Innovation Management: The Leadership Role of the CEO

Master's Thesis from the year 2009 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 2 (Second Class), University of Sussex (SPRU - Science and Technology Policy Research), course: International Management, language: English, abstract: The research plans to show the importance of the leadership role of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in Managing Innovation. This has also attracted the focus of researchers analysing leadership styles and its relation to innovation. Innovation is a transition from traditional methods to modern ways of providing products, services, processes, business models and much more. However, factors that have continuously kept innovation ever-increasing have not yet been clearly identified. Effectively, CEOs have their own role in the process of managing innovation allowing, initiating and monitoring the processes, products, services offered by public or private sectors. Therefore, this dissertation plans to compare the CEOs leadership role in two leading online world companies Yahoo and Google that are rapidly facing the growing demands for modernisation of their offerings. The comparison will attempt to test a hypothesis that relates Yahoo and Google CEOs' role in selection of strategy, acquisitions and management style, and its effect in innovation outcomes.