It turns out to be a little of both. Leaders are sort of born and they're always made. Knowing the details will help you develop effective leaders for your company.

Leaders are Sort of Born. It seems like there's only one thing that a person needs to actually be born with in order to be a leader later in life. That's intelligence. A leader needs to be smart enough.

Effective leaders aren't necessarily the smartest people in the room or the company or even on the team. But they have to be smart enough to do the job they're assigned.

What's more important is what kind of person the potential leader is when he or she becomes an adult. The person who emerges from adolescence into young adulthood has the psychological and character traits they'll demonstrate for the rest of their life. Some of those matter for leadership.

By the time a person becomes an adult we can tell if they can help other people achieve results. That, after all, is what we expect leaders to do. We expect them to achieve success through a group. We expect them to help their subordinates grow and develop.

By the time a person becomes an adult, we can tell if they want to achieve objectives or if they just want to go along and take it easy. We expect leaders to be responsible for achieving results. You can have a marvelous life without a results focus, but if you're going to lead successfully you have to have the drive and willingness to be measured by the results of your leadership.

By the time a person becomes an adult, we can tell if they are willing to make decisions or not. Lots of people wake up every day and let the world happen to them. But leaders must be able and willing to make decisions that affect themselves and others.

By the time a person becomes an adult we can tell if they have the basic qualities that we expect leaders to have. We can determine if they're smart enough to do the job. We can tell if they are willing to help others to achieve results as a group. And we can tell if they will make decisions.

Those things are essential. People who have them can learn the multiple skills it takes for them to become effective leaders.

No matter how they measure up on the key essentials, no one emerges from the womb or from adolescence with all the skills in place to be an effective leader. Everybody has to learn the job. That's why leaders are always made.

Leaders are Always Made. Leadership can be learned by anyone with the basics. But an awful lot of leadership cannot be taught.

That's because leadership is an apprentice trade. Leaders learn about 80 percent of their craft on the job.

They learn from watching other leaders and emulating their behavior. They choose role models and seek out mentors. They ask other leaders about how to handle situations.

Leaders improve by getting feedback and using it. The best leaders seek feedback from their boss, their peers and their subordinates. Then they modify their behavior so that they get better results.

Leaders learn by trying things out and then critiquing their performance. The only failure they recognize is the failure to learn from experience.

In their book, Geeks and Geezers, Warren Bennis and Robert Thomas identify the special power of what they call "crucibles." These are trials which teach hard lessons that leaders use as the basis of their strength in later crises. Many of these events can be called "failures," but leaders turn the bad situation to good by learning from it.

Effective leaders take control of their own development. They seek out training opportunities that will make a difference that will make a difference in their performance.

Effective leaders look for training programs that will help them develop specific skills that they can use on the job. Then, they when they return to work, they devote specific, deliberate effort to mastering in real life what they learned in the classroom.

Marshall Goldsmith and Howard Morgan studied the progress of 88,000 managers who had been to leadership development training. The people who returned from the training, talked about it, and did deliberate work to apply their learning were judged as becoming more effective leaders. The ones who didn't showed no improvement.

If you're responsible for leadership development for your company, you should structure your support for your leaders to recognize that most leadership learning happens on the job. Help people develop leadership development plans. Help them select specific skills training and then work on transferring skills from the training to the job. Help them find role models, mentors and peers to discuss leadership issues.

Help your leaders get feedback from their boss, peers and subordinates. Work to create the culture of candor that will make that feedback helpful and effective.

Don't stop there. Make sure that you evaluate your leaders on their leadership work. Reward them and hold them accountable for accomplishing the mission through the group. And hold them accountable for caring for their people and helping them grow and develop.

A Leader's Growth is Never Done. Leadership learning is a lifetime activity. You're never done because there's always more to learn. There are always skills you need to improve.

Effective leaders seek out development opportunities that will help them learn new skills. Those might be project assignments or job changes. What they have in common is that the leader develops knowledge and skills that can be used elsewhere.

Effective leaders also seek out opportunities that will increase their visibility. The fact is that great performance alone will not propel you to the top in your career. You also have to be visible to people who make decisions about promotions and assignments.

If you're responsible for developing leaders in your company, set up programs to give your leaders both kinds of development opportunities over the course of their careers.

There's no magic formula for developing quality leaders in your company. But if you select potential leaders with the essential traits, then support them with training, feedback, on-the-job learning and development experiences and hold them accountable for results, you'll have the leaders you need to shape your company's future.

• Innovation.

a) Innovation. Research and development department. A model for innovating in a big company.

The relationship between innovation and economic development lies in the manner in which innovation can be applied to the economic development of a country. One of the links between innovation and economic development is the fact that innovation creates new entrepreneurial opportunities with the attendant avenues for economic development. The most direct link between innovation and economic development is the leveraging of the knowledge or human capital required for higher incidence of innovation to the benefit of the economy. In this sense, there is a link between innovation and education. Countries with well-developed educational systems usually have a higher number of people with the human capital necessary for high levels of innovation in comparison to those countries that do not. The economic benefit to the country can be seen in the way in which the citizens of the country use their knowledge to develop the economy.

Entrepreneurship is a direct offshoot of innovation due to the fact that most of the new ideas need some sort of business structure to implement them. For instance, an innovative entrepreneur who decides to apply his or her ideas to a business venture will need to hire employees, rent a place of business, and generally make other types of property and human capital investments, including the payment of taxes to the government. Where the idea is a solid one, the business will grow, leading to the establishment of other subsidiaries, partnerships with foreign investors, reduction of unemployment, and other avenues for the development of the economy.

Product innovation refers to the process of developing and releasing a new or intrinsically altered version of a product or service into a market. While the term may seem to imply new physical products, this term can also be used to refer to new or expanded services. Product innovation is of major importance for many companies, especially those involved with electronics, computers, or software.

Consumers are often interested in product innovation to see what new features or products are available, but businesses often see such innovation as opportunities for new revenue. In highly competitive fields, such as consumer electronics and computer software, product innovation often allows a company to establish itself in the market and develop a new business identity.

A research and development department is responsible for innovations in design, products, and style. This department is responsible for creating innovative new products to keep companies a step ahead of the competition. Many companies also rely on the research and development department, or R&D Department, to improve existing consumer products, and to explore new ways of producing them.

Companies thrive and succeed by creating innovative products, as well as by increasing company profit and utilizing cost-efficient methods. A research and development department is primarily responsible for ensuring that these goals are met. This is an especially important function in the fields of manufacturing and pharmaceuticals, but can be applied to virtually any industry.

Often, a Research and Development Department works closely with the Marketing Department. The Marketing Department studies consumer trends by surveying and researching consumer demands, purchasing methods, product sales, and the existence and development of technology across the relevant market. The marketing department gathers all the data, and makes this information available to the R&D department, which will take action in response to the findings and proceed to keep the company on top of current market needs.

Consumer demands often change very quickly, and the research and development department must be alert and adapt to these market fluctuations accordingly. Companies often allocate millions of dollars to research and development department so that they can continually modify and update their products to preserve a brand's position within the market. Leading products usually will not remain in the number one market position forever without some type of improvement and advancement.

A R&D Department may also be tasked with ensuring that products are manufactured within an appropriate time frame, and that they meet specific quality and cost requirements. Therefore, R&D departments often maintain close ties with engineers, chemists, and other product specialists.

Research and development departments will provide advancements in products that range from simple updates of features to dramatic discoveries of new cures for diseases, depending on the field and the company's needs. The aim, in most cases, is to ensure that each product meets all regulations, legal requirements, and the highest standards in quality control. The research and development department works in conjunctions with other departments to achieve these aims.

Research and development is an investment in a company's future - companies that do not spend sufficiently in R&D are often said to be 'eating the seed corn'; that is, when their current product lines become outdated and overtaken by their competitors, they will not have viable successors in the pipeline.

A model for innovating in a big company. Every CEO wants its company to create and sell game-changing products, products that are out of this world. It is hard. But is it possible at all?

Innovation is risky business. It starts with an idea from an individual inside the company.

Game-changing innovation It is too much risk for employees and the company itself. Share- holders and everybody else working there want predictability. They would rather get a predictable return then a high-risk move for what they have invested in. That’s why true and game-changing innovations are so hard to achieve in large companies.

Innovation is the task of creative and risk taking individuals and small teams. These kinds of people exist. They should be found. But it’s of no use to hire them because they cannot function in big company.

Then tell them you want them to innovate. Give them a budget and some direction to work with. Let them experiment. Help them select a product concept that is in line with your family of products. Don’t get in their way. Just finance them. Let them own the vision for their product. But give them deadlines. Let them start their own company. Hold their hands just a little. Let them produce and start selling when the time is right. If you want, draft an agreement that lets you buy their company for whatever its value if it all becomes successful later on. They will not only create an innovative product, but in about five years they will create a brand and it will be a true brand that represents their passion behind the product. This small company will sell that product your engineers and marketing people would have normally laughed at, at prices and numbers no one would have imagined. Soon other products will follow and a family of products will be born. If it fails, it is their failure. You just lost money.

But if they make it, it’s better to buy the company. You would have never ever created that product yourself, nor that brand these guys have created. But it is all yours now. Your employees didn’t have to risk themselves and you didn’t have to put your reputation on the line. The only risk was in financing their prototype which ended up much cheaper than if you had paid your own engineers to do it.

An example of innovation in big company. Let’s take P&G innovation machine. During the past 2 years, P&G has raised its new-product hit rate from 70% to 90%. Organic growth – meaning growth from core businesses, excluding gained from acquisition – is at the root of P&G’s transformation. According to the CEO of P&G, organic growth strengthens a company’s ability to innovate. P&G uses one-on-one consumer research when marketers spend a lot of time with consumers in their homes, asking them about their habits and frustrations. They also provide employees the possibility to exchange their ideas and they give designers more power. Half of P&G inventions were received from external sources. In an attempt to encourage growth, some companies offer fat bonuses for innovation or hire stars from outside. P&G hasn’t done either of those things. They motivate the rank and files by giving out modest rewards, such as giving 50 stock options, for creative ideas.

b) How to make a good presentation?

A business presentation is a formal tutorial or introduction of business practices or products.

Good presentation skills are essential in today's workplace. Even those workers who aren't required to make presentations regularly as part of their job may be expected to present information occasionally at meetings. Public speaking, even in a business setting among coworkers you see every day, can be stressful for many people. The three skills listed below can help you present well during any type of business presentation:

Communicating with the audience. The first step in your business presentation should be to form your message to meet the needs and expectations of your audience. Ask yourself what the purpose of your presentation is and what your audience is supposed to gain from it. Write this into a timed script and ask yourself if it's something that you would find appropriate if you were an audience member hearing it from someone else. Check to make sure the information you need to convey is logical and complete, yet also interesting to hear.

Tone is one of the most important presentation skills. Make sure your prepared script is natural-sounding and isn't pompous or insulting to anyone in any way. Practice your script a few times a day and then make simple bullet points of key words from the script on an index card. You can then begin practicing your presentation using the bullet points to prompt you if you get stuck. Having the card beside you on the actual presentation day can be a real confidence booster.

Using presentation tools effectively. Whether you'll be using something like PowerPoint or just large charts, these visual tools can enhance your presentation skills in several ways. They can help take some of the visual focus off of you and this can make you feel more relaxed. Visual tools can also make the contents of your presentation easier for your audience to understand. Even a hand-out with bullets outlining your main points can help your audience gain clarity on what you're saying. Taking cues from respected higher ups at your company about which types of presentation tools to use can also enhance your corporate professionalism.

Anticipating audience questions. Thinking like your audience can really improve your presentation skills. Anticipate the questions the audience could ask at the end of your presentation and have good answers ready. It's also very important to prepare yourself for how you'll answer any unexpected questions by practicing how you'll respond to questions you may feel are irrelevant or impossible to answer. Again, when you attend presentations by respected higher ups in your company, take cues from them. Notice how they deal with difficult questions and apply their techniques to suit your own position and style.

MAIN STEPS: Introducing yourself -> structuring the presentation -> inviting questions -> (giving background information, referring to audience knowledge, changing the topic, referring to visuals) -> concluding -> ending.

• Competition. How to stay competitive? What actions can a company take to compete against the rivals?

Most businesses come into being because an entrepreneur has identified a niche in the marketplace - and in the early months or years there may be relatively little pressure from competitors. But your very presence in the marketplace invites competition, and before long you find yourself in a tightening market with competitors, large and small, snapping at your heels. How do you stay ahead of them?

Market drivers. Markets rarely afford you the opportunity to rest on your laurels. The key to remaining competitive is knowing the principal drivers in your marketplace and developing and positioning products and services accordingly.