‘Instructor’s Name’
Leadership and innovation by Joanna Barsh, Marla M. Capozzi, and Jonathan Davidson
- A reflection by ‘Name’
Innovation is the most celebrated concept in modern business management, but not many organizations have a system to facilitate the innovation process. In their article, ‘Leadership and innovation’, Joanna Barsh, Marla M. Capozzi, and Jonathan Davidson, lay down a blueprint for promoting an environment in which an organization can nurture sustained innovation.
Though most business pundits acknowledge the potential of an innovative idea, very few organizations have an established framework to tap the fresh and significant business ideas of their employees. The authors, through this article, advocate to the top management of business entities that, if proper processes are in place, innovation can be encouraged and new, out of the box ideas, could be identified and turned into competitive strategies.
The first step is to assimilate innovation in the strategic management process of the organization. The senior executives of the company should lead from the front, and motivate the subordinates to take risks and discard the fear of failures. The second step is for the management to form networks among the employees, and create an environment that aids innovative thinking, without introducing drastic change programs. Every organization has a mix of people each with their own talent and attitude. So forming a network, would enable people to have an exchange of ideas in an uninhabited manner and channel their combined knowledge towards arriving at an innovative idea. The last and crucial step, according to the authors, is the creation of a culture of trust. The employees should be given the confidence to express themselves freely, and be given assurance that their ideas are valuable to the organization.
There is almost a unanimous consent among management experts that, innovation is a must to survive in today’s globalized corporate world. But the thing that sets this article apart is the authors’ scientific approach to the process of innovation. Most of the literature available in this topic are descriptive and mostly talk about the merits of innovation, but this article has attempted to show a mechanism in which the process can be carried out. As the authors say, innovation is a massive idea with enormous potential, but breaking it into a series of small steps would help a management generate and foster fresh ideas, in a huge way.
