Lead Innovative Thinking Practices

This document discusses the importance of innovation and creativity in organizations and explores different leadership styles and their impact on innovation. It also highlights the critical success factors for organizational innovation and provides strategies to overcome barriers to innovation.

Running head: LEAD INNOVATIVE THINKING PRACTICES
Lead innovative thinking practices
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

1LEAD INNOVATIVE THINKING PRACTICES
TASK 1
Question 1
Ans: - The crucial drivers to any success of organisation are innovation and creativity. The
result which is unavoidable of this innovative and creative process is the change. In this
whole new world, opportunities that the common people are creating are never ending for
those creative and innovative people that are not only adaptable easily as well as can manage
change, but they are correspondingly contributed in this process of dynamic nature. In
today’s world, initiatives and practices of innovation are slowly becoming more and more
significant due to an unpredictable and fast changing business environment of the world.
Generally the common people are starting out with the process of creativity. The common
people are inventing and creating new concepts as well as new ideas. Everyone is letting their
imagination to go out wild. Whether the common people use improvisation, thinking of
divergent nature, or a technique of aerator, here the used methodology is up basically to the
inventor of a particular innovative or creative thinking. Nevertheless the raw material are
only the numerous ideas for the change and innovation. The ideas do not give guarantee by
themselves of any desired transformation or change. The next step is generally to get upon a
process of thinking critically. The common people should select the ideas which sounds
creative and that which we can easily feel are worthwhile. A question about the various ways
of reaction that the market got by selling a particular product, this question is always tied
with the innovation which is successful.
Question 2
Ans: - Creativity is necessary in the workplace if someone want to keep the momentum going
of rising its business throughout the year. At present, there are many organisations who offer
their employees a funky, cool and creative environment in order to help them spark their

2LEAD INNOVATIVE THINKING PRACTICES
creative thinking and relax to get their respective projects moving up forward. Even some
organisations arrange a brainstorming session before going into any new projects for allowing
the employees to build as well as to participate on a specific project. This process creates a lot
of engagement among the team members as it is involved in the process of creativeness.
Innovation makes a sense if it is implemented. For the implementation, funds is required and
if there is a lack of fund then it arise as a barrier for the innovation. The impact of risk
management while implementing innovations within an organisation is growing on a constant
basis as it has power on the leading position of the company by making a rise in its
competition in the international and domestic markets.
Question 3
Ans: - Five leadership style and their impact on innovation in organisations are –
1) Autocratic leadership – This leadership style is an aggressive and is based completely
on control. A leader of autocrat is always uses a look alike style of militant. Orders are
given by the autocrats and expects execution to be prompt with a little or no input or
feedback from the available workers. This can work in an environment related to
production which stresses maximal output to be simple, job roles which is repetitive (Rast
III, Hogg & Giessner, 2013).
2) Laissez-faire leadership – This leadership style is completely opposite that of autocratic
leadership style. This style is having few major benefits in the innovative environment but
there is also a certain lack in structure and discipline that is a very impactful assets of any
business environment. By using this style of leadership, it make possible for the available
employees in order to find an innovative means of undertaking a higher rate of sale
(Wong & Giessner, 2018).

3LEAD INNOVATIVE THINKING PRACTICES
3) Transformative leadership – This leadership style is doing well in the world of
business. This really shines as an approach of all around effectiveness. It give
encouragement to the employees in order to think in an innovative way as well as the
leaders is also often inspiring. They have a bigger vision, as well as they are motivating
and charismatic (Hewitt, Davis & Lashley, 2014).
4) Participant, hands-on leadership style – It is a collaborative style of leadership and it
can takes the input and the opinion of the employees into their own account during the
process of decision making. This brings out the best ideas to the board and then it puts the
company’s leader in a role of co-worker that is generally respected by all the employees
of the organisation (Packard & Jones, 2015).
5) Transactional leadership – this style of leadership is very straightforward with giving
focus on its work, processes and reward that drive results in a consistent manner.
Although leaders of transaction were tends to lack the charisma and the hype found in
leadership that is transformative, they are a process which is result oriented and that is
great for all the business (McCleskey, 2014).
Question 4
Ans: - Innovation is essential in order to attain a competitive advantage for the organisation
and industry. Innovation versus imitation, motivates companies to launch new products and
become pioneers on markets. Many factors has been shown to be determinants in order to
support an innovative orientation of an organisation. ‘Innovation theatre’ is referred to as a
term of a business guru named Steve Blank at the time when the companies invest their
capital into innovation without any type of clear strategy. Innovation on a daily basis is a
remedy to the innovation theatre. It is only possible when everyone feels encouraged for the
contribution to innovation. To overcome this barrier we can simply start with everyday
innovation, like by dedicating about 20 minutes in meetings held every week to sessions of

4LEAD INNOVATIVE THINKING PRACTICES
innovation. Everyone should remember that they are rewriting their culture. Have to keep
patience with the new structure and following it consistently.
Question 5
Ans: - The nine critical success factors impacting organisational innovation are as follows: -
1) A compelling case for innovation: - Unless people understand why innovation is
necessary, it always loses to core business or the performance engine in the battle for
resources. The performance engine is bigger, is the centre of power, and can justify
resources based on short term financial results. So the case for innovation has to be made,
and it better be compelling.
2) An inspiring, shared vision of the future: - Most companies anticipate the future based
upon the past. Not surprisingly, the company always looks relevant in that future.
However, if the past is suspended and a holistic view of the future is envisioned, then it’s
easier to recognize tidal forces of change and the company may not look so relevant in
that future. For this process, it is best to take a 10-20-year perspective. It is not about
predicting the future. It is about developing hypotheses about the future.
3) A fully aligned strategic innovation agenda: - As the Cheshire cat said to Alice, “If you
don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” Innovation is a journey into
the unknown and there are many paths open to the innovator. Before starting it is essential
to know things like: 1) what business are we in now and want to be in going forward? 2)
What is our risk tolerance for pursuing big, game-changing ideas? In our experience, the
#1 reason why game-changing innovation fails is because time is not invested up front to
align the organization behind one strategic innovation agenda.
4) Visible senior management involvement: - Incremental innovation can be pushed down
into the organization where the strategy is clear, decision metrics are understood, and

5LEAD INNOVATIVE THINKING PRACTICES
management models like Stage-Gate create a level playing field. However, for game-
changing innovation it’s the opposite. The strategy is fuzzy, and traditional metrics can’t
be applied early in the process, because that which is truly new has no frame of reference
nor benchmark. So Stage-Gate models can unintentionally kill potentially big ideas. The
pursuit of game-changing innovation only works when the person who can say yes to big
spending visibly sponsors and participates in the work and provides air cover to the work
team.
5) A decision-making model that fosters teamwork in support of passionate
champions: - Breakthroughs cannot survive without a decision-making model that is
different from the one used for incremental innovation. It’s not about metrics; it’s about
“the educated gut.” Old models don’t work. Autocratic decision-making fails to engage
all of the critical stakeholders, while consensus sinks every decision to its lowest possible
common denominator. It doesn’t work without a passionate champion who can make
decisions and engage the team to support those decisions.
6) A creatively resourced, multi-functional dedicated team: - The best teams have three
ingredients: project champions who can make decisions during working sessions and
advocate for them with executive sponsors, relevant capabilities and expertise, and naïve,
seemingly irrelevant diversity. Most often a breakthrough starts with the naïve and then
the experts determine how to do it.
7) Open-minded exploration of the marketplace drivers of innovation: - Organizational
change is driven by marketplace factors: customers, competition, government regulation,
and science and technology. Only by exploring these drivers of change can a company
begin to recognize what it must do to be relevant in its envisioned future.
8) Willingness to take risk and see value in absurdity: - Albert Einstein once said, “If at
first an idea doesn’t seem totally absurd there’s no hope for it.” Innovators understand

6LEAD INNOVATIVE THINKING PRACTICES
that you have no choice; you must take risks, often big ones, by moving toward the
absurd, the “seemingly” irrelevant, in order to create pre-emptive competitive advantage
while competitors move in the “obvious” direction.
9) A well-defined yet flexible execution process: - Companies that have been in business
for a while are good at executing on small, incremental changes. And that’s challenging
enough. What they don’t know how to do is nurture, support, and modify potentially big
new ideas with a more flexible execution process. There are three elements to innovation
execution. First, build a dedicated team for innovation.
Question 6
Ans: - The impact of risk management while implementing innovations within an
organisation is growing on a constant basis as it has power on the leading position of the
company by making a rise in its competition in the international and domestic markets
(Eckles, Hoyt & Miller, 2014).
The importance of enterprise innovation risk management is constantly increasing,
because it has influence on the company's leading positions, increasing its competitiveness in
the market. In this whole new world, opportunities that the common people are creating are
never ending for those creative and innovative people that are not only adaptable easily as
well as can manage change, but they are correspondingly contributed in this process of
dynamic nature (Teece, Peteraf & Leih, 2016). In today’s world, initiatives and practices of
innovation are slowly becoming more and more significant due to an unpredictable and fast
changing business environment of the world. Generally the common people are starting out
with the process of creativity. The common people are inventing and creating new concepts
as well as new ideas. Everyone is letting their imagination to go out wild. Whether the
common people use improvisation, thinking of divergent nature, or a technique of aerator,

7LEAD INNOVATIVE THINKING PRACTICES
here the used methodology is up basically to the inventor of a particular innovative or
creative thinking. Nevertheless the raw material are only the numerous ideas for the change
and innovation. The ideas do not give guarantee by themselves of any desired transformation
or change. The next step is generally to get upon a process of thinking critically. The
common people should select the ideas which sounds creative and that which we can easily
feel are worthwhile. A question about the various ways of reaction that the market got by
selling a particular product, this question is always tied with the innovation which is
successful.
Question 7
Ans: - The typical barriers and challenges regarding innovation within a specific organisation
and ways to overcome those barriers and challenges are as follows –
1) It is not my job
It is one of the common barriers of innovation because no one wants to take up the
responsibility on their own hands in order to review the way things are getting done as well
as suggesting every possible new ideas. To overcome this barrier, some rewards should be
given so that employees get motivated and put their neck out for a brand new idea.
2) But it is my idea
This is another barrier which is common to innovation that is too worried about
ownership of idea. This thing leads to the conflict and as a result it eliminate innovation. This
barrier can be overcome by only focus on rewarding the groups and teams that are working
together to bring some ideas forward. This will surely help to reduce the focus on the
ownership.
3) Lack of funding

8LEAD INNOVATIVE THINKING PRACTICES
Innovation makes a sense if it is implemented. For the implementation, funds is required
and if there is a lack of fund then it arise as a barrier for the innovation. This can be overcome
by starting a policy of return on investment. This will rather give support to any of the future
projects of innovation (Drehmann & Nikolaou, 2013).

9LEAD INNOVATIVE THINKING PRACTICES
4) Unanalysed data
Projects on innovation often generate a bunch of data, especially if they are done with
crowdsourcing. Unanalysed data can become a barrier on innovation if they are not properly
planned. This can be overcome by making a proper system or plan to handle the huge amount
of data that are coming in (Gupta & Rathore, 2013).
5) Not a priority
It is obvious that if someone who has never ever been started creates a barrier to the
process of innovation. It can be resolved by encouraging the people to make their work on a
priority basis in the session of strategic planning in order to ensure it is staying top of the
mind (Holzl & Janger, 2013).
Question 8
Ans: - The systems or processes that should be follow for the engagement of the employees
in innovation are as follows: -
1) Clearly define the roles of strategy:
Gone are the days where your HR team is solely accountable for engagement and culture.
To truly create an engagement culture, everyone needs to contribute, from the top of the
organization to the employees. Here's how to get everyone involved:
Leaders: Progressive organizations are led by people who fully buy into a continuous
feedback strategy that solicits frequent and candid employee feedback is used to serve their
most important resource – the employees themselves. Leaders set the organizational
expectation for collecting feedback, sharing results, and taking action.
HR: Human resources representatives are the conductors that keep your engagement initiative
on the right track. They constantly innovate and tweak the organization’s strategy to make

10LEAD INNOVATIVE THINKING PRACTICES
sure it keeps up with your evolving workplace. They’re on the front lines providing leaders
with usage stats and ROI, arming managers with resources on how to share feedback, dig
deeper into trends, and create solutions for improvement, and empowering employees to
give candid, frequent, and actionable feedback.
Managers: If managers are left to their own devices, engagement is often pushed off behind
pressing business objectives. Instead, progressive organizations often make engagement and
performance a KPI for managers, holding them accountable for hiring, growing and
recognizing great talent. Managers are expected to collect real-time upward or 360
feedback on their own effectiveness, as well as feedback on other topics that are impacting
their teams (Yu, W., Ramanathan & Nath, 2017).
Employees: To give the reminder to the employees to be open-minded at the time when their
teams are preparing for the improvement. Share a report of confidential engagement to each
of the employee who all are highlighting their drivers, biggest changes in over years, etc. This
way all the employees can review their feedback as well as can digest the feeling they are
holding towards their own organization.
2) Collect feedback to work on it
So many organizations fall into the capturing data trap which is unable to take any action
(think sentiment on a daily basis and readings of mood). Employees are getting tired of the
back to back request of feedbacks that their organizations try to neglect to act over it.
Combine the requests which is annoying for feedback, no organizational follow-up or action,
and the working conditions is the same that they had long before at the time of their last
survey and everyone had got a recipe for disengagement of employees (Orsmond, 2013).
3) Impact of local level changes

11LEAD INNOVATIVE THINKING PRACTICES
Your organization may have global initiatives, but don't forget about making positive
changes at the local level. Working with some of America’s Best Places to Work, we’ve
found that change at the team level is most critical to impacting manager effectiveness and
overall team engagement (Goetsch & Davis, 2014). Team or department-level engagement
efforts are not separate initiatives, but rather a more targeted approach, informing managers
on how they can help move the needle on organizational engagement.

12LEAD INNOVATIVE THINKING PRACTICES
References
Drehmann, M., & Nikolaou, K. (2013). Funding liquidity risk: definition and
measurement. Journal of Banking & Finance, 37(7), 2173-2182.
Eckles, D. L., Hoyt, R. E., & Miller, S. M. (2014). Reprint of: The impact of enterprise risk
management on the marginal cost of reducing risk: Evidence from the insurance
industry. Journal of Banking & Finance, 49, 409-423.
Goetsch, D. L., & Davis, S. B. (2014). Quality management for organizational excellence.
Upper Saddle River, NJ: pearson.
Gupta, V., & Rathore, N. (2013). Deriving business intelligence from unstructured
data. International Journal of Information and Computation Technology, 3(9), 971-
976.
Hewitt, K. K., Davis, A. W., & Lashley, C. (2014). Transformational and transformative
leadership in a research-informed leadership preparation program. Journal of
Research on Leadership Education, 9(3), 225-253.
Holzl, W., & Janger, J. (2013). Does the analysis of innovation barriers perceived by high
growth firms provide information on innovation policy priorities?. Technological
forecasting and social change, 80(8), 1450-1468.
McCleskey, J. A. (2014). Situational, transformational, and transactional leadership and
leadership development. Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, 5(4), 117.
Orsmond, P., Maw, S. J., Park, J. R., Gomez, S., & Crook, A. C. (2013). Moving feedback
forward: theory to practice. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 38(2),
240-252.

13LEAD INNOVATIVE THINKING PRACTICES
Packard, T., & Jones, L. (2015). An outcomes evaluation of a leadership development
initiative. Journal of Management Development, 34(2), 153-168.
Rast III, D. E., Hogg, M. A., & Giessner, S. R. (2013). Self-uncertainty and support for
autocratic leadership. Self and Identity, 12(6), 635-649.
Teece, D., Peteraf, M., & Leih, S. (2016). Dynamic capabilities and organizational agility:
Risk, uncertainty, and strategy in the innovation economy. California Management
Review, 58(4), 13-35.
Wong, S. I., & Giessner, S. R. (2018). The thin line between empowering and laissez-faire
leadership: An expectancy-match perspective. Journal of Management, 44(2), 757-
783.
Yu, W., Ramanathan, R., & Nath, P. (2017). Environmental pressures and performance: An
analysis of the roles of environmental innovation strategy and marketing
capability. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 117, 160-169.