Conceptualizing Strategic Innovation Leadership for Competitive Survival and Excellence

Earlier studies on innovation discuss mainly the product innovation of the new product development process. They highlight the difficulties companies face in maintaining the ability to innovate, improve the innovation process, and to learn from the innovation process. There are not many studies that come close to the strategic (and combined) use of innovation and leadership in order for companies to be leaders in the industry—what we term innovation leadership. Innovation is a concept of ongoing and never-ending process. Literature on managing innovation addresses mostly the issues of organizational survival. Innovation leadership has many more aspects to it than management, and companies have to set themselves in the core of the innovation process. In order for a company to effectively implement innovation leadership, we propose a model of innovation leadership comprising of elements along the upstream and downstream innovation processes. Keywords : innovation leadership, innovation management