
Creative leaders constantly set higher standards. They are never satisfied with the primary solution. The behaviors of innovative leaders stimulate and support employees’ creativity and innovative attitudes. It encourages shared vision, which produces and communicates great results.
Importance of creativity and innovation in leadership
Creativity is one of the important traits of a good leader and fosters a healthy workplace. Creativity discloses opportunities for achieving goals, and developing teams to be creative to seek out different perspectives.
There is a difference between mentoring and managing. It must be able to make the fashion shift between searching and executing so as innovation within an organization.
Visionary leadership
They are creative leaders who think big, globally work towards social impact, and keep a large population in mind. They need social awareness and a holistic approach. They present mindful self-awareness, being connected with present situations, and demonstrating compassion for others. Creative leaders have a strong hold on execution in uncharted territory.
The key characteristics of innovation leadership
- Risk tolerance
- Domain expertise
- Openness
- Low anxiety
- Emotional stability
- Confidence
- Action-oriented
- Collaborative inquiry
Challenge the group
- Create new products and services
- Find new ways to boost existing products and services
- Validate ideas
- Provide feedback and in-depth discussion around branding, marketing, and engagement

iMac (1998) + iPod (2001) + iPad (2010): These three devices revolutionized the entire entertainment industry. Steve Jobs, the father of modern innovation has led teams of talented designers and engineers and had them encouraged to produce more and more products. Then he eliminated many until he was left with one. He used to start again, once again refining, looking for simplicity and beauty.
The eight essentials of innovation serve as an important guidepost for navigating the COVID-19 crisis.
- Aspire
- Choose
- Discover
- Evolve
- Accelerate
- Scale
- Extend
- Mobilize


Thanks to McKinsey & Company for providing wonderful calculations.
Leadership and Lean Innovation
Traditional leadership development is to create competence in leaders to hire and manage employees, take ownership of decisions, and drive companywide culture.
In the lean innovation approach, leadership focuses not only on traditional execution objectives but focused on the development of a mentoring mindset that is required to lead an innovation team to success. Lean Innovation has 3 main principles.
- Empathy
- Experiments
- Evidence
Design Thinking
It is a problem-solving technique, that evolved by applying the scientific method to the process of design. That way, lean innovation, and design thinking go simultaneously. It is very useful when designing technological solutions, product or service marketing, and support activities. This equally applies to the smoothening of manufacturing processes.
Some leaders adopt lean start-up concepts to create new growth engines. In many companies, older products are at the end of life and they need to create a way for new ideas else they will vanish in global competition.
“Lean is the agile mindset applied for business where the business model, not just the solution, is the product. Agile focuses on building velocity whereas lean focuses on customer traction velocity.”
Lean Innovation in A Nutshell
Enterprises define innovation poorly. There is no coordination between departments in an organization. Marketing thinks and does differently in isolation from R&D. This leaves the company vulnerable to competition, disruption, and the natural deterioration of existing business.
Innovation has to be tied to the current product lifecycle, technology trends, and the strategic priorities of the company.
Large enterprises require a broad portfolio for growth opportunities. Lean Innovation reduces the waste that happens for discovering new value.
Empathy, Experiments, and Evidence, all employees, from the front line to the C-suite can reduce the risk of the unknown.
Rishikesh Manuprasad Upadhyay