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The Dna of Disruptive Innovators

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The DNA of Disruptive Innovators
Kathy Torres kdellosa@capellauniversity.edu Leading Innovation in the Global Organization
Jane Gibson
February 28, 2015

Introduction This paper will be discussing two leadership models that support innovation, Democratic/Participative and Transformational. The discovery and delivery skills brought forth by the authors of The Innovator’s DNA will follow the discussion on leadership models. Lastly the writer’s strengths and weaknesses of being innovative will be analyzed.
Innovation Supported Leadership Models Each leadership model has a different approach. The leadership models that this researcher found to be the most in-line with innovation are Demographic/Participative Leaders and Transformational Leaders.
Democratic/Participative
Democratic leaders are also known as participative leaders. Both descriptions fit this model. This type of leader requires participation from a team of players with the ultimate decision on the leader. This leader asks for input and then will study the ideas to make the final decision. By using the team’s input the players feel more satisfied and valuable, as well as a sense of ownership (Loiseau, 2015). The reaction to change is more positive by the team players. The players feel this way because they were consulted and contributed in the initial decision making process (Loiseau, 2015). There is a drawback to this leadership model. It is more difficult to include the team when decisions need to be made right now (Loiseau, 2015). Transformational leaders do not seem to have this issue.
Transformational Leaders The concept of Transformational Leadership was introduced in by James McGregor Burns, leadership expert, in his 1978 book Leadership (Manktelow, 2015). Mr. Burns defined this leadership style as “leaders and their followers raise one another to higher levels of morality

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