While innovation leaders have the same core behaviors all great leaders have, they carry important additional behaviors. Today’s topic is the 9 leadership behaviors for innovation leaders which was inspired by an article on Forbes by Jack Zenger. Applied to the topic is my own forty years of experience in the innovation space. These behaviors are foundational for innovation leadership success. 

Fundamentals of Any Leadership Activity

Let’s start by discussing two fundamentals of any leadership activity. Every leader is there to bring together the right people to achieve an objective. Typically, a leader brings in people with different skills and abilities like finance and software engineering. When it comes to innovation, you’re bringing in people with different perspectives and thinking styles. It is critical to understand how to build teams to generate the next great idea. The next fundamental comes from a quote I use often, “leaders deserve the teams they get based on the worst actions they allow other team members to get away with”. If you allow members of your team to get away with things like disrespect, or not being a team player, it will infiltrate the rest of your team. The negative result of this will be your fault as a leader. 

9 Leadership Behaviors for Innovation Leaders

For the first behavior, innovation leaders have a vision of the future, not just the goals of the present. You have to look at both the short and long-term goals and convey a vision that gets people excited. Secondly, innovation leaders establish trust in their team. Building trust is paramount when it comes to innovation. This is because of how risky and scary innovation can be. Without trust, a team will not take the risk of putting their ideas out there. Thirdly, innovation leaders challenge the status quo, refusing to rely on what is safe and comfortable. As an innovation leader, you need to try new things instead of sticking to the same processes. For the fourth behavior, innovation leaders are curious. They ask smart, strategic, thoughtful, and targeted questions to gather input. Spending the extra time to craft better questions will lead to uncovering many ideas. They also listen carefully to responses of questions. For the fifth behavior, innovation leaders set aspirational goals or BHAGS (Big Hairy Audacious Goals). In this position, you are expected to deliver breakthrough achievements and ideas. It is important to challenge your team to do better. This is achieved by giving more autonomy. If you are a micromanager, either break that habit or don’t be an innovation leader. 

Behaviors Six through Nine

The sixth innovation leadership behavior is that innovation leaders move quickly. Studies have shown a clear correlation between the speed of execution and the degree of innovation. The 10% fastest leaders were also in the top percentile of innovation effectiveness. The seventh behavior is that innovation leaders crave information. They need input and things that they can let their conscience work on. For me, I am always reading blogs, magazines, books, etc. I find that the things I read help me connect dots to things that I come across at different points in time. The eighth behavior is that innovation leaders excel at teamwork. They put their self-interest to the side and focus on creating collaboration. One challenge I’ve seen within organizations is competition between different groups. This needs to be avoided to have success as an organization. The ninth behavior is that innovation leaders value diversity and inclusion. If everyone on your team acts, thinks, and has the same background as you, you will have the same thinking style. Similar viewpoints lead to the danger of groupthink, where everyone is thinking and doing the same thing. Differing opinions fuel the creative process.

What comes to mind when you hear the term innovation burnout? Webster's dictionary says that burnout is the physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive or prolonged stress. Burnout occurs when we feel overwhelmed, drained, and unable to meet that constant demand.

Innovation Burnout

For innovators, it's that constant demand for coming up with new ideas. Being in the innovation game for some forty years, I have often gone through the burnout stage. Burnout can kill your creativity that drives innovation. Over the years, I've learned that there are things you can do to avoid it.

If you face burnout, it is essential to talk to somebody about it, whether your spouse, boss, or friend. If you don't address burnout, it can impact your career, family, and even happiness.

Dealing with Innovation Burnout as a Leader

The first thing you can do to deal with burnout as a leader is to eliminate time wasters. While at HP, when I asked my team to update me on something, they would often lose weeks of productivity preparing to present to me. Included in this time was preparation, meetings, etc., all leading up to a one-hour session with me.

In my organization now, when I ask someone for something, I have a conversation with them that does not need wasteful preparation. This meeting helps my team avoid burnout and keeps them focused on their projects, collaborations, etc.

The second thing leaders need to do to avoid burnout is to establish priorities. In my organization, I am a big believer in utilizing OKRs (Objectives and Key Results). Having set priorities helps people know what order they need to do things in.

Thirdly, leaders need to encourage and, at times, force downtime. By taking breaks, you replenish that energy required for the next project. At CableLabs, we offer unlimited paid time off (PTO) to our employees. If our managers see an individual struggling or just came off a big project, they often force them to take PTO.

Time Out

We also shut down our teams periodically, allowing them to rest and avoid innovation burnout. By disconnecting, I found that my teams come back with better solutions to problems. The fourth thing leaders need to do is allow employees time to disconnect at the office. Employees shouldn't have to be on call at all times. Having stress from their boss constantly messaging them will fuel their burnout.

Leaders also need to set boundaries for their employees. When you are outside of work, you should disconnect from work. While this is not realistic with all jobs, it makes a big difference when implemented. When a leader does these five things, it gives their team time to recharge and avoid innovation burnout.

Avoiding Burnout as an Individual

The first thing you can do is invest in your physical and mental health. You are an innovation athlete expected to perform at a high level. Athletes exercise physically and mentally to stay in shape and get more vital and more innovative. As innovators, it is essential to eat well, exercise, and do things that feed your creativity. This podcast is one of my creative outlets as I do it outside of work.

The second thing you need to do is take ownership of recharging your batteries. Don't wait for your boss to force you to take a vacation. Even as a startup guy, it is essential to take breaks to recharge. If you are struggling, don't be afraid to share your struggles with your leaders. If you are feeling this way, other people in your organization are probably feeling the same.

The last thing you can do as an individual is to find a community of fellow innovators. Within this community, you can find help from innovators who have experienced the same struggles. Check out the Innovators Community here.

Co-innovation is a common term used in the innovation space. It describes two organizations of any kind that come together to innovate in an area of common interest. I am not only talking about collaboration. Co-innovation seeks to deliver a result such as a product or service. There is a 50-50 contribution with this model, whether that’s money, people, labs, etc.

Co-Innovation Partner: Corning

During my tenure at HP, co-innovation played a vital role in the company. The amount of money it took to accelerate acted as a barrier to innovation. Corning was the co-innovation partner in this case.

The project we did with Corning was around gorilla glass, which we improved and expanded for more uses. Next, we worked on bending glass displays to limit eye strain. We built a frame and figured out how far we could bend the glass before it would break. This project led to the curved displays, which are now commonly used. With the constant acceleration of time and costs, finding partners with the knowledge you don’t readily have is key to fueling innovation.  

3 Tips to Innovating with a Co-Innovation Partner

The first tip is to choose a partner with strong cultural alignment. During this time, you will be working very closely with your co-innovation partner. By alignment, I mean how they manage, oversee, and support their teams and what they expect from them.

It is also essential that both organizations grant similar autonomy to their teams. If one organization gives a lot of independence and the other micromanages, there will be unneeded friction.

Beyond people, you need to look at how the potential partner treats their customers and sells them. At HP, there is a very relaxed selling approach, but not all organizations are like that. You need to think about these things and figure out if you are willing to align with a company that approaches customers differently.

Next, it’s crucial to discover what the mission objective of the organization is. If one organization is all about numbers and the other is about improving lives, there is no alignment. If you don’t have a strong culture alignment with your co-innovation partner, your chance of success is slim to none.

The second tip is to define the area of focus carefully. There needs to be a substantial overlap of focus. Think of this as a Venn diagram, where your business has an area you want to focus on to achieve success. Your partner also has an area of focus where they want to achieve success. The area where these two spheres overlap is the general area of focus for this co-innovation effort.

Both organizations must have a committed interest in the common area and aware of each essential contribution. Co-innovation partners need to bring value and combine them to create a breakthrough.

The third part of tip two, which I can’t stress enough, is the need for mutual dependency. It would be best to find an area of focus where you need each other to solve problems. If one can do it on their own, then it is not a co-innovation effort. 

My Final Advice

Tip number three is to secure proper sponsorship and support. The key here is to create a true partnership built on trust. In the HP and Corning co-innovation effort, I was the executive sponsor and Wendell Weeks, the Chairman and CEO at Corning, was their sponsor. I can tell you that Wendell and I talk regularly and are good friends even to this day. This level of trust and relationship was built from this project and led to better innovation.

Another thing to think about is that patent creation happens during a co-innovation. Intellectual property issues constantly come up when dealing with co-innovation. Keep these legal issues simple. Tackle this with things such as a split license approach or patent sharing.

I’ve done about a dozen successful co-innovation projects to this day. The results of which are products that you are most likely using today. Co-innovation is not a quick and easy process and takes at least a year to get a project up and running. Be patient and keep your eyes open because you never know when a co-innovation opportunity may arise. 

Whitney Snider is the Head of Alexandria's LaunchLabs and the VP of Alexandria Venture Investments. Alexandria Real Estate Equities is a real estate investment trust that provides housing and labs for life science and tech companies. Whitney will share what ARE is doing to fuel innovation through collaborative campuses.

Whitney's Background

Whitney works at Alexandria Real Estate Equities and is involved in venture investment activity growing the life science cluster in New York City. Focused on collaborative campuses for life science, technology, and agTech companies, Alexandria brings companies together. They help grow collaborative ecosystems that fuel better innovation.

The concentration of Alexandria's portfolio is in some of the most innovative cities in the U.S, such as Boston, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, and New York. Alexandria started with a vision to create a new kind of real estate company focused on the life science industry. Unique team collaborations contributed to their success as an established leader in the industry.

Collaborative Campuses

Alexandria uses four elements to fuel innovation through its collaborative campuses. The first is vocation, where they're at locations with quality housing, good transportation, etc. The second is innovation, where Alexandria evaluates and searches to find opportunities no one has jumped on yet. Then there is talent, where Alexandria focuses on building a solid pipeline to grow the company. Lastly, there is the capital, which is needed to fuel and fund innovation at all levels.

You need these elements to support your ideas. Alexandria's collaboration campuses range from some of the world's biggest pharma companies to top-tier upstarts. With this diversity, there is a co-mingling of talent and energy that allows for more growth.

Alexandria's venture and investments arm focuses on funding early growth stage companies through a built platform. This venture expands its reach and providing mentorship and capital to cultivate innovation that will improve human health.

Fueling Innovation with LaunchLabs

Alexandria has LaunchLabs sites on many of their major U.S campuses. LaunchLabs looks for up-and-coming companies in their regions. Then, Alexandria identifies which ones could use their lab and mentoring infrastructure to become a new star. Alexandria tailors what they do to the specific region they are operating in. They work with teams, pinpoint their needs, and find the necessary resources to improve them. They work to push companies into the next stage of growth.

Currently, over one hundred of Alexandria's tenants and investments are working on COVID-19 solutions. Due to COVID, they had to adapt their buildings and launch initiatives to enhance their tenants' safety measures. In doing so, Alexandria formed a dedicated COVID-19 advisory board to improve and provide insights on the pandemic. As I've learned, there is no playbook when it comes to things like COVID. Having good processes and knowing when to change the process is vital to succeeding in times of disruptive shock.

The Future of ARE

Currently, there are 10,000 diseases known to humankind, with only 10% having some available treatment. Alexandria believes they are on the edge of a biology revolution. They want to find innovative ways to treat the world's major health issues.

Through COVID-19, it has been amazing to see the development of successful vaccines under high levels of pressure. Please don't underestimate the power of human ingenuity and collaboration when it comes to innovating solutions.

If you want to keep up to date with what Alexandria Real Estate Equities is doing, check out their website here. Check out Whitney's LinkedIn here.

About our Guest: Whitney Snider

At Alexandria, Whitney supports Alexandria's venture investment activity and other strategic initiatives to grow the New York City life science cluster.  She also oversees general management, operations, business development, member recruitment, and programming for Alexandria LaunchLabs in New York City.

Whitney was formerly at an early-stage venture capital firm based in New York City and spent two-and-a-half years at Celgene in the Business Development group, where she was a Director. Whitney also was previously a Consultant at Bain & Company in both its Boston and New York offices. Whitney received her Master of Business Administration degree with High Distinction from Harvard Business School and her Doctor of Medicine degree from Tufts University School of Medicine.