Thoughts

Sink or Swim: Leadership Challenges for High Tech Businesses in the 21st Century

In the demanding world of Equity funded organisations one third of Venture Capitalists give their CEOs less than a year to prove themselves, whilst less than a tenth of company founders can expect to remain in charge of their businesses after Venture Capital investment; so rang headlines in the Financial Times in February 2008. Based on research, commissioned by the European Leadership Programme (ELP), a London based forum for CEOs of venture or private equity backed businesses, 52 UK based venture capitalists,1 gave their views on all aspects of the life cycle of the CEO. Ashley Ward, a founder of the ELP, says, “many companies bring in a new CEO in the hope that they can turn around an underperforming business, but this often doesn’t solve their problems.” The requirement for better qualified Boards, a support network of experienced experts, and leadership education that is practical and specific to the needs of high tech CEOs are just three pre-requisites for success, often measures that many venture capitalists fail to realise.

This article will explore the latter of the three criteria, the need for appropriate, hard edged leadership education equipped with management tools designed to address the challenges of 21st Century Leadership in hightech companies; fast moving, multi-cultural, adaptive, and overwhelmingly results orientated.

Innovation management

If 75% of CEOs claim that their strongest competitive advantage is unique products and services supported by processes that can power them to market why do only 20% of them have an innovation management system? Or a clear “journey” of how ideas get selected, backed and taken to market.  Just under half have a well defined innovation strategy but 47% say that they lack clear cut competencies for innovation.  Innovation management, that curious blend of creativity and discipline, is a long way off from being seen as a professional function like marketing, HR or client management.

The Future Of Innovation Is Our Creation: Dancing With Dilemmas

If innovation is creating value from new ideas, then the future of innovation largely depends on the type of world we want to create. The future of innovation is in the future of how we think.  For good or bad, our thinking patterns to date have brought us to where we are now but are vastly inadequate, and insufficient for the challenges that this century, and beyond will pose.

Boom and trust