HHL Dean Prof. Dr. Andreas Pinkwart comments on leadership as one of the school's central future-oriented topics, "To be able to keep track of everything in times of digitalization and globalization and motivate their employees, executives must know what they and the whole team are passionate about. It is only with a precise inner compass that companies can successfully weather the storms." Prof. Dr. Timo Meynhardt, who holds the Dr. Arend Oetker Chair of Business Psychology and Leadership at HHL, recommends "Gemeinsame Spitze" ("Joint Top") by Kai Dierke and Anke Houben for World Book Day. Prof. Dr. Meynhardt associates the work with "the firm conviction that even on the top management level, only the stony path of self-reflection will lead to the urgently required increase in performance."
Building a stage for others: leading innovation
HHL Dean Prof. Dr. Andreas Pinkwart, who also holds the Stiftungsfonds Deutsche Bank Chair for Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship, favors the English title "Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation" by Linda A. Hill, Greg Brandeau, Emily Truelove and Kent Lineback. The book was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2014. Prof. Dr. Pinkwart explains, "There are many books on innovation and leadership that are worth reading but only a very few deal with the two sub-disciplines of business administration simultaneously – the leadership of innovation."
When comparing the mainly Anglo-Saxon works on this topic, the relatively recent book by Harvard professor Linda Hill and her co-authors stands out. They see the role of the innovation leaders within a company rather as building a stage for others instead of taking the spotlight themselves.
"The book, which builds on a qualitative analysis of innovation leaders from all over the world, therefore does justice to today's understanding of so-called open innovation in a particular manner. Empirical studies have shown that opening the innovation process to the company's employees is at least as important to the success of the business as the involvement of customers and suppliers. Hill and her colleagues indirectly tie in with the early works of German innovation research by Eberhard Witte and his students. According to their promoter model, the stakeholders, who are responsible for the various tasks in the innovation process based on the division of labor, rely on various sources of power within the company. They allow them to promote the innovation process in a targeted manner. Linda Hill and her co-authors show in which framework and following which leadership concept they can best achieve this," comments Prof. Dr. Pinkwart.
For a self-critical debate within the management team
Prof. Dr. Timo Meynhardt, who holds the Dr. Arend Oetker Chair of Business Psychology and Leadership at HHL, recommends "Gemeinsame Spitze" ("Joint Top") by Kai Dierke and Anke Houben for World Book Day.
The book was published in 2013 by the publishing house Campus from Frankfurt and describes in a matter-of-fact manner how managers are hit by the impact of ubiquitous complexity while increasingly being forced to take the plunge and work in a team. According to Dirke/Houben, the source of increased performance is joint effort in a "disciplined society of reflection". It becomes apparent that the self-critical debate within a group needs to be constantly redefined and creatively developed. The two authors see the Chief Executive Officer in a new role as Chief Enabling Officer, whose leadership role includes recognizing the quality of cooperation in top-level management as part of the job description. Prof. Dr. Meynhardt comments, "Overall, the book is setting new standards. This not only applies to the opening up of the access to top-level management in companies. The respective literature still shows a great deficit to this day. It is also about the appreciative way in which managers are characterized in their human strengths and weaknesses. Decision-makers probably recognize themselves and benefit from it. It also is remarkable how easily and eloquently the scientific findings are presented so that researchers will find reading the book beneficial and use it to measure their own, at times anemic, theories."
HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management is a university-level institution and ranks amongst the leading international business schools. The goal of the oldest business school in German-speaking Europe is to educate effective, responsible and entrepreneurially-minded leaders. HHL stands out for its excellent teaching, its clear research focus, its effective knowledge transfer into practice as well as its outstanding student services. The courses of study include full and part-time Master in Management as well as MBA programs, a Doctoral program and Executive Education. HHL is accredited by AACSB International. www.hhl.de