International Journal of Innovations in Engineering and Management, Vol. 4; No. 1: ISSN: 2319-3344 (Jan-June 2015) www.gtia.co.in 65 Modelling the Enablers of Innovative Leadership: An ISM Approach Jiveta Chaudhary, Shilpa Sindhu Assistant Professor, School of Management, ITM University, Gurgaon, India Email: jivetachaudhary@itmindia.edu, shilpasindhu@itmindia.edu Abstract: ISM is a widely technique that provides individuals with a holistic view of how elements responsible for or contributing to specific problems interact with one another. ISM generates structure of mutual dependencies and relationships amongst drivers. The present study utilizes ISM methodology to develop a structured model of enablers of innovative leadership. The enablers identified from the extant literature include leaders’ creativity and originality; their passion, level of determination and perseverance; degree of their openness to new ideas and experiences; leaders’ and organizations’ orientation toward continuous and lifelong learning; leaders’ intelligence, planning, business and technical abilities; team diversity in the organization, organizational climate and collaboration; employee involvement and competencies; top management support and commitment; a climate for innovation in the organization; autonomy and independence provided to organizational members including the leaders; and leaders’ and employees’ commitment toward change and continuous improvement.Results confirm a climate for innovation in the organization, leaders’ creativity and originality; and degree of their openness to new ideas and experiences as dependent variables, while leaders’ and employees’ commitment toward change and continuous improvement as an independent variable. Other enablers have been recognized as linkage variables. Keywords: Innovative Leadership, Leadership, Innovative Leader, ISM, Interpretive Structural Modelling, Enablers Accepted On: 30.06.2015 1. Introduction Leader is one who would be responsible for set conditions for organization’s success [1,2]. Leadership capacity is crucial in determining an organization’s fate. Leaders determinethe extent to which organizations are able to optimize their leadership in order to drive business results and meet challenges successfully given the present environment conditions [2,3]. Innovative Leaders are required today [4]. A framework for business excellence rests on the interconnectedness of leadership and management systems. Leadership and Customers & Other Stakeholders are seen as a drivers of all other components (strategy and planning; people; information and knowledge; process management; improvement and innovation; and results and sustainable performance) of the business excellence framework. Innovation and learning influence the agility and responsiveness of an organization [5]. ‘Excellence puts business merely on the starter’s list’ [6]. In order for a business to prosper and gain a sustainable competitive advantage, the business needs to rest on innovation. Innovative efforts in organizations have failed on account of various reasons like risk averse nature of management, lack of drive for innovation, insufficient vision and imagination to observe various possibilities, binary mindset, organizational culture characterized by conformity, compliance and over dependency on formal permission, hampered and insufficient cross-sectional communications and unused talent and potential. A lack of inspirational leadership hinders human potential at work. Innovative leaders demonstrate their belief in their team’s capabilities and inspire them to excel and act on their potentials. Leadership has been held to be a critical ingredient for attaining business excellence. Innovative leaders and their actions separate high performing organizations from the low performing ones [5]. The current paper thus seeks to identify the various factors that contribute toward making leaders innovative. Extant literature on innovative leadership has been reviewed to extract the various drivers of innovative leadership. Using ISM (Interpretive Structural Modelling) an attempt has been made to structure these around a systematic hierarchical model. The paper shall first discuss