Innovation Leadership Styles

The obvious thing to note here is that these are not individual leadership styles. What we're looking at are the cultures and systems that make up the norms of how the organization fulfills its mission.

As you can see in the figure above, the Innovation Leadership Styles match up well with the Innovation Horizons. If you aren't yet familiar with the horizons, here is a link to an article that will be very helpful to read along with this one: Innovation Horizons

Now let's look a little closer at each of the Innovation Leadership Styles.

The Spiral Staircase works really well with Horizon 1 (H1), which is focused on improving and protecting current profit/surplus and healthy balance sheets. This horizon needs a leadership style that works step by step to meet short term goals, hone return on investment (ROI), and create detailed forecasts based on available data. To be successful, the culture and practices must include a thorough expertise on the current market and how the core products and services deliver consistently on those expectations. There is a strong focus on operational and financial efficiency. Innovation is incremental and structured: driven by reading the market closely and responding accordingly. This maintains the sweet spot of meeting performance metrics that are based on previous predictions. While essential to all organizations, the limitation of the Spiral Staircase is that it cannot deliver on the radical innovation needed to work with uncertainties.

The Cauldron is used to challenge the business model with high energy debate and rapid experimentation. Roles and responsibilities are intentionally undefined, or can come under question as part of the discussion. The Cauldron can also be found when changes in direction cause a feeling of agitation and even chaos within the organization, when old norms no longer apply and new norms are still unformed. You may see this during sudden interruptions (pandemic or disaster), a signficant change in leadership (new CEO or Board turnover), rapid technology disruption, elimination of a major source of revenue (grants, client loss), etc. The Cauldron leadership style is necessary and highly creative for all organizations, and understanding how to lead through turbulence is a powerful advantage.

The Fertile Field is a discerning leadership style that tends the organization from the inside by finding the best potential and growing it while tilling anything that is not working. This is an important skill when working in Horizon 2 (H2): getting good at ending ineffective initiatives or programs that are taking up resources better spent developing more promising revenue sources and market share.

The PacMan leadership style grows by acquisition. Sometimes this means buying (or otherwise taking on) new capabilities that exist outside of the organization and sometimes it involves creating and investing in an experimental start-up that functions separately and is later brought back in if successful. Organizations that are not skilled and comfortable in the dynamics of external investment and acquisition could find themselves in the path of another PacMan.

The Explorer investigates the as-yet unknowns of Horizon 3 (H3). This leadership style is necessary to hone skills of working with uncertainty to prepare the organization for future conditions or sudden disruptions. This leadership style does not work with ROI or respond the the current marketplace; it creates the future through learning on a different level. In many cases, competing organizations or disparate industries work together as Explorers to share knowledge and co-create possibilities that they will later turn into new products, services, and intellectual property for tomorrow's core business.


At Erin Mosley, Inc. (EMI) we often find that organizations struggling with some aspect of their operations and strategy implementation have gaps in understanding how the Innovation Horizons and Innovation Leadership Styles work together. Most organizations can see themselves in these descriptions and deploy some of these elements, but not with high-level skill or consistency. Examples include:

• Start-ups that love Exploring in H3 but fail to create repeatable, scalable processes for experimentation and operations that will bring in profits for the long term through H2 and H1 leadership.
   
• Established organizations that believe the incremental innovations of H1 Spiral Staircase are the full picture of innovation, only to struggle when growth stagnates or when surprises and market shifts come along. The H1 mindset does not quickly or easily adapt to H2 or H3 leadership needs under stress.
   
• A pervasive Cauldron leadership style that has a hard time discerning when to make decisions using more of a a Fertile Field approach or how to "settle down" to provide consistent H1 leadership to their teams. Cauldon leadership can also sometimes mistake itself for Explorer. A key difference is that Cauldron is intended to disrupt the organization internally to make H2 changes when strategically needed, while true H3 development is a highly disciplined approach to investigate external forces acting on the organization.
   
• Organizational leadership that is pretty good at Fertile Field, but a lack of clear communication and process makes it feel unpredictable (a little like Cauldron) in some parts of the organization or to some members of the team. The organization will benefit from development of an innovation management system and continued training and practice for the team.
   
• Leadership that focuses nicely on H1 Spiral Staircase and knows enough to invest at least a small amount in H3 idea generation, but has no way to reliably move H3 into H2 to "build the business" between the two horizons.
   

Further, data analysis published by Innovation360 has shown that organizations who develop and apply radical innovation skills (H3, Explorer) are likely to also understand incremental innovation and how to divide attention and resources across all three horizons using innovation management systems. They make smart use of multiple Innovation Leadership Styles to manage the full outlook of risks and opportunities.

This may in part be due to the involvement of the most senior executives. All of the investment in H3 and H2 requires high level endorsement and vision for the future - tied to the strategic plan. If executives are skilled in this way, the entire organization benefits over the long term. If the organization cuts back on H3 and H2 or lacks the proper leadership approaches, its future is at risk.

The three leadership styles that align with H2 - Cauldron, Fertile Field, and PacMan - provide different paths to take the most promising concepts coming out of H3, rapidly test those concepts, and select those that warrant further development. Working in this horizon needs these entrepreneurial leadership styles to create positional advantages that lead to tomorrow's core business revenues.

In brief, the aspiration for organizations is to use multiple Innovation Leadership Styles concurrently to sustain innovation through:

• H3 Explorer → 
• H2 Cauldron, Fertile Field, and PacMan developing viable new revenues and market share through experiments and prototypes →
• H1 Spiral Staircase delivering on current core business profitably.

Erin (Pink) Mosley has been active with Innovation360 since 2017 and is a IMGB™️ Innovation Management Green Belt / Licensed Practitioner. Prior to founding EMI, she was a Global Director of Innovation for a Fortune 500 firm. Contact us to learn more. 

Source credits go to:

• Innovation360 and Agent360
• Penker, M., P. Junermark, and S. Jacobson. 2017. How to Assess and Measure Business Innovation: 41 - 55.
• Loewe, P. P. Williamson, and R. C. Wood. 2001. "Five Styles of Strategy Innovation and How to Use Them." European Management Jounal. 19 (2): 115-125.
• Innovation360. "Successful Innovators Apply Multiple Leadership Styles Simultaneously." Accessed February 7, 2026. https://innovation360.com/new-research-successful-innovators-apply-multiple-leadership-styles-simultaneously/
  
• McKinsey & Company. 2009. "Enduring Ideas: The Three Horizons of Growth." Accessed February 6, 2026. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/enduring-ideas-the-three-horizons-of-growth.
• Baghai, M., Coley, S., & White, D. 1999. The Alchemy of Growth: Practical Insights for Building the Enduring Enterprise. London: The Orion Publishing Group Ltd.

Original post January 7, 2026
Written by Erin (Pink) Mosley
©️ 2026 Erin Mosley, Inc.