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Leading Innovation and Disruption Change

We live in a period of transformative change.  Disruption always yields champions and victims. Organizations quick to respond and change will likely succeed. Your ability to effectively lead during these times will contribute to a healthy, growing and dynamic organization.

Technological advancements in artificial intelligence and cloud computing are fundamentally changing business models and industries. These changes are taking place at unprecedented speed. While managing programmatic change or optimization can be challenging enough, leading innovation and disruptive change on a regular basis is especially difficult.

Effective Leaders Embrace Disruption

In a world of emerging technologies, emerging markets and customer demands, innovation is imperative to keep your company relevant. Powerful leaders are not distracted nor fazed by disruption and they can measure their success and progress in the context of continual change.  For savvy leaders, the digital age – despite its challenges – has brought with it a revolutionary opportunity.

The best leaders welcome and encourage new ideas and models of doing business as well as innovative solutions to the toughest problems. It takes courage to leap into the unknown and encourage your employees to do the same.

Driven by Purpose

An EY-sponsored Harvard Business Review study found that organizations with a clear purpose drive innovation. Leaders that demonstrate that purpose through sound decisions and actions on a consistent basis are most effective in driving innovation. If they can connect innovation to the purpose of their organization, they show authenticity to stakeholders and are likely to have better performance and reputation.

Microsoft’s purpose and vision is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. This is possible only by continuous innovation. Great leaders who can sustain innovation recruit employees who are passionate about the purpose and empower them to drive it forward.

Encourage Intrapreneurship

One thing remains true for all organizations – the future is uncertain. Business models can be displaced by a new app, platform and technology. Leaders should look to disrupt their organizations by fostering an  innovation-culture, allowing employees to act like entrepreneurs within a large organization.

One way to support new ideas is by providing an environment that supports fast prototyping. At Microsoft, we run global Hack-a-thons that foster innovation at all levels of the organization, across roles and regions.

Welcome Diversity and Lead Inclusively

Leaders can’t generate new ideas and perspectives or leading-edge approaches without a diverse workforce. There should be a good mix of attributes on all teams: gender, background and qualifications. Diversity is good for business.

Achieving diversity through focused recruitment approaches is only half the battle. Leaders should lead inclusively to harness diversity for innovation and competitiveness.

Successfully Execute your Innovative Ideas

Great ideas are only as good as their potential to be successfully executed. Find out more about how you can pave the path to successful innovation within your organization by realizing Execution as the real value of innovation and disruption.

Listen here on how to measure the success of your innovation programs.

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