Innovation Leaders: How Senior Executives Stimulate, Steer and Sustain Innovation

CHAPTER 4

STEERING INNOVATION TOP DOWN

[Traditional] professional management isn’t going to give you the kind of growth you need in a slow-growth world . . . Our challenge is to take nanotechnology into the future. We’ve got to do personalized medicine. We’ve got to do renewable energy!

Jeff Immelt¹ CEO of General Electric

 

Chapter 3 highlighted how innovation leaders can actively encourage spontaneous, unplanned bottom-up innovation. Most recognize that breakthroughs, at times, occur through a combination of serendipity and entrepreneurship. But all-round innovation leaders do not want to rely only on these hard-to-manage factors. They are not resigned to seeing their role restricted to a kind of benign laissez-faire, i.e. to hiring ...