The presentation discusses leadership as a contextual and political phenomenon essential for innovation, focusing on mission, stakeholders, resources, and governance. It highlights the importance of relationship-based intangible capital resources like social, morale, and conceptual capital in fostering a conducive environment for innovation. Additionally, it critiques traditional positivist research methodologies, advocating for interpretive and constructionist paradigms to better understand and transform social realities related to innovation.

1. Leadership for Innovation
Ken Dovey
Sharegune Presentation
Orkestra
3 October 2013
THINK.CHANGE.DO

2. (i) Leadership is a contingent; contextual; and political phenomenon. It
involves, inter alia, working with power, culture, mental models, various
interests.
(ii) Leadership needs to facilitate on-going answers to the
questions:
• what really matters (mission)?
• who really matters (key stakeholders)?
• which resources really matter?
• how should power be managed (governance)?
1 Leadership for Innovation in the 21st Century

3. 2. The Relationship-Based Intangible Capital Resources (ICRs) that
Underpin Innovation in a Knowledge Economy
(i) Social capital: resources such as trust; norms of reciprocity and
voluntary support; capacity to ‘fight for excellence’ effectively.
(ii) Morale capital: resources such as commitment, enthusiasm,
dedication, resilience (note: morale capital is also mission-based)
(iii) Conceptual capital: resources such as ideas, knowledge,
absorptive capacity.
Leadership needs to create a social environment (relationships) in which
these (free) resources are generated and leveraged in the interests of
effective innovation.

4. (i) Social reality is different to the natural reality: it is an ‘inter-
subjective’ reality that has been socially constructed around the interests,
needs, values, and aspirations of those who have the most power within
it. Thus, there can be no ‘general laws’ governing social reality – its
nature is established and sustained/transformed by ‘political’ action.
3. Innovation Research Methodologies: Challenging the Traditional
(Positivist) Ontological and Epistemological Assumptions

5. (ii) Research seeking to answer questions about the social
dimensions of innovation therefore has to be located in research
paradigms other than that of positivism (the scientific method):
Research seeking purely to understand social realities should be located
within the interpretive research paradigm (ethnography, phenomenology,
grounded theory), while research seeking to understand and transform
social realities should be located within the constructionist research
paradigm (action research).
3. Innovation Research Methodologies: Challenging the Traditional
(Positivist) Ontological and Epistemological Assumptions (cont.)

6. (iii) The nature of social knowledge. Social knowledge does not exist
in objective form. It is idiographic – contingent, unique, and subjective
(and inter-subjective) in nature. It is tied to contexts, events and human
experience. It can never be explicated exactly and will always be
interpreted uniquely. It is an emergent phenomenon - ever changing as
social realities transform through new experience - with its meaning
contingent upon human sense-making of current and past experience.
3. Innovation Research Methodologies: Challenging the Traditional
(Positivist) Ontological and Epistemological Assumptions (cont.)

7. Leadership needs to ‘work with’ academic research culture (deeply
socialized shared research assumptions) and embedded personal
mental models (life-time work/identity being challenged by
alternative assumptions) so as to facilitate work within appropriate
research paradigms for the various aspects of innovation research.
3. Innovation Research Methodologies: Challenging the Traditional
(Positivist) Ontological and Epistemological Assumptions (cont.)