3.Real leaders: born or made?

The age-old question continues to raise its ugly head: Are leaders born to lead, or are they made?  Does Leadership DNA exist?  We often point to one person or the other and say, “Now, he’s a leader,” without giving a lot of thought to how this person became a leader in the first place.  Sometimes it is easy to simply conclude that some of us have the leadership gene and some of us do not. 

Fear not, there is hope for the rest of us because here is some very good news:  Leadership DNA is a myth.  There is no such thing as a natural ability to lead that exists within some of us while remaining absent in others.  A closer examination of those leaders we often hold in high regard, those we refer to as role models, will reveal one common characteristic among all of them.  They all have a burning desire to lead, to be influential, motivational, and take responsibility for themselves and others. But What makes these leaders effective? It is not a natural ability; it is their desire to lead people, combined with a set of learned skills that they apply as leaders. 

So, I think It’s a difficult question. But on my mind a leader has to have abilities that can be developed but cannot be cultivated in case of their absence. To confirm my words I can add, that the main traits of leader are: intellect, purposefulness, resolution, charismatic, adventurous, energetic, fairness and risk. Above else good leaders are open-minded. They go up, down, and around their organizations to reach people. They don’t stick to established channels. They’re informal. They’re straight with people. They make a religion out of been accessible. One of the things about leadership is that you cannot be a moderate, balanced, thoughtful, careful articulator of policy. You’ve got to be on the lunatic fringe. I guess that the majority of these qualities cannot be got during a life.

Innovations

1. Important innovations in our life and their characteristics

The business world is not kind to pioneers. Even if you know how a market will develop. Timing is a matter of luck-or of quite exceptional skills.

Majority of people never heard of Berkey, Ampex, Gablinger or Chux. Each of this companies occupies an important place in the history of product innovations. Berkey produced the first hand-held electronic calculators, Ampex the first video recorders, Gablinger developed low-alcohol lager, Chux sold the first dispensable nappies. We don’t know about this companies because none of these companies made a commercial success of their innovations. Today we use calculators made by Casio, video recorder by Mitsushita, our low-alcohol bear is Miller Lite, our nappies made by Proctor&Gamble In each of this market innovators was swept out.

There are two closely related lessons. One is that being the first is not often important. The other is that innovations is rarely a source of competitive advantage on its own. Individuals & small companies can make a great deal of money out of good new ideas. The success of large established corporations ( Matsushita, IBM, General Electric) is generally based on their depth of technical expertise, their marketing skills. These characteristics enable them to develop the innovative concept far more effectively than the innovators themselves. This is not to say that there is no role in business for the great innovator. GE was built on the creativity of T.Edison, the Ford motor company on the ability of its eponymous founder.