Innovation is on everyone’s minds. In fact, a recent survey found that 90% of CEOs claim innovation is a top priority. And yet, only 10% are satisfied with their organization’s ability to innovate. That gap reveals a deeper challenge: innovation isn’t just about ideas or industry expertise—it’s about leadership.
For Chief Innovation Officers (CINOs), the transition from being an industry expert to becoming an innovation leader is critical. CINOs are often brilliant when it comes to understanding trends, technologies, and market dynamics. But leading innovation within an organization requires a different skill set: the ability to foster a culture of experimentation, rally teams around a shared vision, and guide them through the highs and lows of the creative process.
What exactly is standing in the way of more organizations unlocking their full innovation potential?
Industry expertise, while valuable, can create a tendency to focus on “proven” methods and known solutions. True innovation requires being comfortable with ambiguity and building environments where others feel empowered to experiment and fail forward.
Too often, organizations prioritize speed and efficiency over the messy, iterative process of discovery. CINOs who can instill a sense of curiosity and adaptability into the company culture will be far more effective at generating long-term innovation.
Without strong leadership and clear processes, innovation initiatives risk stalling out before they even get off the ground.
These assessments give you a starting point, showing where gaps in creativity, collaboration, or leadership may exist. From there, you can tailor your approach to address those pain points and make innovation a sustainable, scalable part of the culture.
Design sprints enable CINOs to foster collaboration across departments and eliminate silos. They also give teams a structured way to test ideas, fail fast, and iterate quickly—all crucial ingredients for innovation success.
Coaching can also help CINOs themselves. Innovation leadership requires a unique set of skills—balancing visionary thinking with practical execution, encouraging experimentation while managing risk. Coaching helps CINOs sharpen their ability to communicate, delegate, and build cultures of trust and collaboration.
This means moving away from a culture of perfectionism and creating clear feedback loops so teams can learn from failures and improve continuously.
Ultimately, innovation leadership is about much more than coming up with great ideas. It’s about creating the conditions where those ideas can flourish. It’s about building a culture that encourages learning and experimentation, where people feel empowered to challenge the status quo and pursue new possibilities.
For Chief Innovation Officers, the journey from industry expert to innovation leader involves more than just expanding your toolkit—it requires evolving your mindset. The best CINOs aren’t just experts in their fields. They are the catalysts for change, the connectors who bridge ideas with execution, and the champions of cultures that value curiosity, creativity, and resilience.
By leveraging tools like innovation assessments, design sprints, and leadership coaching, CINOs can close the gap between aspiration and reality, turning innovation from a buzzword into a sustainable driver of growth and competitive advantage.
If innovation is truly a top priority, it’s time for leaders to build the environments that make it possible.