Role of Leadership in Leveraging the Innovativeness and Performance of High Tech Enterprises

Abstract

The successful emergence of India s entrepreneurial enterprises in knowledge based industries and service sector during past two decades, has attracted the attention of entrepreneurs and business executives all over the world. In developing countries planners, policy makers and researchers who are genuinely concerned with the need to manage the competitiveness of their societies among emerging global knowledge economy, are striving to acquire a deeper understanding of individual and organizational factors affecting the performance and sustainable development of such enterprises. Although all industries are to some extent users of knowledge inputs, the term knowledge base industries is usually refer to those industries which intensively utilize advanced technology and/or relatively highly skilled work force. Thus in addition to the commonly recognized high technology industries concerning space technology, information and biotechnology sectors, knowledge based enterprises also include service activities such as finance, insurance and e-business, in their gambit. Beside their knowledge intensive and high technology environment these organizations are essentially characterized by their emphasis on newness and novelty in product and process development (Nirjar andTyelcote, 2007). Researchers have suggested that creativity and innovation along with the technical competence of work force are the dominant variables which determine the competitive advantage of a knowledge based firm (Kapur, Kumar and Samiee, 2008; Ojha an Krishnan, 2004) newline