The best technology in the world may remain useless if it is not incorporated into products that people will want to buy, or which will otherwise answer one of the world’s needs (e.g. climate, environment, health etc.). The route to that involves business and leadership skills.
Delivering innovation value in a business context is about striking the right balance between vision and discovery. The balance between blind and sighted innovation is something I have written about in more detail in one of my essays about creativity in entrepreneurship. In strategic terms, innovation can either deliver a push of new product capabilities to the market, or it can solve product challenges pulled by new customer demands, or both. Many other strategic business decisions are of crucial importance when it comes to innovation: make versus buy, protecting intellectual property versus open sourcing, adaptive versus radical innovation, options available to maintain or renew competitiveness. As a director of research in a startup environment, I have developed the ability to analyse, communicate and make decisions on these aspects. I have also studied the strategic management of innovation at Cambridge University’s Institute for Manufacturing (IfM), and am on track to receive the Innovation Management Certificate of Achievement (IMCA) from the Cambridge Judge Business School (more detail in my CV).
When it comes to the importance of leadership skills, there always comes a point where achieving growth, success and innovation becomes more than a single person’s job. Modern operational models eliminate middle management in aid of less hierarchical and more direct servant leadership models. The manager’s role consists in empowering a team to express the best of each member’s expertise, and fostering a work culture based on trust, mutual support and inspiration. As a multi-cultural person myself, that is something that I have deeply enjoyed developing while growing my own research team and mentoring other staff members at Audio Analytic.
The kind of books I read on the management of technology and innovation include:
If you are interested in the strategic and managerial aspects of innovation in business, please feel free to contact me for more information.
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons.