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Many organizational executives have the experience of breaking through existing rules and practices and opening new paths for themselves. Although they are strong leaders, however, few of them feel they are successful in creating innovative organizations. We hear many of them say, "Not many new suggestions or project ideas are raised by my colleagues."

Nonetheless, some top leaders see their own organizations as innovative. So when innovation-driven leaders(*1) think that not only they themselves, but also the organization is innovative, what is notable about such firms?

Figure 1 illustrates the features of employees in innovative organizations(*2) and non-innovative organizations(*3) as defined by innovation-driven leaders.

Figure 1. Differences in the perceptions of employees in innovative organizations and those in non-innovative organizations, as defined by innovation-driven leaders. (*4)

■Employees working in a non-innovative organization ■Employees working in an innovative organization

Employees from 23 innovative organizations(*2) and employees from 29 non-innovative organizations(*3) Answers from companies with an average of 132 employees
7-point scale (1 "Completely disagree" to 7 "Very much agree")
Survey conducted by Coaching Research Institute in 2016

In innovative organizations, we can see that the employees agree more with the corporate philosophy,and work with stronger goal-oriented and customer-oriented ways.

To generate innovation, we must take a new step and change existing practices and systems. However, as organizations have strong inertia and people have an instinctive desire to fit in, it is not easy to make changes. In such cases, it may be beneficial to check the current state of your organization based on factors, goal-oriented, customer-oriented, and agreement with corporate philosophy, and discuss these issues with employees from the perspectives found in this survey.

*1
Innovation-driven leaders: 88 organization executive leaders, who scored higher than average (7-point scale) in response to the question "I do not stick to ways of thinking and methods that were successful in the past, but always try to implement new methods and ways of thinking," out of 120 organization executive leaders
*2
Organizations to which 23 leaders belong, who chose 6 or 7 (7-point scale) for the question "My organization is not relying on methods and ways of thinking that were successful in the past, but is always implementing new methods and ideas," among the innovation-driven leaders in (*1)
*3
Organizations to which 29 leaders belong, who chose one from 1 to 4 (7-point scale) for the question "My organization is not relying on methods and ways of thinking that were successful in the past, but is always implementing new methods and ideas," among the innovation-driven leaders in (*1)
*4
From 32 items where employees answered about their behavior and perceptions, three items were selected and compared where the most significant gap was found in the perceptions.

Research Overview

No. of samples: Organizations to which 120 executive leaders belong (Organizations with 30 or more employees and an average of 132 employees)
Period: September 2011 - July 2016
Survey method: Web survey
Survey tool: Executive Mindset Inventory