The importance of innovation as an essential ingredient of competitive advantage has long been studied. Researchers from various disciplines have investigated the factors that drive organizational innovativeness. Strategic leadership as one of the determinants to catalyze organizational innovation hence becomes the research topic in this paper. The research purpose is to reveal the interrelationship between strategic leadership and an organization’s competitiveness.

In research practice, the authors are trying to answer the research question as how strategic leadership affects an organization’s innovation process. To better answer the question, grounded theory as one of the qualitative research methods has been adopted to carry on the analytical process. In theoretical framework, a detailed discussion on strategic leadership and innovation has been made to give the theoretical background of studied phenomena.Two company cases have been presented and analyzed thereafter in empirical study.

The research result reveals interlinks between leadership, strategic choice process and an organization’s innovativeness. Some discussions and future research conclude the paper.

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