U.S. R&D department to take on an
important position in France as a program man-
ager in charge of a major development project.
The idea was that the drive and behavior of the
newcomer would not only rub off on his own
team but would also inspire the rest of the R&D
organization. But soon it became clear that the
new innovation leader was clueless in changing
the processes and behaviors of the local team and
that the conservative habits of the local organi-
zation were in fact starting to affect his own be-
havior. The solution was to send him back to the
United States before it was too late. The story
reveals a problem of critical mass: an innovation
leader alone—even at a high level—may not have
the power and impact to profoundly change the
culture of the local organization.
r Chain of leadership. Rather than relying on an in-
dividual alone, Deschamps advocates the concept
of a “chain of leadership,” where a series of lead-
ers with complementary skills successively and
seamlessly take the leadership role in the different
phases of the development project. Deschamps26
gives the example of Tetra Pack’s “retortable
carton” package project (named Tetra Recart)
where, over a ten-year time frame, a succession
of technical, business, and executive champions
worked together and in succession to provide an
uninterrupted chain of leadership.
r Collaborative innovation. Where the chain of
leadership provides a solution to the “time” di-
mension of innovation, it fails to properly ad-
dress the “space” dimension in a world of open,
networked innovation. Innovations such as Ap-
ple’s iPod have been developed by matching in-
house ingredients with outside technologies, in
what is often called “network innovation.”27 In
this environment, innovation leaders must or-
chestrate and integrate technologies, ideas, and
Global Business and Organizational Excellence DOI: 10.1002/joe
people from various horizons. Their role is not
to be the source of ideas but to encourage and
champion ideas. “People have a lot of great ideas,
if you give them space to do their thing and
create an environment that is collaborative, not
competitive—if you never say ‘That’s silly’ when
they’re thinking out of the box,” said Mark Dean,
vice president of systems of IBM Research.28 In-
novation becomes like a team sport where the
innovation leader plays the role of captain: on
the field and guiding the team players. And as in
a sports team, in a successful innovation project
the performance of the team is stronger than what
could be achieved by the sum of the individual
talents. The traditional model of top-down lead-
ership is replaced by network systems of elec-
tive actions.29 This new model of innovation
and leadership is now embraced by many high-
tech companies, and John Chambers, the CEO
of Cisco Systems, mentioned at a recent Fortune
magazine conference that this change would lead
to a 10-percent annual productivity increase for
Cisco over the next decade. Traditional compa-
nies may also up the benefits by raising awareness
of the need to change, experimenting with new
collaborative tools (McKinsey or Disney), devel-
oping new collaborative processes, providing in-
frastructure to enable collaboration (Procter &
Gamble and the Centers for Disease Control), and
building a culture of collaboration.30
Where the chain of leadership provides a solution
to the “time” dimension of innovation, it fails to
properly address the “space” dimension in a world
of open, networked innovation.
r Embedded and transferable leadership. At its
best, the performance of collaborative innova-
tion may even be such that groups made up of
“normal” people may outperform those made up
of people with “the right stuff.”31 At this level,
the innovative capability of individual people is
January/February 2010 57
 of second order: what drives creativity and in-
novation is the collaborative interaction of who-
ever wants to contribute. Leadership is not in the
hands of an individual or a group of individuals,
but is now embedded in the organization of the
participants. Open Source software or Wikipedia
are examples of innovations driven by voluntary
collaborative participation, and where the action
of each is generating positive externalities for
the others. This ultimate form of collaborative
innovation32 is not specific to software or In-
ternet companies. Innovation communities exist
on physical products such as sports equipment
(e.g., mountain bikes, snowboards, surfboards)
or surgical equipment (e.g., clinical chemical
analyzers).33 A small U.K. company producing
gauges and other measuring devices for the fuel
tanks of filling stations has reached 80 percent
market share on the European market. Through-
out the organization, employees at all levels feel
enabled to find and solve problems, often exper-
imenting with different solutions and frequently
failing, but at least learning and sharing that in-
formation for others to build on: improvement
projects are everywhere. The operations direc-
tor comments: “It doesn’t bother me that I don’t
know in detail what’s going on. They all know
the strategy, they all have a clear idea of what we
have to do [. . .]. They’ve all been trained, they
know how to run improvement projects and they
work as a team. And I trust them.”34
In a recent article35 inspired by leadership behavior
in honeybee swarms, Couzin et al. observe that in
animal groups, making movement decisions de-
pends on social interactions among group members.
They study groups where few individuals have
pertinent information on where to go and how to
get there (as is often the case in innovation), where
group members do not know which individuals
have pertinent information, and where informed
individuals may differ in their preferred direction
due to differences in experience or motivation.
Using a simple model where individuals balance
58 January/February 2010 DOI: 10.1002/joe
their preference to move in a given direction with
their desire to maintain social interactions with
group members, they highlight the importance of
feedback mechanisms to reinforce the leaders36 and
demonstrate the ability of a group to achieve a
consensus for the majority option when differences
are relatively small. This is especially relevant for
innovation: feedback mechanisms such as other
people’s opinions, surveys, tests, and beta versions
are necessary along the way to reinforce the leaders.
And the ability to achieve a consensus when there
is no major disagreement in the direction pursued
is a guarantee of efficiency. Furthermore, Couzin
et al. show that leaders do not have to be identified.
Leadership can emerge as a function of information
differences among members of a population and
is therefore transferable. For those who may argue
that embedding leadership is easier said than done,
the model of Couzin et al. brings a positive note.
They demonstrate that the larger the group, the
smaller the proportion of informed individuals
needed to lead the group with a given accuracy,37
suggesting that in large firms only a relatively small
proportion of innovation leaders is required.
For those who may argue that embedding leadership
is easier said than done, the model of Couzin et
al. brings a positive note. They demonstrate that
the larger the group, the smaller the proportion of
informed individuals needed to lead the group with
a given accuracy.
Innovation Leadership: Diverse and Dispersed
Stories about emblematic innovation leaders have
masked that innovation is not in general the fact of
one single individual, even at the top. Innovation
leaders share a common set of attributes and abili-
ties. But in complex organizations and environment,
leadership roles are diverse and must fit organization
and innovation stage, strategy, and organizational
Global Business and Organizational Excellence
level. A single individual or a few key leaders, even
at the top, should not be expected to reunite all those
abilities.
Companies wishing to implement sustained innova-
tion should set up a pool of diverse innovation lead-
ers at different levels of the organization who can
offer varying leadership roles at different organiza-
tional and innovation stages and suit the evolving
requirements of the innovation strategy. Leadership
needs to be conceived as something that happens
across functions and levels and evolves along the or-
ganization’s and the innovation strategy’s life cycle.
Top management leadership is as much about gen-
erating dispersed (embedded) leadership within the
organization as it is about direct involvement. And
the primary role of innovation leaders should be to
create a climate for innovation.38
Notes
1. Amabile, T. M. (1998). How to kill creativity. Harvard
Business Review, 76(9), 77–87.
2. Deschamps, J. P. (2008). Innovation leaders: How senior
executives stimulate, steer, and sustain innovation. Hoboken,
NJ: Wiley.
3. The “tolerance rule” is one of 3M’s “golden rules” of
innovation: employees are guaranteed to keep their position
in the event of failure of their project.
4. See note 2.
5. Henderson, R. “Technology Strategy” course, MIT Sloan
School of Management.
6. See note 2.
7. Interview with J. P. Deschamps.
8. Collins, J. (2001). Level 5 leadership. Harvard Business
Review, 79(1), 67–76. These 11 good-to-great companies
were selected for their great performance out of the 1,435
companies that appeared in the Fortune 500 from 1965 to
1995.
9. Gilley, A., Dixon, P., & Gilley, J. W. (2008). Character-
istics of leadership effectiveness: Implementing change and
driving innovation in organizations. Human Resource De-
velopment Quarterly, 19(2), 153–169.
10. Ibid.
Global Business and Organizational Excellence DOI: 10.1002/joe
11. See note 2.
12. Jung, D., Wu, A., & Chow, C. W. (2008). Towards un-
derstanding the direct and indirect effects of CEO’s trans-
formational leadership on firm innovation. The Leadership
Quarterly, 19, 582–594.
13. See, for example, Verloop, J. (2004). Insight in inno-
vation: Managing innovation by understanding the laws of
innovation. Boston, MA: Elsevier. For Verloop, there is no
successful innovative company without a committed CEO
(twelfth law of innovation).
14. Cited by Skarzynski, P., & Gibson, R. (2008). Inno-
vation to the core: A blueprint for transforming the way
your company innovates. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business
Press.
15. Cited by Davila, T., Epstein, M., & Shelton, R. (2006).
Making innovation work: How to manage IT, measure it,
and profit from it. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Wharton School
Publishing.
16. Bossink, B. A. G. (2007). Leadership for sustainable in-
novation. International Journal of Technology Management
and Sustainable Development, 6(2), 135–149.
17. Nadler, D. A., & Tushman, M. L. (2004). Beyond the
charismatic leader: Leadership and organizational change.
In M. L. Tushman & P. Anderson (Eds.), Managing strategic
innovation and change (2nd ed., pp. 563–576). New York:
Oxford University Press.
18. An instrumental leadership style includes structuring,
controlling and rewarding, while an interactive style involves
empowering, cooperating and developing additional leader-
ship (see note 16).
19. For a description of Whirlpool’s innovation infrastruc-
ture see Snyder, N. T., & Duarte, D. L. (2003). Strategic
innovation: Embedding innovation as a core competency in
your organization. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
20. J. P. Deschamps analyzes four dimensions but ends up
with those four strategic thrusts.
21. Bhattacharyya, S. (2006). Entrepreneurship and innova-
tion: How leadership style makes the difference. Vikalpa,
31(1), 107–115.
22. Manz, C. C., Bastien, D. T., Hostager, T. J., & Shapiro,
G. L. (1989). Leadership and innovation: A longitudinal pro-
cess view. In A. H. Van de Ven, H. L. Angle, & M. Scott
Poole (Eds.), Research on the management of innovation:
The Minnesota studies (pp. 613–636). New York: Harper &
Row.
January/February 2010 59
 23. House, R. J. (1971). A path goal theory of leadership ef-
fectiveness. Administrative Science Quarterly, 16, 321–328.
24. Stocker, J. I., Looise, J. C., Fissher, O. A. M., & de Jong,
R. D. (2001). Leadership and innovation: Relations between
leadership, individual characteristics and the functioning of
teams. International Journal of Human Resource Manage-
ment, 12, 1141–1151.
25. Ibid.
26. See note 2 (Chapter 8).
27. Network innovation is not limited to the high-tech in-
dustry: pharmaceutical companies or consumer goods com-
panies such as Procter & Gamble practice it.
28. In Davenport, T. H., Leibold, M., & Voelpel, S. (2006).
Strategic management in the innovation economy. Erlangen,
Germany: Publicis Corporate Publishing and Wiley.
29. Rodriguez, D., & Solomon, D. (2007). Leadership and
innovation in a networked world. Innovations, 2, 3–13.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid.
32. Sometimes also called “high-involvement innovation.”
See Bessant, J. (2003). High involvement innovation. Chich-
ester, UK: Wiley.
33. von Hippel, E. (2005). Democratizing innovation. Cam-
bridge, MA: The MIT Press.
34. Taken from Tidd, J., Bessant, J., & Pavitt, K. (2005).
Managing innovation: Integrating technological, market
60 January/February 2010 DOI: 10.1002/joe
and organizational change (3rd ed.). Chichester, UK:
Wiley.
35. Couzin, I. D., Krauze, J., Franks, N. R., & Levin, S. A.
(2005). Effective leadership and decision-making in animal
groups on the move. Nature, 433, 513–516.
36. When informed individuals find themselves moving in
a similar direction to their preferred direction, it reinforces
their preference; otherwise it reduces it.
37. The authors note that in honeybee swarms, only 5 per-
cent of individuals can guide the group to a new nest site
(from Seeley, T. D. [1985]. Honeybee ecology: A study of
adaptation in social life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press; pp. 71–74.
38. Isaksen, S., & Todd, J. (2006). Meeting the innovation
challenge: Leadership for transformation and growth. Hobo-
ken, NJ: Wiley.
Roland Bel is a professor of strategy and innovation at the
Euromed School of Management in Marseille, France. He has
20 years of international management experience in Europe,
the United States, and Asia, for companies such as ESSO,
Hewlett-Packard, Schneider Electric, and MGE UPS Systems.
Dr. Bel’s research interests are in the area of the theory of
organizations, international strategy, and innovation, with
a focus on the scope of the firm, hybrid organizations, and
the impact of innovation strategies and organization on firm
performance.
Global Business and Organizational Excellence