Understanding the Link Between Leadership and Innovation

At present, it’s hard to tackle any issue pertaining to leadership or management without addressing Covid-19, which is impacting on marketplaces and workplaces across the globe.

Despite the status of the Covid-19 outbreak as the single biggest health and socio-economic crisis since the Second World War, it’s also hard to dispute the transformative power of coronavirus across the board.

Make no mistake; Covid-19 has the potential to change virtually all aspects of society, particularly in terms of the structure of the labor market and developed economies across the globe.

With this in mind, the Coronavirus outbreak arguably represents an opportunity for growth and innovation, and good leadership will be central to ushering this in. But what’s the relationship between leadership and innovation and why exactly should you care?

The Link Between Leadership and Innovation – The Key Considerations

There’s plenty of evidence to support the link between innovation and leadership, particularly in terms of how the former has become a strategic and critical driver of growth during the digital age.

This relationship is especially pertinent in the current global landscape, as globalization continues to blur geographical boundaries and the market barriers that once prevented firms from reaching their true potential.

This viewpoint is shared by most of the senior executives in the UK, 70% of which have recently claimed that innovation will be one of the top three growth drivers for their companies over the course of the next five years.

This demographic also saw innovation as the single most important way for companies to accelerate the pace of change in the global business environment, across various business disciplines such as distribution, processes, and manufacturing.

However, 65% of senior execs are generally disappointed in their ability to stimulate innovation, with this demographic committed to doing more to incorporate technology into their business model and successfully integrate new ideas company-wide.

How Can Leaders Successfully Innovate in Their Companies

With these statistics in mind, there’s clearly a seismic gap between leaders’ aspirations and execution when it comes to innovation, and it’s important that entrepreneurs are able to fill this void if they’re to steal a march on their competitors.

For example, companies are constantly looking to update and revise their approach to SEO and online marketing, but often within relatively narrow channels. This is causing companies to miss out on innovations such as voice search, which is set to become significantly big business by the end of 2020.

While this technology has yet to fully enter the mainstream, it’s predicted that 50% of all searches will be screenless and conducted by voice this year. With this in mind, a number of insightful leaders are beginning to proactively optimize their content for voice search, in order to compete more aggressively and create a more agile marketing strategy.

Conversely, those who fail to recognize the importance of voice search or understand this technology properly risk losing their market share.

In the case of the latter, for example, it’s thought that 50% of business locations have incorrect information listed on Google and Bing, and this represents a huge concern given the local focus of voice search and the changing habits of consumers.

The Last Word

Not only is there an increasingly tangible relationship between leadership and innovation in the digital age, but there’s also a pressing need for CEOs and managers to leverage technology as a key driver of growth.

To achieve this, leaders must first ensure that they have their fingers on the pulse of innovation and technological advancement, primarily by collaborating with others throughout the business to collate, analyze and ultimately utilize relevant data.

Beyond this, leaders must also create long-term strategies that can fully utilize and implement technology effectively, while understanding how this will drive growth in the future.

With this type of approach, leaders can effectively weaponize innovation and use this in the fight to become a dominant market leader.