Innovation: Essentials from Leader to Leader

EXECUTIVE FORUM

 

Innovation Means Relying on Everyone’s Creativity

BY MARGARET J. WHEATLEY

Innovation has always been a primary challenge of leadership. Today we live in an era of such rapid change and evolution that leaders must work constantly to develop the capacity for continuous change and frequent adaptation, while ensuring that identity and values remain constant. They must recognize people’s innate capacity to adapt and create—to innovate.

In my own work I am constantly and happily surprised by how impossible it is to extinguish the human spirit. People who had been given up for dead in their organizations, once conditions change and they feel welcomed back in, find new energy and become great innovators. My questions are How do we acknowledge ...