Innovation Occurs on a Foundation of Organization

The model A Vision of Leadership (now Leadership for Collaboration and Innovation) proposes that innovate is one of four fundamental leadership values and drives the three leadership practices of :

• Improvising in our visualization of what we want and in our collaboration with those who help us.
• Responding to sustain our collaboration with others and in our contribution to their needs.
• Realizing our visualization of what we want and making that real in our contribution.

This is innovate, as a corner of the tetrahedral model, viewed from above.


These three practices are indispensable for innovation but not enough to sustain an enterprise. We need to make and deliver products and services as well as create them and must not omit organization, the base of the tetrahedron when innovate is on top. We must continue respecting, structuring and conforming.

I just heard Gordon Moore explain to Charlie Rose how with separate R&D and production facilities at Fairchild the labs produced more innovations than the production facilities required and the transfer of innovation from laboratory to production was usually inefficient. At Intel, therefore, he ensured that R&D is carried out on production lines!

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Management, Business, Work, Lean, Collaboration, Organization, Visualization, Contribution, Realizing, Conforming, Responding, Respecting, Structuring, Improvising, Innovate, Fairchild, Gordon Moore, Intel