What innovation actually requires from leaders.
<p>A short input on what innovation actually requires from leaders: the mindset, the habits, and the role in creating conditions for a team to think differently.</p>
Innovation Asks sets up the session by establishing what innovation actually means in a leadership context, drawing on three distinct bodies of research.
The first covers what innovation actually is. Steven Johnson's research across multiple domains found that good ideas rarely emerge as sudden breakthroughs. They develop slowly, in conditions of connection and cross-pollination, and depend on people having the space and permission to explore them. Clayton Christensen's work on disruptive innovation makes a related point: the most significant innovations often start at the edges of a market, in places established players are not looking. Both bodies of work point to the same conclusion: innovation is a structural and cultural phenomenon, not an individual talent.
The second covers the leader's role. Teresa Amabile's research at Harvard found that intrinsic motivation is one of the strongest predictors of creative performance, and that leaders have more influence over the conditions for that motivation than most realise. Amy Edmondson's work on psychological safety reinforces this: teams that feel safe to take risks, share ideas, and fail without consequence are significantly more likely to generate and act on new approaches. Ed Catmull's account of building Pixar adds a practitioner perspective: the most valuable thing a leader can do for innovation is remove the barriers that prevent people from thinking freely.
The third covers what gets in the way. Research into organisational dynamics consistently shows how pressure, hierarchy, and risk aversion combine to create cultures where innovative thinking is quietly suppressed. These are structural features of most organisations, not signs of individual failure, and that reframe is worth making explicit at the start of the session.
Participants have a clear, shared understanding of what innovation demands of leaders, and a framework they can use to assess their own approach.
Give a short input on what innovation asks of leaders, challenging the assumption that innovation just means brainstorming and broadening it to how a team thinks and works.
Give a short input on what innovation asks of leaders: the mindset, the habits, and the role in creating the conditions for a team to think differently. The key points to land are that innovation is a practice that can be developed with the right habits and conditions, that the leader's main contribution is environmental, in what they permit, reward, and model, and that most teams are more capable of innovative thinking than their current environment allows. Challenge what leaders think innovation means; many will associate it with brainstorming, creative thinking, or product development, and broadening that frame early, to include process innovation, market exploration, and the way a team thinks, opens up the conversation that follows.
Use Innovation Asks when a group is meeting innovation leadership for the first time and you want to widen the assumption that innovation just means brainstorming. The input sets out what innovation demands of leaders and their role in creating the conditions for it.
Using this tool with a skilled facilitator means that discussions are focused, time is used efficiently, and the group moves toward consensus, making the session productive and impactful.
