“How to become an Innovative Leader”

I have recently watched a video on the Wall Street Journal on how to become an innovative leader. Rosabeth Moss Kanter of Harvard Business School, Kim Campbell, and Charlie Wells talked about how to innovate and be a good leader. I learned a few things about leading a company and coming up with good ideas.

One thing I learned is that if you are the leader of a company, you should have people express their ideas or hatch new ones more. You should put up a suggestion box, where people not only from the high-ranked parts of the companies but also the low-ranked parts can write suggestion. Some people are smart, and have good ideas. They’re just afraid of suggesting them to the executives because they’re afraid they’ll get fired. You should also organize events for people to meet other people they don’t know and let them talk a little. They might come up with ideas that will benefit the company. Some people just need to be with other people to have good ideas.

Another thing I learned is that if you improve, you should move on, and not keep dwelling on that improvement. You need a flexible, short plan, from 6 weeks to around 4 months. If you improve before the plan time ends, you can just move to the next plan. Companies should work up slowly, not in big bursts, because big bursts are very likely to cause trouble. What is called “rapid prototyping” in the tech industry shouldn’t just stay in the tech industry. It should spread out. Try it, test it, change it, and move on to the next subject.

To sum up, I have learned a lot of things from the video “How to become an Innovative Leader” on the WSJ.