As you can imagine, in my job I ponder innovation a lot. Innovation is so critical to success in technology and frankly it’s the fun part of what we do.
The tricky bit about innovation and leadership, comes in channeling it toward your business objectives. When you innovate in ways that make your business better you win.
So often I find that individuals want to innovate to help the business, but lacking proper clues from the business they tend to innovate where they think makes sense.
The concrete suggestion here is to make sure that your organizational goals are not just saying vague things like “increase shareholder value” but instead are giving your innovative workforce clues where to innovate.
In having useful organization goals, you provide pointers on where innovation might be valued. If you don’t do that, you’ll probably find yourself with a lot of self operating napkins.
Meg Bear 
Great post. This immediately brought to mind the notion of “commander’s intent” from Made to Stick. Objectives that communicate in plain talk the “…the plan’s goal, the desired end-state…” allow for innovation but provide the overall guidance and framework in concrete terms so what was needed gets done.
Mark
great catch Mark — I lifted the “shareholder value” concrete example straight from that book ;-).
OK where can I buy a t-shirt that says, ‘I ponder innovation a lot’???
Let’s get a photo of you as “The Thinker” and get them made. I bet we’d sell dozens 😉