ABSTRACT
Public innovation does not happen by itself: It has to be initiated, created through interactions between various actors and types of knowledge, then fostered and, most importantly, implemented and adopted by the users. Creating new ways of ‘doing’ implies more complex ways of learning (Lundvall 2007). It follows that leadership is thought to be crucial for innovation. However, the questions of which leadership qualities are most likely to foster public innovation have seldom been addressed. There is a vast literature on charismatic or transformational leadership, as we will see in this chapter, and this is linked to innovation. However, most of this research has been conducted on private firms, and it generally has very little to do with what we know about linking innovation capacity to leadership activities and conceptual styles in the public sector (Bekkers, Edelenbos and Steijn 2011).
