How do you become an innovation leader? What does successful innovating look like? What sets successful innovators apart? These questions are asked not only by innovation teams, but also by many top managers and strategists.

Based on interviews with innovation experts between November 2021 and January 2023, we identified seven mindsets that innovation leaders should internalize and master in order to steer their company into the future in a future-oriented and stable way. We summarize the essentials of these conversations for you in compressed form.

The corporate landscape in the DACH region is shaped by many established companies with a long tradition, in which the existing business model and organizational culture have rarely been questioned in the past. Investments in innovation, however, mean securing the future. More and more companies and corporations have internalized this in the past decade. They are striving for innovations, but they act according to their own corporate pace and prevailing mindset.

Use our advance knowledge from years of working with innovation leads to identify capabilities that turn you and your innovation teams into innovation leaders.

Becoming an innovation leader

The 7 traits of an innovation leader

1. Technology Literacy

The path to becoming an innovation leader is marked by a deep understanding among leaders of technological innovations and their concrete impacts.

2. Courage to Innovate

In recent years, many innovation budgets have been reduced. Even so, innovation leaders foster the courage of their innovation teams to tackle disruptive ideas. This only works through a strong failure culture in the company.

3. New Business Exploration

Digitalization projects are important for innovation, but they are not enough. Innovation leaders should also give their innovation teams time and resources for creative and disruptive innovations. Only then can they develop new business models that will make them successful in future.

4. From Digitalisation to Innovation

For innovation leaders, digitalization projects built on existing processes are not innovation goals.

5. Ecosystem Thinking

Innovation leaders see innovation ecosystems and collaborative business models as a decisive competitive advantage.

6. Talent Mesh

A talent mesh network is flexible, robust and non-hierarchical. For innovation leaders, the connection and continuous networking of talents across company boundaries with universities and start-ups becomes a decisive competitive advantage.

7. Investment Opportunities

For innovation leaders, strategic investments in start-ups are unavoidable in 2023.

Deeper insights into these levers are provided in the following PDF:

Executive Summary - Innovation Leader 2023

These 7 mindsets should be internalized and mastered by innovation leaders in order to steer their company into the future in a future-oriented and stable way.