Leading Innovation Change - The Kotter Way

Innovation has been considered necessary for solving every problem today. In any business meeting, conference or media innovation is discussed and desired. However, key challenges in realizing innovation are a well understood framework and an infrastructure for its successful deployment. Current frameworks including Open Innovation, Crowd Sourcing and many others do not address corporate needs in terms of credibility and for its body of knowledge for developing competency. Having established a credible and teachable framework for innovation, the author realized that organization leadership is unable to drive innovation due to misunderstanding of innovation principles and change management at the leadership level. Recognizing success of Prof. Kotter's Leading Change model, the author adapts the model to managing the innovation change [1]. This paper presents application of the Leading Change to innovation management and providing guidance to organization leadership for innovation deployment. Innovation deployment has become a necessity for organizations in knowledge age for achieving competitive edge and sustaining profitable growth.