Chicken or egg? The role of leadership and strategy in innovation success
Innovation holds much potential value but is often not seen to bring significant value to research organisations. Is this a chicken and egg situation?
Without a clearly defined leadership and innovation strategy it is unlikely that significant achievements or income will be derived from innovation activities in research organisations. Hence the return on investment of public research funds into innovation outcomes will remain low unless a lever is pulled somewhere. This is a systemic issue that cannot be addressed solely by creating another initiative encouraging scientists to innovate or sending them on another course. Innovation needs to be embedded into organisational structure and culture.
During my MBA research I set out to understand the enablers of innovation in agricultural science and related disciplines and found that leadership and innovation strategy were notable for their absence in the conversation. Most research organisations have a clear research strategy, which scientists are involved in developing, but when it comes to how to disseminate or make value of the knowledge generated from research, there do not seem to be clear plans.
Neither the senior people interviewed, nor the scientists that were surveyed mentioned leadership or strategy as important areas for innovation. However, to innovate it is generally accepted that organisations need leadership that is receptive to and supportive of innovation, together with a clear strategy, including who is involved and how the innovation activities will create value both for the organisation and for society as a whole.
A survey of scientists working in the biological sciences found that in addition to a lack of innovation strategy, it is not always clear how the Knowledge Exchange (KEC) programmes that exist at Universities and Research Institutions add value or generate revenue. Around 60% of respondents at Universities and Research Institutes said their organisations had KEC teams. Participants at Universities were less likely to know whether a KEC team was available, which may be due to the large size of some Universities. Of those that had KEC teams at their organisations, half said they had sought help from their KEC teams and found it useful. Of the other half, 14% had sought help and not found it useful whilst 36% had not used their KEC team for support. Amongst the challenges identified were limited knowledge and experience of innovation, with KEC staff often coming from a research rather than entrepreneurial backgrounds. They were also critiqued for not having a good network of contacts to support scientists in making the right links for innovation, and not bringing in funds to cover their costs. As there was no way of measuring the impact of these functions within institutions this may be a harsh judgement, but it serves to highlight the need for KEC to clearly demonstrate the value it brings in the context of agricultural innovation.
It is desirable to increase innovation and make use of the vast knowledge generated from investment of public funds. This requires the senior leadership of research organisations as well as funding bodies to make these intentions explicit and to integrate them into organisational strategy. Considering how they will create value for their customers/stakeholders and how they will capture a share of that value is crucial. Organisations need to carefully consider what capabilities they have to support innovation and implement structures and policies to create an environment that is supportive, including making innovation activities a part of the scientist key performance indicators.
The good news is that of the scientists surveyed 58% and 34% said they always or sometimes thought about an end product, respectively when they planned their research. Overall, 75% said they would be interested in taking their research through to innovation (with a further 23% saying they might be interested), hence there is a fertile ground for organisations to engage scientists in entrepreneurial activities with the right support.
Creating value from knowledge is difficult, many entrepreneurial ventures fail and the time lag from investment in an innovation activity until a return is realised can span many years. Hence public funding bodies also need to consider how they can support research organisations until enough ventures are created for the organisations to be generating value return to enable self-sufficiency in supporting their own scientist entrepreneurs.
This requires significant commitment from organisations and patient investment by public funders. The outcome is tangible and exciting: stimulating huge value generation from research, much of which is currently an untapped asset.