A joint project between Cass Business School and the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) pays special attention to the role of the corporate leader in the innovation process and how corporate leaders think about innovation. It also addresses the challenge of generating the capacity for innovation in their organisations, explores what challenges leaders face and how they are facing up to these issues.

The report comes at a time where businesses in the UK and many other developed economies face a potential perfect storm: after a deep and unexpected recession, business leaders face a double-dip recession and an extended period of low economic growth. This may have a fundamental impact on business strategy as the need for customer retention as consistency of returns displaces a historic drive for growth.

Dr Robert Davies who co-authored the report says: "We did this in the context of examining 'new to the organisation innovation', not just 'new to the world innovation'. In other words, we were interested in how corporate leaders proposed to help their organisations deliver offerings, relationships and processes that their organisations had not delivered before."

The research is based upon 20 interviews conducted with corporate leaders. The researchers used cognitive mapping processes and coding techniques to help to "get inside the minds" of members of leadership teams to see how they personally thought about innovation and their roles in building the capacity for innovation in their organisations.