Dr Neil Béchervaise

NB Consulting (Australasia) Pty Ltd

Fog or focus: leadership and power issues in leveraging intellectual capital against strategic direction during innovation

Damian Mitsch
Business Administrator
GPM Pty Ltd
and
Neil E. Béchervaise
Adjunct Professor
Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship
Swinburne University of Technology

Abstract

Nepalese pilots never fly in clouds because they may contain mountains. The fog that clouds every innovation opportunity contains fragments of identity, power, risk and change. When assessed against existing strategic direction, each rises up to impact on the potential for succesful innovation take-up. Under dynamic leadership, these same elements form a lens of opportunity through which innovation is focused to provide a vision of growth in intellectual capital.

Two large Australian organisations, Panther and ACORN, were recently presented with options to access introductory communications innovation. Early stage innovation up-take appeared to offer opportunities to each organisation for significant strategic advantage. Panther accepted the innovation, ACORN chose to remain with existing technology.

This paper identifies the leadership approaches of Panther and ACORN, assesses the communication approaches used to promote the diffusion of potential for introductory innovation during its actualisation and evaluates the transition from implementation to intellectual capital value of each approach against the strategic imperatives identified during take-up or rejection.

Keywords: Leadership, Organisational culture, Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Strategic planning, Information systems.

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