Gaia Grant is a researcher and lecturer at the University of Sydney Business School, and she is also an Executive Director of Tirian International Consultancy. In her research Gaia has focused on how to lead to create a culture that supports sustainable and responsible innovation – along with how to improve creative thinking and innovative problem-solving to deal with wicked problems. As the creator of the unique ‘Innovative Change Leader’ Profile (iCLi) and ‘Dynamic Polar Positioning’ (DPoP) tools, Gaia has been able to support a range of organisations globally from Fortune 500 companies through to not-for-profits with exploring practical innovation solutions.
“There is a critical need for leadership to enable organization to harmonize financial, social, and environmental requirements. Purpose-driven Innovation Leadership for Sustainable Development offers fascinating insights into a senior leadership team efforts to find balance among divergent requirements and logics in the context of a rapidly growing ‘for-purpose enterprise’. Through a detailed, ethnographic case study the readers are presented with general principles that can be applied in many contemporary organisations to help navigating the unavoidable tensions that derive from the pursuit of innovation and the attempt to reconcile multiple objectives. The result is an evidence-based informative and practical guide for anyone interested in exploring how to better lead for impact.” Dr Marco Berti, Associate Professor Management and Organizations, Nova School of Business & Economics, Lisbon “Purpose-driven Innovation Leadership for Sustainable Development takes a bold approach to a relatively new field of study. The research explores how the dynamics of competing strategic purpose-driven growth demands can manifest in a senior leadership team. Paradoxical tensions identified included those between the need to pursue both breakthrough innovation and incremental innovation, along with the need to pursue both purpose and profit. By taking the reader through a rich case study methodology, the book bridges the common gap between in-depth qualitative research and practical actionable insights and applications.” Professor Eric Knight, Professor of Strategic Management at Macquarie Business School