What does innovative leadership look like?
An innovative leader is someone who values continuous assessment and improvement, challenges the traditional ways of doing things, and changes processes and structures with purpose and meaning. He or she ask, “What can we do better next time?” at the completion of an initiative. A great leader also balances the need for stability with the goal to improve an annual program, as well as questions the need to change something before considering changes.
Innovative leaders encourage creativity in their organizations and create safe and welcoming spaces for organization members to propose new ideas. Check out these resources to learn how to create an innovative environment in your organization.
Articles on Innovation
From simply paying attention for new perspectives and patterns, to promoting collaboration, to giving yourself and your organization permission to play with ideas, these articles highlight skills can emphasize in order to create an innovative environment within your organization.
Campus Resources
Where Do Good Ideas Come From?
In this animated short clip, Steven Johnson describes the type of environment we need in order to foster creative thinking and the process of producing good ideas. He also notes the importance of connecting and exchanging ideas with one another.
Books on Innovation
Breakthrough Creativity by ISBN: 0891061533Publication Date: 2001-04-03Lynne Levesque shows that creativity, like intelligences, exists in a variety of forms, and demonstrates that high-performance organizations need to make use of creativity in all its dimensions. It takes more than just "thinking outside the box" to build a flexible, adaptive organization that will survive competitive battles, grow and prosper, and provide the environment that attracts and keeps the best talent. On the basis of her research in personality, innovation and creativity, Levesque describes eight distinct creative talents. People of each talent have a unique way of looking at challenges, collecting data and generating creative solutions. Breakthrough Creativity describes in individual chapters how each talent works, how each contributes to the creative process and how each can improve decision making, team building and strategic planning and thinking.
Yes, And by ISBN: 0062248545Publication Date: 2015-02-03For more than fifty years, The Second City comedy theater in Chicago has been a training ground for some of the best comic minds in the industry. But it also provides one-of-a-kind leadership training to cutting-edge companies, nonprofits, and public sector organizations-all aimed at increasing creativity, collaboration, and teamwork. The Second City provides a toolkit individuals and organizations can use to thrive in a world increasingly shaped by speed, social communication, and decentralization. Based on eight principles of improvisation, Yes, And helps to develop these skills in including mastering the ability to co-create in an ensemble, fostering a "yes, and" approach to work, embracing failure to accelerate high performance, and innovating by making something out of nothing.
On Creativity, Innovation, and Renewal by ISBN: 0787960675Publication Date: 2002-03-22On Creativity, Innovation, and Renewal features the best thinking from top experts on strategic innovation, sparking creativity, and transforming organizations. Written in a concise style that is ideal for the busy executive with little spare time, the book presents a stellar roster of contributors.
