Many leaders, after realizing their company is trapped in what we call The Innovation Mirage—a state of high activity but low impact—often trigger a costly and frustrating hunt for talent.
As a leader, you’ve likely been told you need more “innovators.” The conventional wisdom is to launch an expensive, time-consuming search for this rare, creative talent. You might spend a small fortune, only to find yourself a year later with a portfolio of exciting slide decks, a few failed pilots, and no discernible impact on the bottom line. This is a common experience, born from a flawed strategy: the belief that innovation is a capability that can be found rather than one that must be built.
The Common Blind Spot: The Futility of the Search
The conventional approach is to hunt for creative geniuses—the “hero innovators.” Of course, if you happen to find such a person, you should absolutely hire them. But making the search for them your primary innovation strategy is a high-risk gamble. It mistakes individual creativity for an enduring organizational capability.
Furthermore, this strategy creates a significant organizational risk. By concentrating critical innovation knowledge in a few ‘heroes,’ the company’s capability becomes fragile. When these individuals inevitably leave, the innovation capacity—and all its tacit knowledge—walks out the door with them, forcing the costly search to begin all over again.
“For too long, we’ve treated innovation like an art form, hoping to find our own Picasso. It’s time to start treating it like the rigorous business discipline it must become.”
The Turning Point: The Rise of the “New Professionalism”
The planned development of ISO 56011, a future global standard (currently designated as an Approved Work Item) for an “Innovation Management Competency Framework,” signals a definitive paradigm shift. The future doesn’t belong to companies that can find innovators; it belongs to companies that can build them, systematically.
This shift marks the dawn of the “New Professionalism” in innovation. It’s not just about finding people who can generate ideas. It’s about cultivating leaders who can architect the conditions for value creation. A true innovation leader is a master of three core domains:
- System Architecture: They see the organization not as a hierarchy, but as a dynamic system. They identify leverage points to ensure that innovation efforts are not isolated science projects, but are directly tied to the company’s core value-creation engine.
- Cognitive Agility: They operate at multiple “logical levels” of thinking. They can zoom out to align a project with corporate purpose and zoom in to structure the specific actions required, preventing the common failure of good ideas being rejected because they can’t be translated into a practical business context.
- Process Rigor: They understand that creativity itself can be systematized. They build clear pathways for ideas to be tested and scaled, which increases the velocity and success rate of new initiatives and provides a better return on innovation investment.
The “Steel Man” Argument: But Won’t Systems Kill Creativity?
A common objection is that systems and standards will stifle the very creativity we seek. A well-architected system doesn’t constrain creativity; it unleashes it by channeling it toward productive outcomes. A powerful engine requires a chassis and a steering wheel to translate its power into purposeful motion.
The Three Pillars of a High-Performance Innovation System
This new competency model is the crucial human layer of a complete Innovation Operating System. A high-performance system is always built on three interconnected pillars:
- Pillar 1: Innovation Strategy (The “Why”): The clear, top-down direction that defines where the organization must innovate to win.
- Pillar 2: Architected Process (The “How”): The clear, rigorous pathways for ideas to be identified, tested, and scaled efficiently.
- Pillar 3: Leadership Competency (The “Who”): The leaders with the skills we’ve just described, who are essential to execute the process and deliver on the strategy.
These three pillars must be architected to work together. A brilliant strategy with leaders who lack the right competencies will stall. Successfully integrating these pillars is how you build a resilient and high-performing innovation culture.
The New Reality: Innovation as a Reliable Capability
When you shift your focus from searching for individuals to building a systemic capability across all three pillars, the entire equation changes. Innovation stops being a gamble and becomes a manageable, professional discipline with predictable outputs.
This system provides the framework and common language for leaders to effectively coach their teams on these new professional competencies, scaling talent development far beyond generic leadership training. This is the ultimate competitive advantage.
Your Next Move
The first step in any transformation is an honest assessment of your current state.
- Challenge Your Assumptions: How much of your innovation budget is focused on the high-risk search for “heroes” versus the high-return investment of building a system?
- Assess Your Leadership: Do your current leaders possess the systemic and cognitive skills required to build and run a true innovation OS?
- Initiate a Competency Diagnostic: Engage a partner to benchmark your team’s innovation competencies against this new model to build a targeted plan for leadership development, often beginning with a foundational program like our Innovation Management for Executives course.
Developing the Core Competencies
Developing true Cognitive Agility requires new mental models. Our Psychology of Corporate Innovation training is designed to provide leaders with the tools to overcome cognitive biases and lead with greater perspective.
Mastering Process Rigor is about turning ideas into impact. Our Disruptive Product and Service Design program provides the systematic framework to do just that.
Key Takeaways
- Shift Focus from Searching to Building: The most effective innovation strategy is not to hunt for rare “hero innovators,” but to build a systemic, in-house capability for innovation.
- Embrace the “New Professionalism”: A global shift, signaled by the upcoming ISO 56011 standard, is treating innovation as a rigorous business discipline with defined leadership competencies.
- Master Three Core Competencies: True innovation leaders require a toolkit based on System Architecture, Cognitive Agility, and Process Rigor.
- Competency is Part of a System: These skills are the crucial “Who” that, when combined with Strategy (Why) and Process (How), deliver measurable results.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
- Are you saying we shouldn’t hire creative people?
- Not at all. The article argues that making the search for rare individuals your primary strategy is flawed and risky. The goal is to build a system that can develop and scale innovative capabilities across your entire team, not just depend on a few heroes.
- What is ISO 56011?
- It is a future international standard currently under development that will define a competency framework for innovation management. Its creation signals a global shift towards professionalizing the specific skills and behaviors required for effective innovation leadership.
- How do these competencies relate to our existing innovation process?
- They are the essential “human layer” of your process. A great process with leaders who lack these competencies will stall. Leaders with these skills are able to execute the process effectively, make better strategic decisions, and deliver measurable results from your innovation efforts.
