The role of leaders in driving innovation

The paper will discuss the role of managers in promoting innovation. The coverage of the topic is considerable, so I will not attempt to provide a full literature review, but rather highlight the leadership roles and style characteristics that can be key to promoting innovation. Our objectives are to examine what leadership skills are needed today to enable the process of value creation through collaborations and what role leaders play in innovation collaborations. In this short article we would like to focus attention on the role of leaders, because we believe that the ability of an organisation to create value and to participate in innovation collaborations, the possibility of interfirm linkages, is significantly influenced by the attitude, the mindset, the everyday communication, the way the leader manages processes, the way he leads, organises and manages in his daily life.