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Since the Industrial Revolution, all businesses have been in a race to deal with change. Innovation is essential for business survival.

For example, almost all organizations are scrambling right now to figure out how to use artificial intelligence to improve their productivity and effectiveness.

Running a business is a balancing act of order and freedom. Order is essential for effective production, and freedom is essential for creative innovation. Two skills are required: management (order) and leadership (motivating innovation).

John Adair is an internationally well-known author and authority on leadership. He advises on leadership development, has written numerous books on the subject, and helped to found Europe's first Centre for Leadership Studies at the University of Exeter.

Leadership for Innovation is a little handbook (132 pages of text) about leading innovation in organizations.

According to Adair, innovation in organizations requires a special form of creativity, team creativity. It's challenging to implement because innovators tend to be solitary and require a lot of freedom.

A key to effective team creativity within a large group of companies is good communication between researchers. Many creative developments take place by linking up technologies that others see as separate.

Allowing freedom for innovation means accepting risk. Innovation requires experimentation and testing that will result in failures. The possibility of failure should not be used as an excuse to avoid creative thinking and innovation, and commonly is used as an excuse by risk-averse bankers, investors and managers. There should be a post mortem after each failure to identify the lessons learned, not to award punishments.

The book includes case studies of the Medical Research Council's Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge University, where the first model of the double helix structure of DNA was developed, and Soichiro Honda, who developed Honda Motors to produce and market motorcycles and automobiles with innovative, low-emission engines.

Leadership for Innovation is a valuable quick read for every organizational leader.

Buy it on Amazon: Leadership for Innovation: How to Organize Team Creativity and Harvest Ideas.

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