Leadership and Innovation Challenges for Uber: Analysis and Solutions

This report delves into the leadership and innovation challenges confronting Uber, a prominent player in the transportation sector. The report identifies key issues, including negative organizational culture, employee treatment concerns, and the need for updated innovative strategies. It analyzes these challenges through relevant leadership and innovation theories, such as Maslow's needs theory and transformational leadership. Furthermore, the report highlights areas for change, such as disruptive innovation and active innovation strategies. Organizational priorities, including employee management and fostering an innovative culture, are also discussed. The report offers recommendations, such as treating drivers as permanent employees and encouraging employee feedback. Practical steps are outlined, encompassing changes in leadership approach, issue identification, and the implementation of out-of-the-box thinking. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of addressing these challenges to maintain Uber's competitive edge and suggests that practical implementation of the steps is critical to overcome the issues.

Running head: LEADERSHIP AND INNOVATION
Leadership and innovation
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Executive summary
The aim of this report is to discuss about the leadership and innovation challenges being faced by
Uber in recent time. In addition, this report also discussed and evaluated various recommended
steps in overcoming the challenges. The areas for improvement in having innovative
environment are also being identified in this report. In addition, there are organizational priorities
of Uber are discussed, which should followed by them on an urgent basis. It is concluded that
leadership and innovation is having direct relationship and Uber should initiate effective
leadership approach in order to generate innovative ideas.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Leadership challenges of Uber........................................................................................................3
Steps to overcome the issues.......................................................................................................4
Innovation challenges of Uber.........................................................................................................4
Areas of change...........................................................................................................................5
Organizational priorities for Uber...................................................................................................6
Recommendations............................................................................................................................6
Practical steps to follow...................................................................................................................7
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................8
Reference.........................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
In the current time, innovation is one of the key criterions for the business organizations
in order to gain competitive advantages in the market. Moreover, there is a direct relationship
between the innovation and leadership. This is due to the reason that effective leadership
approach will help to determine the level and effectiveness of the innovative idea in the
organization (Sethuraman and Suresh 2014). However, in doing so, there are various challenges
being faced by the business organizations. Uber is one of the major organizations who are
concentrating more on the innovative ideas to operate in the market (Gobble 2015). However,
there are various challenges in the business operation being faced by Uber in regards to the
innovation.
This report will discuss about the leadership and innovation challenges for Uber. In
addition, different theories and concepts will be used in order to evaluate the intensity of the
challenges faced by them. Few recommendations will be discussed to overcome the identified
issues along with some practical steps.
Leadership challenges of Uber
One of the major leadership challenges being faced by Uber is the negative
organizational environment and cultures. According to the reports, there are instances of sexual
harassments in organization. This denotes that organizational culture of Uber is not favorable for
the employees (Leighton 2016). Leadership is facing the challenge of rectifying these issues.
Another issue is the treatment of the employees. According to various reports, drivers of Uber
are treated as freelancers rather than their permanent employees. Thus, employees are not getting
any types of benefits other than their basic compensation. This is causing reduction in the level

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of motivation for the employees. These issues are also restricting Uber from sustaining
innovative ideas (Maheshwari 2017). This is due to the reason that having demoralized
employees in place will not be able to generate innovative ideas. There is an urgent need of
having effective leadership in place to avoid these issues.
Steps to overcome the issues
One of the frameworks that can be used in overcoming the above issues is the initiation
of the Maslow’s needs theory. This theory does not state the effective leadership styles, but it
helps in identifying the needs of the employees to motivate them in the organizations. According
to this theory, safety needs of the employees should be met in order to prevent the issues of
sexual harassments (Jerome 2013). Moreover, it will also help to meet the financial needs of the
employees by providing employees benefits. This theory will help in meeting all the need of the
employees and will help in motivating the employees.
Another step that can be followed is the initiation of the transformational style of
leadership. This style of leadership will enable the upper level management to gain the feedback
and opinion of the employees in the decision making process (Zhu et al. 2013). Moreover,
having the transformational leadership will help in providing employees with proper work life
balance. Employees will get motivated by their leaders and will feel more important in the
organization by having their say in their decision making process. These steps will help in
overcoming the identified issues in the previous section.
Innovation challenges of Uber
One of the key innovation challenges for Uber is the issue with creating value from their
existing innovative measures. This is due to the reason that the innovative business approaches

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of Uber are becoming outdated with time. For instance, the effectiveness of booking cab by app
is becoming outdated with the emergence of more competitors in the global markets along with
various small competitors in the regional markets (Cohen, Almirall and Chesbrough 2016).
Another innovation challenge that is faced by Uber in the recent time is the lack of sources of
generating innovative ideas. This is due to the reason that with having ineffective leadership in
place is restricting the sources of innovation in the organization. Thus, they are in the need of
having some sorts of innovative strategies, which will help them in enhancing their innovative
approaches in the market.
Areas of change
One of the key steps that can be initiated by them is the strategy of disruptive innovation.
Though, Uber is already having disruptive innovation strategy in place by introducing the
concept of app based online cab service, but they are in the need of disruptive innovation again
(Christensen, Raymor and McDonald 2015). With the help of the disruptive innovation, Uber
will be able to create entire new markets for operation and will have huge business opportunities.
However, it should be noted that Uber should continue their process of initiating disruptive
innovation due to the reason that any type of innovative ideas will get outdated with time. Thus,
it is important for Uber to have disruptive innovation in place at any point of time. Thus, their
approach of continuing with same innovation should be changed.
Uber is not active enough in defending their existing innovation, which is causing loss in
competitive advantages in the market. Thus, this should be changed and they should initiate the
strategy of active innovation. This will help Uber to increase the life cycle of their existing

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innovations. Currently they are more passive to the generation of the innovative ideas and this
should be changed to active.
Organizational priorities for Uber
One of the key organizational priorities of Uber is employee management. This is due to
the reason that similar to any other business organizations; Uber is also operating in the market
and gaining profits due to their human resources (Alfes et al. 2013). Thus, in the current time of
their rough phase, their priority is to manage the human resources effectively and to maintain
their effectiveness and productivity. Another priority of them is to initiate and design the
leadership approach in such way that it will have positive impression on the employees as well as
in the entire organizational processes. The next priority of them is to initiate innovative culture in
the organization in order to motivate the employees in generating the innovative ideas (Wei et al.
2013). The last organizational priority of them is to have disruptive innovation in place. This is
due to the reason that disruptive innovation will only help them to create new market
opportunities. Thus, their priority is to ensure that the generated innovation is disruptive in
nature.
Recommendations
 It is recommended that Uber should consider their drivers as their permanent employees
rather than freelancers. This will enable them to provide all the employee welfare benefits
to the drivers and will motivate them (Lamba and Choudhary 2013). As the drivers are
the face of Uber, their enhanced motivation will to create positive impression among the
customers.

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 It is also recommend to them that they should consider the feedback of the employees in
their internal management. The more effective will be the feedback mechanism of the
employees, the more effectively issues of the employees will get solved. Thus, the
employees will be motivated in their workplace and will generate more innovative ideas.
 Uber should provide more space and freedom to their employees in generating out of the
box thinking (Goodwin and Graebe 2017). These thinking of the employees will
transform in to innovative ideas for the organization. Employees should have the freedom
to think of their own rather than following the orders. This will only motivate them to
generate innovative ideas.
Practical steps to follow
 The first step of Uber is to change their existing approach of leadership. This will act as
the foundation of their innovative business strategies.
 The next step of them is to determine the issues and challenges of the employees.
Effective determination of the issues of the employees will help to understand the areas
of improvement.
 Next step follows with the resolution strategies of the identified issues. Effective and
proper strategies should be initiated in accordance to the identified issues and
implemented.
 The next step is to encourage the employees in generating out of the box ideas. Required
facilities should be provided to them in supporting their innovative ideas.
 The next step involves implementing the out of the box thinking in to practical solutions
in order to determine the effectiveness and success ratio. This will act as pilot project for
them.

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 The last step involves identification of the key performance indicators in evaluating the
performance of the innovative ideas. This will help to identify the shortcomings of the
ideas and modifying the approaches accordingly.
Conclusion
Thus, it can be concluded that Uber is facing number of organizational challenges
including the innovative and leadership challenges. These challenges are costing their
competitive advantages in the market. In view to these issues identified, this report discussed
about some of the recommended steps, which will help to overcome the challenges. Moreover,
there are some areas also identified in this report, which will further need to be changed in order
to have ideal internal environment in place. Apart from the recommendations, this report also
discussed about some key steps that need to be followed by Uber in implementing the change in
the organization. The steps are being stated in most practical manner and it is expected that
effective implementation of these steps will help in overcoming the identified issues.

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Reference
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resource management practices, engagement and employee behaviour: a moderated mediation
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Christensen, C.M., Raynor, M.E. and McDonald, R., 2015. What is disruptive innovation.
Harvard Business Review, 93(12), pp.44-53.
Cohen, B., Almirall, E. and Chesbrough, H., 2016. The city as a lab: Open innovation meets the
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Gobble, M.M., 2015. Regulating innovation in the new economy. Research-Technology
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Goodwin, G.C. and Graebe, S.F., 2017. Work-Life Balance. In A Doctorate and Beyond (pp.
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Jerome, N., 2013. Application of the Maslow’s hierarchy of need theory; impacts and
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