7.1. Organizational Impediments to Innovation

But we all know that organizational structure and behavior can also stifle innovation. It can impede the fostering and nurturing of the entrepreneurial spirit that is so essential to creative change. The systems that are designed for uniformity, for reducing the margin of error, have little elbowroom for mistakes. Layers of management, often thought necessary for orderly review and direction of the organization can, in fact, stifle and limit innovation. Commitment to authority standards, intended for reasonable control, can become bureaucratic and in some cases debilitating. Governance structures can find senior management and the board of directors out of touch with the needs of the creative innovator. ...

Get Leading for Innovation: And Organizing for Results now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.