Gaia Grant is a researcher and lecturer at the University of Sydney Business School and the Executive Director of Tirian International Consultancy. In her research, Gaia has focused on how leaders can create a culture that supports sustainable and responsible innovation – along with exploring creative thinking and innovative problem-solving strategies to deal with wicked problems. Gaia has facilitated practical innovation solutions for a range of organisations globally, from Fortune 500 companies to not-for-profits, utilising the unique ‘Innovative Change Leader Inventory’ (iCLi) and ‘Dynamic Polar Positioning’ (DPoP) tools she has developed from her research.
“There is a critical need for leadership to enable organizations to harmonize financial, social, and environmental requirements. Purpose-driven Innovation Leadership for Sustainable Development offers fascinating insights into a senior leadership team's 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 with 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 of 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, New South Wales, Australia