Features
- Cover Type: Hard Cover with 456 pages
- Published by: Jossey-Bass June 10, 2008
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0470515244
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0470515242
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Book Dimensions:
9.1 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
- Weighs: 1.7 pounds
Product Description
Innovation leaders promote and address the innovation agenda in their company. Through personal conviction or competitive necessity they are obsessed with providing superior value to customers through innovation. They know how to mobilize their staff behind concrete innovation initiatives and do not hesitate to personally coach innovation teams.
For innovation to occur leadership has to be collective. To create a momentum for innovation in their company, leaders from different functions need to team up, to build innovation networks. Innovation leadership is not just an innate talent that can be selected at the hiring level. It can be developed within an appropriate company culture through careful leadership development, typically achieved through career management and coaching. Innovation leaders also need to stay on board and it is the responsibility of the top management team to create an attractive climate to develop and keep its innovation leaders.
There are plenty of books that deal with innovation, or with new product development, or with leadership; this is different in its focus on the specifics of innovation leadership – that particular form of leadership that stimulates and sustains innovation.
This book maps the broad territory of innovation leadership and contributes new thinking on the focus of the emerging leadership role of the CTO; distinction between ‘front end’ and ‘back end’ innovation leaders; the concept of aligning leadership styles with strategy; and the chain of leadership concept.
Combining practice-based and empirical research-based observations with simple conceptual frameworks, illustrated by many company examples and case stories from a broad range of industries in the US and Europe, this is a systematic presentation of innovation drivers and their implications in terms of what leaders need to do to make it work.
From the Inside Flap
Innovation leaders promote and address the innovation agenda in their company. Through personal conviction or competitive necessity they are obsessed with providing superior value to customers through innovation. They know how to mobilize their staff behind concrete innovation initiatives and do not hesitate to personally coach innovation teams.
Using real business experience and empirical research, Deschamps characterizes a specific and distinctive form of leadership that stimulates and sustains inn
ovation. This book will help you improve the innovation performance of your organization by:
- identifying and recognizing your company's innovation leaders, both through their behaviour and priorities
- encouraging spontaneous innovation initiatives, bottom-up, and steering innovation proactively, top-down
- distinguishing between four different types of generic innovation strategies and understanding their different leadership imperatives
- realizing that each innovation strategy requires a different style of leadership and different priorities
- assessing and developing your innovation leadership environmental and resources.
Reader ReviewsI've been waiting impatiently for the publication of Deschamps' book as I had read his previous bestseller Product Juggernauts. I also had had the privilege of talking extensively with the author on innovation management 2 years ago for an interview that I published in Arthur D. Little's journal Prism. The author was still in the midst of shaping his thinking about "innovation leaders". What makes the book great is its pragmatic approach to innovation management and the realistic view on leadership. Many books on leadership position leaders as near-perfect heroes. This book acknowledges that "superman" does not exist. As a consequence, 99% of "normal" managers and executives will find this book highly accessible and relevant to their daily innovation management practice.At the same time, it is more than a concatenation of easy anecdotes and examples: it also provides structure and framework to a subject that by nature is hard to grasp yet so important.
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