Book 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.
Jean-Philippe Deschamps is an innovation
management practitioner with 40 years of international consulting
experience. At IMD, which he joined in 1996 as professor of technology
and innovation management, he focuses his research, consulting and
teaching on the role of leaders in innovation. Before IMD, he was a
vice president and practice leader with consulting firm Arthur D.
Little. He co-authored the best-selling book Product Juggernauts:
How Companies Generate Streams of Market Winners (Harvard
Business School Press) and has given seminars and lectures throughout
the world, including twice at the World Economic Forum in Davos. He
graduated from HEC, INSEAD and Harvard Business School.
