Innovation is a critical leadership quality in the academe. Innovation involves change, challenges the status quo, and breaks down the walls of the Ivory Tower. The innovator brings forth the new meaning of ideas and proposes new insights into a proposition.
A tool an innovator can use is interdisciplinary practices, making their research robust and come up with new ideas about their work. To be innovative means diving deep into the topic and knowing what depth means and what it entails. It involves ingenuity, novelty, and out-of-the-box thinking which means one says something no one else has said before. The innovator brings the academe up to the 22nd century and beyond with their new ideas. Innovative thinkers as leaders are transformative and stimulate the conversation forward while encouraging increased intrinsic motivation as well as propelling the invention of bright ideas along the way. The innovator opens the eyes of those they transform through a paper, a conference, a lecture, etc. Perhaps even an aha! the moment becomes manifest. This is akin to seeing a dot and encourages the attendees in a conference to have many ways in which that dot can be seen: the starting point of a Chinese letter, the pupil of an eye, or a period.
Innovators are trendsetters through their leadership. They are the leaders of a conversation and they are forever moving the conversation at their speed. Kant, Wittgenstein, Crenshaw, Freire, among many have been leaders and trendsetters in their own domain. They continue to leave their mark up to this point because they challenged their cohorts and came up with their own ideas. These examples show the importance of innovation and leadership in the academe as they transcend time and space. They are pioneers and legends!
