Innovation Environment Challenges in Organizations

I recently came across some interesting thoughts on challenges to a successful Innovation environment in organizations. Among the various challenges to a healthy Innovation environment in organizations, Indifference, Hostility, and Isolation contribute to a majority.
Indifference
The majority of executives make it to top positions by being very good operational managers - meeting sales objectives, improving products and services to keep up with competitors, supporting existing customers and acquiring new ones, managing mergers and acquisitions, achieving the required financial results quarter after quarter, etc. These management jobs are very tough and getting tougher, given our rapidly changing, fiercely competitive, global business environment. Being a good manager takes very hard work, attention to detail, and organizational discipline.
When the going is good, a company might be able to cruise along with top managers who are indifferent leaders. Such managers are typically executing tactical, incremental strategies where the critical ingredients are good, disciplined management as well as operational excellence. But once the skies begin to darken, as they inevitably do, such managers will get into deep trouble, and often end up taking a business down with them. Their most talented innovators and strategists, those whose skills are now badly needed to help set the business on the proper course, have either long departed or become so disenchanted that they have nothing left to give.
Hostility
In general, managers who do not actively encourage new ideas and innovations in their organizations do so because of indifference. But some managers go beyond indifference. Their initial reaction to any new idea is negative, if not downright hostile.Typically, the corporate bullies, as one could call them, achieved their high management positions because despite their poor interpersonal skills, they might be good at other parts of the job. Sometimes, they are excellent innovators themselves, but given their autocratic tendencies, innovation for them is a one-man or one-woman show. They tend to be poor team players - Collaborative innovation is not for them. Such hostile behavior is hugely detrimental to a healthy innovation environment. People championing new ideas, especially if they are potentially disruptive new ideas, are going against the grain of what the business is currently doing.Senior managers can nurture those new ideas through positive words and actions, or they can stop them on their tracks by being overly negative and combative.
Isolation
Innovation is multidisciplinary and technologically complex. It arises from the intersections of different fields or spheres of activity.But perhaps even more important, a collaborative approach to innovation helps provide the energy and emotional support that new ideas need in their very early stages. New ideas are almost always rough and ill-formed at first. Nothing works better than bouncing ideas off other, supportive people. This back-and-forth dialog is crucial in helping to shape the idea into something more concrete, understandable, and actionable. Then it is more ready to face the tougher challenges and criticisms from line management and others in the organization. That is why isolating people in organizational silos is one of the biggest obstacles to innovation. Companies that are serious about innovation do everything possible to break down silos and encourage communication and collaboration across the organization and beyond.