Though innovation as a practice has a clear definition and understanding, its fitment into the context of organization’s product and strategy is not everyone’s cup of tea. Effective executives who build organizations ensure alignment among diverse groups within an organization. They bring innovation not only as a practice but also as the organization’s strategy, and make sure that all the strategic levers are aligned to innovation as their hub. Apple, Walt Disney, Alibaba, Target and Google are some of the organizations which have consistently been recognized for their innovation-driven success. The leaders break the silos across the various functions, viz., finance, operations, marketing and HR, with the help of innovation as the common alignment factor. They make various functions speak in the common lingo of innovation. Over a period of time, innovation becomes the identity of the organization. It explains their organizational culture.

Despite knowing the indispensability of innovation in the growth of an organization, business houses have been struggling to decode innovation as a strategy. While embracing innovation as the organization’s strategy and culture is one milestone, ensuring its effective functioning in the long term is an extremely challenging goal for the leaders. Putting innovation on an auto-pilot mode, assuming its effective functioning, could prove suicidal and pull the organization down. Polaroid, Nokia, Sun Microsystems, Xerox and Yahoo are examples of organizations that excelled in innovation at one point of time and then nosedived into oblivion. This issue brings forth some important and essential thoughts, opinions and observations on business and innovation, encompassing various perspectives.

The first paper, “Cultural Challenges in Leading an Innovation-Oriented Business: Comparing Entrepreneurs from East and West” by Stephanie Jones, Thomas Geydan and Mazin Alsafi, brings in a cross-cultural comparison and elaborates on the various challenges that the business houses face while implementing innovation. The paper takes the popular Hofstede’s framework as the base and offers an elaborate understanding of the role of culture in fostering innovation successfully in an organization.

The second paper, “Leadership Styles Required to Lead Digital Transformation” by Kurt April and Afzal Dalwai, focuses on the changing landscape of business with the augmentation of digital applications. The paper observes that organizations with predominantly digital products and applications call for a different leadership style as compared to the conventional styles. According to the authors, executives leading digital transformation and technological innovations demonstrated greater situational awareness and cognitive ability to set the strategic direction of the business. These leaders required emotional attentiveness to determine how best to rearrange their plans as the landscape changed, and cultivated the right ethos to create inclusive products and services.

The third paper is “Environmental Sustainability and Climate Change: Leading with Innovation” by Colin Coulson-Thomas. As the title suggests, the author takes his shot from the climate point of view and presents how the increasing levels of carbon dioxide and deteriorating global climate conditions are affecting the world. The author focuses on the threats that the budding generations are facing from the changing climatic conditions and the role of business houses and key personnel like directors and executives in attending to the climate challenge. The author raises a few pressing questions that need the immediate attention of business houses like “Are new leadership styles and approaches required, or do the cultures and structures of organizations need to change?” The paper harps on several sensitive issues in the context like leadership, culture and innovation, governance, regulatory frameworks, etc. The paper focuses on the role of innovation in coming up with solutions to address the intimidating climate challenge.

Finally, our regular feature “Perspective”, carries Dan Coughlin’s, “The Enormous Value of Education in the Business World”, wherein he elaborates on the significance of the conventional education in the context of business.