One on One with Oliver Wyman's Carole France

Oliver Wyman's latest report in its Global Leadership Imperative series takes a look at innovation's relationship with leadership. According to the research, 65 percent of executives still don't have an innovation strategy in place. Carole France, partner, Oliver Wyman Delta Executive Learning Center, talked to Consulting about the research, and how to strengthen that innovation-leader relationship.

Consulting: What is the leader's role when it comes to inspiring innovation?

France: We've done a number of interviews and surveyed a number of people, and it's become pretty clear that the companies who excel in innovation have leaders who have three sets of traits in common. The first thing they have to do is create a climate in which innovation can occur. The mistake that leaders makes often is to believe that if they just hire really smart, creative people, innovation will just happen. Well, we've learned it doesn't just happen. They have to create a climate in which it can happen and in which it's nurtured. And then they need to create a culture and values where employees—not just R&D people who have been hired to be innovators—but all employees play some kind of a role. We've also learned that in that culture is that people who have these kinds of cultures, leaders who create these kinds of cultures don't talk about managing conflict. They talk about encouraging disagreement and finding venues in which they can elevate different points of view. That's a big piece of that culture where different points of view are celebrated, they're honored and people don't worry about conflict, they don't see it as conflict. Then the third thing is this notion of an organization structure that supports the whole generation and execution of new ideas.