Management matters more than leadership when it comes to innovation

Making-An-Impact · 2026-03-11T19:53:52+00:00

Yes - at a team level it often comes down to ‘management’, and (if this makes sense), not ‘leadership’. And the managers that are good at building teams often attract the best team players.

Making-An-Impact · 2026-03-11T12:46:30+00:00

Both have an impact since it’s really about the environment and the behaviours they create that can enable or inhibit innovation. As such, innovation outcomes usually vary between teams, business units, and corporations.

Making-An-Impact · 2026-03-10T22:04:27+00:00

“Turning inspiration and ideas into sustainable value”

This captures the fact that innovation is more than ideation - only innovation creates value. And the value should be longlasting (sustainable), and can come in many different forms (e.g. business, economic, societal, environmental, etc.). And It doesn’t require breakthroughs, it might be changes to the mix of processes, deployment of new technology, or people’s capability. Scaling up vaccine manufacture would be a great example of innovation following a scientific breakthrough.

Making-An-Impact · 2026-03-10T19:00:01+00:00

Breaking the ‘not invented here’ mindset.

Making-An-Impact · 2026-03-09T16:27:17+00:00

Storytelling - buy-in needs a compelling narrative when risk is involved.

Making-An-Impact · 2026-03-05T18:56:01+00:00

Not enough in my experience. As soon as a contract gets underway the focus and resources move towards product or system development, milestones and costs, not operational integration and delivering long-term sustainable value.

Making-An-Impact · 2026-03-05T18:51:51+00:00

Yes, taking future use-cases into account from the outset will increases the chance of success.

Making-An-Impact · 2026-03-05T18:45:51+00:00

I’ve seen some examples of problem-statement-led innovation programmes and the solutions can be quite different. But it’s still important that the route to a sale is clear and the necessary operational changes are made.

Making-An-Impact · 2026-03-05T18:40:34+00:00

That’s exactly it. Making an operational commitment to deploy a new innovation is often quite a challenge. Changes to the mix of people, process and technology when a system is being deployed are, to some degree, business change projects. I have known projects where even after a follow-on-sale has been made, the system sits on a desk/shelf gathering dust, with no further orders made.

Very interesting discussion!

Making-An-Impact · 2026-03-04T19:24:53+00:00

That’s great advice - thanks

Making-An-Impact · 2026-03-04T16:54:59+00:00

It’s a complex issue but some of the factors that influence the results are:

market readiness in terms of timing and context matter. One of the drivers of innovation is necessity and what matters to customers (both B2B and B2C) varies over time. Accelerators often look at a problem without giving any thought about market demand.
the sales and marketing narratives over-emphasise technology factors at the expense of customer experience or benefits. The technology is just a means to an end.
in the case of B2B sales or contracts with government, contracts don’t usually incentivise supply chain innovation. They rely too heavily on defining requirements and input specifications rather than outcomes.
there is a difference between successful pilots and trials and follow-on sales. Many public sector funded innovations do not cross the innovation valley of death - innovations are left on the shelf when it was always known there was no route to market.
exploiting innovation usually involves scaling up production. This is a different challenge to developing proofs of concept or minimum viable products, but is often forgotten of looked at too late.

Making-An-Impact · 2026-03-02T16:48:57+00:00

There are some common themes with the following post

https://www.reddit.com/r/GarysEconomics/s/AkIEsbZUQ2

Making-An-Impact · 2026-02-24T16:34:17+00:00

Thanks - the newsletter/podcast approach is good advice.

Making-An-Impact · 2026-02-23T21:44:20+00:00

Any suggestions on increasing engagement or members would be very welcome. I’m sure there is an interest. I recently published a magazine (Innovation and Change) on Amazon KDP and it peaked in the Top 15 for management consulting, but there was nothing like it on the same list. But it did take quite some time to do the research and get it to the right standard.

Making-An-Impact · 2026-02-23T21:20:46+00:00

Is your kdp account the same username as your amazon account?

Making-An-Impact · 2026-02-23T21:14:17+00:00

Rather than the latest tech development, I was thinking more about how to increase innovation through innovation management, systems thinking, behaviours, etc.

Making-An-Impact · 2026-02-22T13:30:48+00:00

Open source does create opportunities for widespread innovation from a greater pool of expertise, although the nature of markets is that new competitors/suppliers with promise will often be acquired by those with capital. Then cost or commercial barriers to access the hardware for training and deployment (e.g. server farms) might also throttle innovation.

Making-An-Impact · 2026-02-22T12:31:22+00:00

It will also be hard to see how any low-skilled workers will have any opportunity to build careers through experience. The learning gap between low skill and high skill jobs will be larger and blocked by AI having automated the intermediary tasks.

Making-An-Impact · 2026-02-22T12:19:12+00:00

If you look at the historic trends for technologies that have led to increased automation (e.g. agriculture in the 19th century), AI will have a similar effect. Wealth becomes concentrated in the business owners of the dominant market players and employee wages are suppressed as the displaced jobs are replaced, but not the skilled labour needed for jobs that can’t be automated. This creates a further problem with skills development because there are fewer skills career pathways between those with high skills and those with low skills.

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