{"id":48215,"date":"2022-10-14T10:50:34","date_gmt":"2022-10-14T08:50:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/?p=48215"},"modified":"2025-11-24T14:09:56","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T12:09:56","slug":"driving-innovation-in-companies-skills-for-leaders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/driving-innovation-in-companies-skills-for-leaders\/","title":{"rendered":"Driving Innovation in Companies: Skills for Leaders"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Driving Innovation in Companies: Skills for Leaders | University of Cambridge\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/jMGQoPVEXt8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Competitors who have the ability to work faster and cheaper are a constant threat to established companies.<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">According to Jaideep Prabhu, guest lecturer on the Leading Sustainability: High Impact Leadership online short course from the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), leaders need to create a culture of innovation if they\u2019re to remain successful.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-transcript\">Transcript<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Most successful large companies struggle with innovating again and again. The irony is that their very success sows the seeds of their failure.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Having come up with an innovative product, these companies grow and become successful. They have existing products serving existing customers in an existing competitive landscape. But all the while, as they\u2019re serving their current market, there are new markets growing, new opportunities coming up, and new competitors serving those new markets.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now, the established company faces a dilemma. Do they now start to develop the new idea for the new market, or do they focus on their current idea for the current market. Or if they decide to do both, how do they balance these two?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They now struggle to adapt to a world in which it\u2019s important to innovate faster, better, and cheaper in the way that start-ups do. So, the large, established companies with their old processes and structures struggle to keep up with these frugal start-ups that can do things faster, better, and cheaper because they\u2019re having to deal with two different ways of innovating.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I\u2019ve spent my career studying innovation and have been very interested in the question of why some companies are able to innovate, not just once or twice, but continuously, over a long period of time. And so, a related question is: how do those companies create a culture of innovation, create certain attitudes and practices that are embedded deep within the organisation that helps the organisation to organically innovate again, and again and again?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And a key part of the answer to that question turns out to be the question of leadership: how people are \u2013 not just at the top, but often at the top \u2013 are able to create and foster such a culture of innovation. Leadership is a key aspect of driving innovation in companies, and therefore is a key aspect of keeping these companies growing and prosperous over a long period of time.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">First of all, leaders in organisations need to spend some amount of time thinking not only about business as it exists today, but also business in the future. The leaders of organisations need to think about what are future threats and opportunities. These could be technological or market or organisational.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And then based on that thinking about the future, they need to come up with a vision for where they want their organisation to go. So, that\u2019s a key aspect: developing that vision of where to go. Then they need to be able to communicate that vision in an inspiring way to the entire organisation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And third, they need to empower people at different levels within the organisation to be able to realise that vision. They need to empower people to find new ideas, to develop new solutions, and then eventually, commercialise them.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Competitors who have the ability to work faster and cheaper are a constant threat to established companies. According to Jaideep Prabhu, guest lecturer on the Leading Sustainability: High Impact Leadership online short course from the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), leaders need to create a culture of innovation if they\u2019re to remain [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":81,"featured_media":48198,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,171],"tags":[122,127],"article-format":[],"class_list":["post-48215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-career-advice","category-employee-development","tag-business-management","tag-career-advice"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.4 (Yoast SEO v27.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Driving Innovation in Companies: Skills for Leaders - GetSmarter Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Jaideep Prabhu, professor of marketing at the Cambridge Judge Business School, discusses how to lead frugal business innovation.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/driving-innovation-in-companies-skills-for-leaders\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Driving Innovation in Companies: Skills for Leaders\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Jaideep Prabhu, professor of marketing at the Cambridge Judge Business School, discusses how to lead frugal business innovation.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/driving-innovation-in-companies-skills-for-leaders\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"GetSmarter Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-10-14T08:50:34+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-11-24T12:09:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/getsmarter_blog_header-banner_CAM-HIL-driving_innovation-1.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1500\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"844\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Aaminah Allie\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"GetSmarter Staff\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.getsmarter.com\\\/blog\\\/driving-innovation-in-companies-skills-for-leaders\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.getsmarter.com\\\/blog\\\/driving-innovation-in-companies-skills-for-leaders\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Aaminah Allie\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.getsmarter.com\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/dd2f83fcd9d19a49e609bf9329d13186\"},\"headline\":\"Driving Innovation in Companies: Skills for Leaders\",\"datePublished\":\"2022-10-14T08:50:34+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-11-24T12:09:56+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.getsmarter.com\\\/blog\\\/driving-innovation-in-companies-skills-for-leaders\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":543,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.getsmarter.com\\\/blog\\\/driving-innovation-in-companies-skills-for-leaders\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.getsmarter.com\\\/blog\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2022\\\/10\\\/getsmarter_blog_header-banner_CAM-HIL-driving_innovation-1.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Business &amp; 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