Are you Managing or Leading Innovation?

Really?

I like the statement – “Manage process and lead people”. But what about innovation? We still struggle to understand if it is process, or people mindset, or some combination.

We know innovation is a lot about exploratory action and Leadership that empowers action. There is still room for managing it particularly in corporate setting, which must manage risk.

Innovation, Managing, and Leading

There is a lot written around managing vs leading, as applicable to people, processes, and business. Some of that when viewed through the innovation lens, looks like:

Innovators	Innovation Managers	Innovation Leaders
Solve complex problems	Control complexity in development	Transform company, industry & ecosystem
Develop new products & services	Deliver to the roadmap	Create vision, strategy, and roadmap
Create future they conceive	Predict the future based on trends	Prepare for the unpredictable future
Deploy their expertise to resolve situations	Organize, staff, and manage resources	Align expertise and offerings with markets
Create new outcomes	Prevent negative outcomes	Promote positive outcomes
Be creative and explore	Control creativity and experimentation	Empower people to experiment and learn
Develop their expertise	Assess the expertise and fill the gaps	Proactively fill gaps to required expertise
Build relationships of value	Re-structure to accomplish goals	Create relationships to be highly effective
Do it the way they know best	Do it the right way	Do the right things
Defend their viewpoint	Sell solutions to get everyone on board	Acknowledge & surface healthy conflict
Collaborate, learn, & produce	Motivate but control collaborative practices	Inspire collaboration and learning
Strive for excellence	Maintain a Center of Excellence	Build a Network of Excellence
Want to feel important	Want to look important	Make others feel important
Compete and collaborate as required	Create competitive strategies to win	Create collaborative strategies for win-win
Focus on Innovation Value Chain	Focus on Innovation Framework	Focus on Innovation Purpose and Mindset

In Summary,

An innovation focused organization needs all three roles – leaders, managers, and innovators. I emphasize the term ‘ROLE’ and not ‘TITLE’. I have seen CTOs actively engaged in technical discussions and engineers creating vision and collaboration with competitors for a win-win. 

A successful innovative organization allows a bit of all three across all its staff – from technician to the C-suite. That cross over through working meetings and casual chats, in person or virtual, promote sound teamwork, transparency and integrity, and internal empathy; so much needed to be adaptive and agile.

If you like this blog post, you will like my book series “Inspiring Next Innovation ….” available on Amazon and summarized in these book launch webinars on YouTube.

For Leaders –

Inspiring Next Innovation Purpose,

Available on Amazon Watch on YouTube                               

For Innovators –

Inspiring Next Innovation Value Chain,

Available on Amazon Watch on YouTube  

For Managers –

Inspiring Next Innovation Framework,

Available on Amazon Watch on YouTube     

For Leaders –

Inspiring Next Innovation Mindset,

Available on Amazon Watch on YouTube

To engage with the author – please register for upcoming virtual sessions.