Creating the Conditions for Sustainable Innovation The Leadership Imperative - Full Report

Creating the Conditions for
Sustainable Innovation
The Leadership Imperative
Organizations need innovation to
survive and thrive. Thus, they need
leaders who excel at driving
innovation. But many leaders fall
short when it comes to fostering
ideas. What can be done to support
leaders as they create conditions that
nurture innovation?
Trend Research
The Talent Management Expert
Written by
Evan F. Sinar, Ph.D.
Richard S. Wellins, Ph.D.
Chris Pacione

Creating the Conditions for Sustainable Innovation
Our most talked-about and revered citizens and
organizations are known for their ability to create
new solutions that are valuable to the marketplace
and elevate their standings in the business world.
Across all industries and disciplines, the ability to
innovate is universally admired.
Innovation. It is not just a survival strategy.
It is THE survival strategy of our time.
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CreatingtheConditionsforSustainableInnovation
But what does innovation mean for leaders?
Few would argue that leaders are the major influencers of innovation for every organization.
Those on the frontline manage teams of individual contributors and are the conduit for up-to-date
knowledge, market trends, business challenges, and the customer. Higher up the ladder, it’s on
the shoulders of senior leaders to create a culture that reinforces ideation and brings the best
ideas to fruition.
So what is the state of leadership and innovation? That’s what the following pages seek to
illuminate. We start with a section that makes the case for innovation. We then present the
findings of research we undertook to explore the connection between leadership and innovation.
Finally, we offer some recommendations that all organizations can put into action with their
leaders to foster higher levels of innovation among associates.
We hope this information will help drive innovation in your organization.
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THE CASE FOR INNOVATION:
BACK ON TRACK
September 2008 marked not only the collapse of financial markets, but the rapid
decline in innovation as a key corporate priority. In the few years prior to the crash,
innovation had become the fuel for hot economic growth. And then, “innovation” as
an organizational priority dropped off the radar charts. Managing during the crisis
focused on survival. Layoffs were common, R&D budgets were slashed. CEOs
were doing everything possible to avoid risk and uncertainty, not pursue them.
Now innovation is back with a vengeance. And on the off chance you’re skeptical, in
this section we’ll delve into why innovation is so important.
Not a day goes by without innovation stories on the front pages. According to a
recent New York Times article1
, innovation is “the crucial ingredient in all economic
progress—higher growth for nations, more competitive products for companies, and
more prosperous careers for individuals.” Seventy-two percent of CEOs ranked
innovation as one of their top three strategic priorities, up eight points since FY’092
.
The 2011 Conference Board CEO Challenges report3
placed innovation in the top
five challenges list for Asia, Europe, and the United States. Innovation has truly
been re-established as the currency of business growth.
Why So Critical: Innovation Drivers
There are a number of driving forces behind the re-emergence of innovation.
• While the status of the financial crisis remains uncertain, organizations still oper-
ate in an environment of conservative spend. R&D dollars are scarcer, meaning
that organizations need to be innovative, while at the same time more targeted
in their internal investments. While on the surface those goals appear at odds,
that may not necessarily be the case. The Corporate Executive Board recently
dispelled the myth that more ideas always generate more innovation.4
Rather,
better-performing companies prefer fewer, bigger and more predictable innovation
bets. Internal R&D investment trends match this pattern. A recent Booz Allen
Hamilton report5
showed a negative correlation between R&D spend and success-
ful innovation.
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• You’ve heard this before: there is little you can do today that can’t be copied by a
competitor more quickly and easily than ever before. Over the last decade, the
average time to copy another company’s new product has dropped from 369 days
to 266!5
The impact: companies can’t rest on their past laurels. It’s why organiza-
tions like Apple, Unilever and Marriott continue to launch new products and services
month after month, year after year. And, contrary to some pundits who prefer the
“wait and copy strategy,” first movers enjoy a 36 percent better stock return.5
• Innovation has become more than just a company priority; it has become a
national imperative. Noted journalist Fareed Zakaria pointed out that Barack
Obama mentioned “innovation” or “innovative” 11 times in his 2010 State of the
Union Address.6
Yet, Zakaria is also quick to draw our attention to a sobering
statistic. The Information Technology Innovation Foundation ranked the U.S. last
of 40 countries in terms of improved innovation capacity over the past decade.
In the meantime, China’s government investment in corporate innovation will
shortly outpace that of America’s.
The Innovation Advantage
There is substantial evidence that companies that focus on innovation enjoy better
business performance.
• Companies who reported high innovation effectiveness had a 76 percent product
success ratio versus 54 percent for companies with medium or low effectiveness
ratings.4
• Highly innovative companies enjoy better sales and profits from new products
when compared to their less innovative counterparts (48 percent vs. 21 percent
and 49 percent vs. 21 percent respectively).4
• A 2010 Boston Consulting Group study2
demonstrated that innovative companies
enjoyed a whopping 12.4-percent point advantage in their three-year total share-
holder returns compared to their peers.
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Getting to Point B: Innovation Drivers
Hop on the innovation bandwagon and expect a long and bumpy ride. Many organi-
zations mistake creativity for innovation. No doubt, it is a very important ingredient
in the dish, but not the only one. Looking backward, you can’t help but respect the
ingenuity behind 3M’s Post-It Notes or Steve Jobs’ incredible ability to use technolo-
gy to transform century-old business models.
Yet there are many companies with creative ideas and creative people who are not
effective at driving innovation in their organizations. They fail because they are
unable to turn those ideas into sustainable business. They fail because a “neat”
idea may not be something customers want or are willing to pay for, or worse yet,
because a real winner gets executed miserably. Statistics indicate that 46 percent of
R&D dollars get wasted on new products that never get off the ground or fail early.7
In 2000 P&G had many new ideas. Yet only 15 percent of them ever realized their
profit and revenue targets. A decade later, their success rate has more than tripled.8
Their journey, like those of many other successful innovators, began by experiment-
ing with the art and science of the innovation process. They took a closer look at
the structure and process changes they needed to make to move from idea to suc-
cessful execution.
While there is not “one right answer,” organizations are addressing a number of key
areas:
• What’s the best structure and organizational design to optimally foster successful
innovation?
• How do you best combine top-down and bottom-up innovation?
• How do you move from a culture of risk aversion (the number one barrier to
innovation, according to the Boston Consulting Group2
report) to one of calculated
risk-taking?
• What combination of innovation categories has the highest payoff (e.g., product,
service, business model)?
• What are the ways deeper customer insights can help guide better hit rates?
• What are the best practices for moving from a new creation to successful execu-
tion of that creation?
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The Linchpin: The Role of Leadership
While organizations vary widely in their approach to innovation, there is one
common thread. The ability to consistently conceive of, create and bring to market
new innovations is highly dependent on the quality of talent and the environment in
which they work. And, in turn, responsibility for the quality of talent and a culture
highly conducive to innovation squarely falls on leaders at all levels. In fact, the
research on behavior of leaders spotlights them as one of the most, if not the most,
important drivers of innovation. In a recent IBM study,9
over 60 percent of a sample
of 1,500 CEOs cited creativity as the most important leadership quality over the
next five years. According to the research, “CEOs now realize that creativity trumps
other leadership characteristics. Creative leaders are comfortable with ambiguity
and experimentation. To connect with and inspire a new generation, they lead and
interact in entirely new ways.” In DDI’s Global Leadership Forecast 2011,10
fostering
creativity and innovation was rated as the third most critical skill for the near future by
over 12,500 leaders from around the world, and showed the biggest surge between
its criticality in the past three years, and for the next three. Yet, a full 50 percent of
the leaders in the sample considered themselves ineffective at doing it, more than
any of the other critical skills! A leader’s impact on employee innovation cannot be
overstated: Teresa Amabile, a pioneer in research on the role of leadership in inspir-
ing creativity, demonstrated how leaders can either nurture or destroy innovative
behaviors based on their behaviors.11
And, nowhere is this point about the role of leadership made more compellingly than
in a recent work by Gary Hamel. In a widely-read 2009 Harvard Business Review
article12
Hamel stresses the need to innovate the role of management itself.
Working with Hamel as part of our Global Leadership Forecast 2011,10
we found
leaders themselves often describing their organizations as rigid, restricting the
opportunity to innovate to only a select few, or tending to value those who value the
status quo more than the renegades. With nearly 1 in 3 employees who participated
in the forecast feeling that their own creative ideas are squashed by organizational
bureaucracy, it’s time for a wakeup call for many organizations today.

ABOUT THIS INNOVATION RESEARCH
In our experience, a clearly identified set of specific behaviors that relate to a
leader’s role in fostering innovation is lacking. Subsequently, we don’t know how
well leaders are performing on key behaviors, making it challenging to benchmark
and prioritize development areas.
Organizations are no longer questioning whether it makes sense to invest in creating
an innovative culture—the current business environment and economic context has
made this an unquestioned truth. The more pointed question on every leader’s mind
is and should be, “How do we institutionalize innovation so that we are doing it in a
repeatable and sustainable way that brings measurable business value?”
DDI and LUMA Institute set forth to study and answer that question. We worked
together for close to six months to operationalize a definition of innovation, and the
specific leadership behaviors that drive employee innovation. This was a first and
essential step in our work to develop a curriculum to improve a leader’s ability to
create and foster the conditions where innovation flourishes among employees.
Our working definition of innovation is a new solution (e.g. product, process, busi-
ness model) that drives differentiation and measurable business value. The model in
Figure 1 summarizes the overall context in which innovation occurs, and offers the
foundation for our research.
FIGURE 1:
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Innovation Challenges Driving Innovation
Failure to Understand
Stakeholders
Lackluster Ideas
Aversion to Risk Taking
Poor Execution
Inspire Curiosity
Challenge Current
Perspectives
Create Freedom
Drive Discipline
Question
Assumptions
Think Differently
Experiment
Get Things Done
Leader Team Members

On the left-hand side of the model are four common barriers to organizational
innovation. These challenges are the kind of issues that keep CEOs, investors
and other senior stakeholders up at night, as they inhibit organizational innovation.
On the far right are the new behaviors these stakeholders wish to see from those on
the frontlines. The middle column describes those leader behaviors that help associ-
ates overcome the organizational challenges, and that are ultimately brought out in
associates. The leader behaviors outlined below are crucial to creating and sustaining
an environment in which associates are motivated and enabled to innovate.
• Inspire Curiosity – Innovation leaders encourage employees to expand their
understanding of both internal and external stakeholders: who they are, how they
are interdependent, and the unique contexts in which each one operates.
• Challenge Current Perspectives – Innovation leaders help employees view
problems and opportunities differently and envision alternative possibilities.
• Create Freedom – Innovation leaders empower experimentation, risk taking,
learning from mistakes, and valuing effort over perfection.
• Drive Discipline – Innovation leaders help employees identify execution implica-
tions early and often and align efforts to ensure successful implementation of
innovative solutions.
Building on this framework, we gathered information about the actual prevalence
of these behaviors in today’s organizations. We identified 20 specific leadership
behaviors; five behaviors reflect each of the four challenges above (see Appendix 2
on page 24 for a complete list). Then we created two surveys: one for leaders and
one for employees. We asked leaders to agree or disagree that they demonstrate
these behaviors (for example, “I sponsor frequent brainstorming
sessions to generate and develop ideas”). For an alternative perspective, we asked
an independent group of employees to agree or disagree that their current leader
demonstrates these behaviors (for example, “My leader sponsors frequent brain-
storming sessions to generate and develop ideas”). Our survey also included items
about the climate for innovation and how innovation is prioritized amongst other
objectives, for both the leader’s own work group and in the organization as a whole.
Our final sample was diverse. It spanned demographic groups, leader levels,
industries, and companies of various sizes (see Appendix 1 on page 23 for further
details). In the resulting data, we uncovered trends that highlight widespread defi-
ciencies in leader-driven innovation. In several cases, these trends run counter to
long-held notions. Our observations are distilled into the findings in the next section.
9

10
THE FINDINGS
FINDING #1: Leaders are not actively engaged nor are they personally
invested in driving innovation.
When we surveyed leaders about innovation, we asked them to agree or disagree
that they demonstrate each behavior. For this section and in the remainder of the
report, we use agreement rates to gauge the prevalence of a leader’s behaviors.
When we look at individual leader behaviors—as reported by the leaders them-
selves—regardless of the challenges they target, five rose to the top of the list of
most frequently performed behaviors targeting innovation, all with agreement rates
over 75 percent (see Figure 2).
FIGURE 2: INNOVATION BEHAVIORS MORE FREQUENTLY PERFORMED BY LEADERS
Leader Behaviors % of Leaders Agreeing
I demonstrate unwavering openness and appreciation for unique ideas and opinions. 78%
I urge employees to continually expand their understanding of business trends
and emerging issues. 77%
I challenge employees to vigorously engage themselves with our customers’ interests,
needs, and motivations. 77%
I guide employees who fail or make mistakes to reframe the experiences as
learning opportunities. 77%
I give employees full latitude to choose the best path to accomplish their goals. 75%
The high agreement ratings of these behaviors illustrate that leaders do accept and
encourage their teams’ innovation efforts. These are unquestionably positive and
valuable behaviors on the part of leaders. However, they are relatively passive, not
requiring a leader to take a personal risk or confront the status quo. In contrast,
when we turn to the five least frequently performed behaviors, they are more
dynamic and active behaviors—those which demand a leader’s personal attention
and require him or her to challenge organizational paradigms.

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FIGURE 3: INNOVATION BEHAVIORS LESS FREQUENTLY PERFORMED BY LEADERS
Leader Behaviors % of Leaders Agreeing
I enable employees to regularly observe and interact with suppliers and other
companies in our industry. 60%
I protect designated time away from core activities for employees to generate new ideas. 60%
I sponsor frequent brainstorming sessions to generate and develop ideas. 59%
I support employees' key decisions even when they are not based on extensive
data and analysis. 56%
I encourage employees to spend less time problem-solving and more time
understanding stakeholder views. 41%
Contrasting with the most-performed behaviors, these less common behaviors
involve conscious efforts to prioritize time for idea generation and information gather-
ing above base work activities (see Figure 3). They compete against the pressures
of meeting daily priorities, putting considerable pressure on leaders, especially at
lower leadership levels. These activities also conflict with commonly accepted
leadership principles, for example, that major decisions require abundant supportive
data or that problem-solving should take precedence over perspective-taking.
Comparing the most and least common leadership behaviors, it is clear that the
behaviors extensively performed related to innovation are more often passive rather
than active, and more likely to be closely aligned with conventional wisdom about
leader responsibilities.
FINDING #2: The big gap: Leaders think they exhibit behaviors
associated with driving innovation far more frequently than employees
think leaders do.
Surveying both leaders and employees allowed us to pinpoint the gaps that existed
between these two groups. Those differences turned out to be both pervasive
and concerning, yet they also reveal how leaders can focus and advance their
innovation-generating skills, and how organizations can accelerate leaders’ efforts.
To look at this issue broadly, we grouped the 20 leader behaviors into the four
challenges they address—Inspire Curiosity, Challenge Current Perspectives,
Create Freedom, and Drive Discipline. On every set of leader behaviors linked to
innovation challenges, leaders reported agreement ratings considerably higher than
employees who rated their own leaders. These trends are displayed in Figure 4.

The leader-employee gap in agreement rates ranged from a massive 29 percent
for behaviors reflecting Challenge Current Perspectives, to a still troublingly high
23 percent for behaviors associated with Inspire Curiosity. Why do associates
rate their leaders so low relative to these innovation behaviors? There’s a very real
possibility that leaders simply overestimate their own skills. When asked about their
specific level of skills for driving a culture of innovation in a separate question,
76 percent rated themselves as above average or excellent. Employees, however,
perceived only 57 percent of their leaders to be above average or excellent in these
skills. It could also be a failure on the part of leaders to be transparent about their
efforts to generate and advance new ideas. Leaders need to clearly state their
goals related to innovation. This, in turn, will increase employees’ awareness of
these activities, and ultimately, will strengthen the leaders’ impact on employee-bred
innovation.
FIGURE 4: AGREEMENT RATINGS OF LEADERS AND EMPLOYEES BY INNOVATION CHALLENGE
12
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Inspire Curiosity Challenge Current
Perspectives
Create Freedom Drive Discipline
Leaders % Agree Employees % Agree
64%
71% 69% 69%
41% 42% 41%
40%

Finding #3: Leader actions to foster employee innovation will likely
fail without an organization-wide commitment to innovation.
Leaders need to be innovative, but much of the onus for driving innovation lies with
the organizations for which they work. So what is the role of the organization’s
culture of innovation (or lack thereof)? The short answer is: the stronger the culture
of innovation is, the more both leaders and their teams will report that innovation
behaviors are demonstrated (see Figure 5).
FIGURE 5: ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT TO INNOVATION AND PREVALENCE OF LEADER
INNOVATION-RELATED BEHAVIORS
We asked everyone who responded to this survey to rate their organization’s com-
mitment to innovation, ranging from “Very Strong—Innovation is a driving priority,
deeply permeating both culture and structure of the organization” to “Very Weak—
Innovation is a non-priority, and the organization’s culture and structure directly
counteract such efforts”. We then compared these answers to the ratings of leaders’
innovation-related behaviors by the leaders themselves and by employees. For this
finding, we looked across all 20 behaviors to calculate an overall measure of their
prevalence amongst leaders.
The pattern that emerged shows that, perhaps predictably, cultures that are strong
on innovation include leaders who rate themselves—or who are rated by their
employees—highly, too. What may have been less predictable was how quickly the
gap closed between leader and employee perceptions at higher levels of commit-
ment. In fact, at very strong commitment levels, this gap is negligible. Clearly, the
overall organization attitude toward innovation is a crucial factor—as senior leaders
and corporate strategies present a compelling vision of innovation, alignment soars
between leaders at all levels, and employees.
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80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Very Weak Weak Mixed Strong Very Strong
Leaders % Agree Employees % Agree

Finding #4: The more senior the leaders, the more they create the
conditions for innovation.
Based on leader perspectives on their own behaviors, differences between senior
and first-level leaders were sizable, with senior-level leaders exhibiting much higher
agreement rates for all challenges. Although there was a clear linear trend from
level to level, differences between senior- and mid-level leaders, and between
mid- to first-level leaders, were smaller and not statistically meaningful (see Figure 6).
FIGURE 6: DISPLAY OF INNOVATION BY LEVEL
While higher-level leaders may in fact perform more innovation-building behaviors,
this finding may also highlight the impact and criticality of leader autonomy and scope
of influence. First-level leaders may simply not have the power to notably drive
employee innovation. Higher-level leaders may also have more resource
control given that they are more likely to be in positions where they are responsible
and accountable for driving innovation across wide spans of the organization.
As first-level leader ranks have thinned, they may also be consumed by day-to-day
job activities and tasks. Pursuing innovation may come with risks they don’t care to
take, or have the time to.
Organizations must clarify for leaders of all levels the role they can and should play
in propelling employee innovation—it cannot be positioned as the exclusive domain
of senior leaders. In fact, it is critical that senior leaders help develop new behaviors,
as well as provide the systems, structures, support and autonomy to drive innovation
throughout the organization. These efforts may be particularly fruitful for lower-level
leaders who, as our findings indicate, may be far less likely to demonstrate innova-
tion-fostering behaviors while being more attuned to the customer’s perspective.
They can and should be a critical contributor in addressing innovation challenges.
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80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Inspire Curiosity Challenge Current
Perspectives
Create Freedom Drive Discipline
First-Level Mid-Level Senior-Level
71%
58%
65%
80%
62%
70%
75%
63%
70%
75%
62%
69%

Finding #5: There are no significant differences in innovation-fostering
behaviors across age or gender.
The large and diverse participant group in this study allowed us to diagnose whether
certain groups were more inclined than others to demonstrate innovation-related
behaviors. Some of the stereotypes or assumptions we were able to examine include:
• Younger leaders are more willing to take risks.
• Younger employees have higher expectations of their leaders, which could result
in lower ratings of leaders’ innovation-fostering behaviors.
• Female leaders are more risk-averse than their male counterparts, and thus less
likely to compel innovation.
The reality? None of the above stereotypes or assumptions is borne out in our results.
Only minute differences existed when comparing male and female leaders, and
when factors such as leader level were controlled for, the differences disappeared
completely. We also looked at variation between age groups to detect any behavioral
differences—and again, we found no clear trend by age group. Rather, innovation-
fostering behaviors were evenly distributed across leaders regardless of age. For
both gender and age, then, our findings do not suggest any meaningful effect of
demographics on leaders’ innovation-related behaviors.
Finding #6: Who killed innovation? When identifying the perpetrator,
leaders are less likely to look in the mirror.
A leader’s negative impact on employee innovation—by destroying or starving it—
can be extremely damaging to an organization’s pursuit of innovation as a strategic
goal. As the first reviewers of ideas generated by individual employees, leaders are
the make-or-break deciders on what ideas are pursued, and which ones are not.
From the perspective of an employee who has taken the personal initiative and risk
to develop and propose a radical idea, poor leader openness can severely inhibit
innovation motivation—possibly permanently—to the company’s detriment.
While this effect is relevant for leaders of any level, the scope of a leader’s poison-
ing influence on employee innovation grows as he or she climbs the organizational
hierarchy. For example, a first-line leader may, through negative reactions to new
concepts, demotivate the few individuals under his or her supervision. A senior
leader can have a far greater impact, perhaps on dozens or even hundreds of
employees, spanning entire business units and departments.
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We focused on one specific question highlighting perceived obstacles to employee
innovation. For leaders, we asked, “My team would say their greatest barrier to
being innovative is:…” The four choices are listed in the table below. For employ-
ees, we asked a similar question, but framed it as the greatest barrier they see to
their own innovations. Figure 7 lists the percentage of leaders in each level, and of
employees, choosing each barrier.
FIGURE 7: THE GREATEST BARRIERS TO INNOVATION, AS CHOSEN BY DIFFERENT LEVELS OF
LEADERS AND BY EMPLOYEES
Leaders Employees
First-Level Mid-Level Senior-Level
Across all leader levels, leaders are most likely to attribute a team’s barriers to
innovation to the employees themselves and the information on which they base
their ideas. In practice, a leader who discards ideas with low perceived value can
appear closed-minded and dismissive to employees. Leaders were much less
likely to see themselves as wanting “to be the person who generates all great ideas.”
It’s troubling in that more than a third of leaders at all levels (35 percent) appear to
be characterizing employees as fundamentally lacking the information to “really offer
ideas of value.” And this is worst at higher leader levels—a full 41 percent of senior
leaders take this perspective, and only 20 percent of senior leaders admit that their
team sees them as wanting to be the sole idea-generation engine.
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1. “I don’t have enough information about
the business to really offer ideas of value.”
2. “My boss wants to be the person who
generates all great ideas.”
3. “My ideas never seem to go anywhere
or get stalled.”
4. “New ideas aren’t welcomed. We get
stuck on how things have been done.”
33% 32% 41% 28%
20% 24% 20% 28%
21% 26% 14% 19%
26% 18% 25% 25%

Finding #7: Industry differences highlight market trends and the
importance of a differentiated view of innovation challenges.
Our leader-level study participants ranged across nine industries with enough individuals
to reliably examine differences: business/professional services, construction/
engineering, financial services, health care, IT/telecommunications, manufacturing,
media, public sector, and retail/wholesale. Across all innovation-fostering behaviors,
leaders in the IT/telecommunications and media industries were strongest, averaging
agreement rates about behaviors targeting innovation challenges of 76 percent and
78 percent, respectively. While innovation permeates most industries to a degree,
the fluid and constantly-evolving nature of these two in particular make it unsurprising
that they are the industries with the most prevalent rates of leaders driving innovation.
At the other end of the spectrum were public sector and business/professional
services. Not only were leaders’ innovation-fostering behaviors relatively infrequent,
but these were also the only two industries where a majority of leaders said their
organization’s commitment to innovation was either unlikely to change, or likely to
decrease, over the next three years.
For one industry, the importance of a differentiated set of innovation challenges
and related leader behaviors became clearly evident. In health care, leaders are
low compared to other industries for behaviors related to Inspiring Curiosity and
Challenging Current Perspectives. This is no surprise given the heavy layers of
current and future regulation imposed on this industry. A health care leader who
vigorously Challenges Current Perspectives, for example, may rapidly run afoul
of well-established policies and procedures targeting patient safety and avoidance
of medical errors. And in this industry, leaders are probably looking for greater
adherence than curiosity. On the other end of the spectrum, it’s no surprise that
health care leaders excel in Driving Discipline; over 75 percent of them report
engaging in behaviors targeting this area. Once a new innovation is proven worthy,
health care is an industry where everyone is likely to march to the same beat.
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RECOMMENDATIONS
So, what can be done to foster innovation in your organization? When it comes to
driving innovation through leaders and their teams, we have several recommendations.
Close the employee/leadership gap. Simple truth: Leaders play a pivotal role in
fostering and creating a culture of innovation. Our results show that most leaders feel
they excel at the behaviors that lead to higher levels of innovation. But, employees
do not see their leaders the way leaders see themselves. From the employee view-
point, leaders struggle to inspire curiosity, challenge current perspectives, create the
freedom to innovate, and drive discipline. This may not be surprising, but it remains
an enormous challenge to organizations ramping up their focus on innovation.
Our perspective is that the skills leaders need to drive innovation are developable
(see sidebar, page 20). We are not implying all leaders can become highly creative.
They don’t need to be. But most can do a far better job at learning and consistently
applying the behaviors covered in this research, and in transferring the autonomy
for innovation to their employees. Organizations must provide their leaders with the
necessary skills to effectively function in this critical role.
Build a top-down and bottom-up culture of innovation. Encouraging new
approaches to leadership, involving employees and customers in all innovation-related
processes, rewarding creative effort, learning from failure—all are elements of an
organizational culture that is 100 percent supportive of innovation. A recently issued
study13
showed significantly higher profit and five-year CAGR for organizations that
aligned their business strategy with an innovation focus. Our own study shows a
very promising trend for organizations that take broad actions to achieve a highly-
visible and company-wide commitment to innovation. In these organizations, leaders
report themselves as extensively displaying innovation behaviors. And, it appears,
employee perceptions of leader behaviors are similarly positive. In fact, there is
almost no difference between the two groups in organizations where there is a very
strong cultural commitment to innovation. This is likely a two-way street—that is,
prominent organizational support reinforces the use of leader innovation behaviors.
More extensive use of these behaviors, in turn, helps build a stronger innovation culture.
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Examine innovation by level. The contributions of a frontline-level leader will be
drastically different than those of a more senior one. While every level plays a
critical role in innovation, it’s important to consider actions that are appropriate to
that level. Organizations must concentrate on the ways in which each level is
uniquely endowed to drive innovation. Senior leaders are stewards of the culture.
Mid-level leaders translate strategy into tactics. Frontline leaders are closest to the
business, and will likely hear about trends first. Individual contributors are both a
source for ideas, and for execution. The critical point: Innovation is everyone’s job.
And while level matters greatly, gender and age don’t. Don’t stereotype the ability
(or inability) of any leader, at any age or of any gender, to excel at demonstrating
innovation-related behaviors, as these assumptions will likely be mistaken and can
be damaging if allowed to continue.
Ignite innovation action. As we saw in Finding 1, leaders are most comfortable
supporting innovation from the sidelines and with a minimum of personal engage-
ment. While safer for leaders, these passive approaches are also less likely to truly
spur employee creativity to the degree needed in a highly competitive and rapidly
evolving business environment. Big ideas often start with many little ones, as well
as failures that teach valuable lessons along the way. Leaders need to be personally
comfortable with learning from mistakes and letting go of perfectionistic tendencies
that make it difficult for the teams to have the freedom and curiosity necessary to
innovate. Leaders who aren’t willing and able to dive in and accept these risks to
provide employees with the necessary freedom will fail.
To change, organizations must shake things up, and push leaders toward action.
Make it clear that innovation requires risk acceptance and unambiguous commitment
on the part of both the leader and the employee.
Communication is key. Organizations need to supply leaders with current informa-
tion about key business trends and strategies, and how these translate into the
impetus for innovation and ideas when it comes to their teams. Driving execution
is challenging, especially when it comes to innovation. Organizations may need to
empower others by building accountability, fostering employee involvement, engaging
team members in the creative process, and developing a work environment where
employees are expected to grow, learn, and experiment with new concepts. Finally,
for positions where innovation is key, organizations should also imbed innovation
behaviors—for leaders and employees—directly into the competency models and
performance plans for the roles.
19

INNOVATION
INTOACTION
Four things to do immediately to support
innovation in your organization.
1. Senior Management Sets the Pace
You heard it before: Start at the top. Senior management
support is essential for almost every initiative to work. But,
in the case of innovation, it is a lot more than support. Senior
managers must see innovation as a major business objective.
They need to show they are willing to take calculated risks.
They need to establish a culture that fosters openness,
experimentation and customer intimacy. And, they need to
put into place the processes that will turn good ideas into
profitable businesses.
2. Choose the Right Leaders
DDI assesses thousands of leaders each year for selection,
promotion, and development. One of the biggest derailers
we see in leaders is aversion to risk. Fair to say, a leadership
team of all high risk takers spells certain trouble. But a team
where almost everyone is risk averse will guarantee an
“innovationless” environment. A science-based profile for
leaders who are likely to foster innovation should be embedded
into your selection/promotion systems.
20

3. Develop Innovation Leaders
Begin to look at the ability to both innovate and build a culture conducive to
innovation as a set of skills and behaviors which can be developed. There are
specific techniques that can help both leaders and employees think more
creatively, connect with stakeholders (including customers), and evaluate new
ideas. Courses, like DDI’s Driving Innovation, teach leaders how to drive innova-
tion (but not necessarily be the source of all innovation themselves) as they learn
to challenge assumptions, inspire curiosity in others, encourage experimentation,
and reward ideas that work out—as well as those that do not.
4. Build a Business Process for Innovation
P&G has become the poster child for innovation, and for good reason! They
made tremendous improvement in their innovation success rates (measured
by the number of successful new product introductions balanced with a reduction
in product failures). They did this not just by building a fountainhead of new
ideas spawned by close customer interactions and observations, but by having
a clear business process for bringing the right new ideas to market. Their chief
innovation officer is accountable to make this process work throughout P&G’s
global footprint. The key learning here is that innovation is a lot more than new
ideas; it is the science and discipline of tying innovation to business success.
21

APPENDIX 1: METHOD SECTION
In August 2011, Development Dimensions International surveyed 513 leaders and
514 non-leader employees in the United States. Leaders and employees were
independent (non-paired) groups. Responses from these individuals guided the
findings contained in this report. The demographics of those surveyed were:
Leader Survey:
• Gender: 51% male, 49% female
• Geography: 100% United States
• Age: 16% 29 or younger, 25% 30-39, 27% 40-49, 13% 50-54, 19% 55+
• Leader level: 27% first-level supervisors, 45% mid-level managers,
directors and VPs, 28% senior-level VPs
• Primary industry: 11% Business/Professional services, 6%
Construction/Engineering, 8% Financial services, 8% Healthcare, 7% IT
and Telecoms, 1% Logistics and distribution, 10% Manufacturing, 2% Media,
1% Pharmaceuticals, 6% Public sector, 16% Retail/Wholesale, 1% Utilities;
24% Others
• Company size: 46% 100 employees and less, 34% 100 – 5,000 employees,
20% more than 5,000 employees
Non-Leader Employee Survey:
• Gender: 51% male, 49% female
• Geography: 100% United States
• Age: 22% 29 or younger, 25% 30-39, 20% 40-49, 13% 50-54, 20% 55+
• Primary industry: 5% Business/Professional services, 3%
Construction/Engineering, 5% Financial services, 11% Healthcare, 5% IT
and Telecoms, 3% Logistics and distribution, 11% Manufacturing, 3% Media,
2% Pharmaceuticals, 10% Public sector, 12% Retail/Wholesale, 3% Utilities,
28% Others
• Company size: 28% 100 employees and less, 46% 100–5,000 employees,
26% more than 5,000 employees
*Some numbers do not sum to 100 due to rounding.
23

APPENDIX 2
TABLE OF LEADER BEHAVIORS BY INNOVATION CHALLENGE:
LEADER AND EMPLOYEE AGREEMENT RATES
24
I challenge employees to vigorously engage themselves with our customers'
interests, needs, and motivations.
I urge employees to continually expand their understanding of business
trends and emerging issues.
I challenge employees to take unfamiliar perspectives in order to question
their assumptions.
I enable employees to regularly observe and interact with suppliers and
other companies in our industry.
I encourage employees to spend less time problem-solving and more time
understanding stakeholder views.
77% 54%
77% 51%
67% 37%
60% 35%
41% 29%
Inspiring Curiosity
Leader Behavior Leader Employee
I demonstrate unwavering openness and appreciation for unique ideas
and opinions.
I ask thought-provoking questions to drive exploration of new possibilities.
I promote cross-functional collaborations to fuel the generation of new ideas.
I encourage active and passionate debate about the merits of new concepts.
I sponsor frequent brainstorming sessions to generate and develop ideas.
Challenging Current Perspectives
78% 43%
74% 42%
72% 43%
71% 41%
59% 39%

25
I guide employees who fail or make mistakes to reframe the experiences as
learning opportunities.
I give employees full latitude to choose the best path to accomplish their goals.
I empower employees to pursue new ideas autonomously rather than needing
others' approval for every decision.
I create abundant opportunities for employees to take action on their big ideas.
I support employees' key decisions even when they are not based on
extensive data and analysis.
Creating Freedom
I champion the merits of employee-initiated ideas to senior management.
I connect employees who have ideas for new projects to others who can
help them take next steps.
I introduce employees to structured tools and techniques designed to
enhance their creativity.
I promote employee-driven research and experimentation to iteratively
improve new concepts.
I protect designated time away from core activities for employees to
generate new ideas.
Driving Discipline
75% 42%
73% 42%
69% 40%
68% 42%
60% 33%
77% 47%
75% 43%
73% 41%
67% 40%
56% 33%

Sources
1. Lohr, S. (2011 Aug 28) Reaping the Rewards
of Risk Taking. New York Times, Aug 27, 2011: BU3.
2. Andrew, J.P., Manget, J., Michael, D.C., Taylor, A.,
& Zablit, H. (2010) Innovation 2010: A Return to
Prominence and the Emergence of a New World
Order. Boston, MA: Boston Consulting Group.
3. The Conference Board CEO Challenge 2011:
Fueling Business Growth with Innovation and
Talent Development. (2011) New York, NY:
The Conference Board.
4. Corporate Executive Board (2010). Making the
Case for Radical Innovation Retrieved from
http://mlcwideangle.exbdblogs.com/2010/12/08/
making-the-case-for-radical-innovation/
5. Jaruzelski, B. & Dehoff, K. (2010 Winter)
The Global Innovation 1000: How the Top Innovators
Keep Winning. Strategy + Business, 61: 48-61.
6. Zakaria, F. (2011 June) The Future of Innovation:
Can America Keep Pace? Time, 177(23).
7. Cooper, R. (2001) Winning at New Products:
Accelerating the process from idea to launch.
New York, NY: HarperCollins.
8. Brown, B. & Anthony, S.D. (2011 June)
Harvard Business Review, 89(6): 64-72.
9. Capitalizing on Complexity: Insights from the
Global Chief Executive Officer Study, (2010),
Somers, NY: IBM Corporation.
10. Boatman, J. & Wellins, R. (2011) Global Leadership
Forecast 2011: Time for a Leadership Revolution.
Bridgeville, PA: Development Dimensions
International.
11. Amabile, T.M (1998 Sept/Oct) How to Kill Creativity.
Harvard Business Review, 76(5): 76-87.
12. Hamel, G. (2009 Feb) MoonShots. Harvard Business
Review, 87(2): 91-98.
13. Jaruzelski, B., Loehr, J. & Holman, R. (2011 Winter)
The Global Innovation 1000: Why Culture is Key.
Strategy + Business, 65: 30-45.
26

27
About the Authors
Evan F. Sinar, Ph.D.—Manager—Assessment and Selection Analytics, DDI
Evan Sinar manages a team of industrial-organizational professionals to create
DDI’s screening, testing, and assessment solutions. Evan has consulted with
DDI clients including Wal-Mart, Procter & Gamble, Marriott, Citi, Volkswagen,
and General Motors. Evan serves as a thought leader on topics such as
technology-delivered testing, legal defensibility, and candidate reactions.
He also has authored numerous publications and presentations for major
journals and professional conferences.
Richard S. Wellins, Ph.D.—Senior Vice President, DDI
Rich is responsible for leading DDI’s global research programs, launching new
solutions, and executing DDI’s brand and marketing strategies. During his
tenure at DDI, Rich has authored five books on leadership and teams and written
for more than 20 publications on global talent management. Rich has helped
organizations around the world develop their senior leaders. He also serves as
a judge for CNBC’s ABLA, interviewing dozens of Asia’s top CEOs each year.
Chris Pacione—Director & CEO, LUMA Institute
As Director and CEO of LUMA Institute, Chris leads a highly skilled, multidiscipli-
nary team of design practitioners and educators who are passionate about helping
everyone “make things better.” Chris is a frequent speaker and writer on the topic
of design and education and has years of experience as both an entrepreneur
and educator. In 1999 he cofounded BodyMedia Inc., a pioneer in wearable health
monitoring. Chris is also a lecturer at Carnegie Mellon University and Virginia
Tech. He holds several IDEA Gold Medal Awards sponsored by BusinessWeek
and the IDSA and has numerous patents for his work.
Acknowledgments
Editorial: Jennifer Donahue and Elizabeth Speed Kabus
Research: Stella Chang, Kim Cimarolli, and Jennifer Pesci-Kelly
Advisors: Ellie Hall and Audrey Smith
Design: Stacy Infantozzi and Susan Ryan

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