Innovation and Collaboration in the Digital Era: The Role of Emotional Intelligence for Innovation Leadership and Collaborative Innovation

Innovation and Collaboration in the Digital Era provides a holistic approach to collaborative innovation, innovation management and innovation leadership. It is full of practical advice and includes 34 interviews with high-level politicians, innovation industry leaders, academics and entrepreneurs discussing the reality of innovation and how to create change for a positive impact. Many quotes are included from researchers and practitioners in the innovation field who have participated as guests in the author’s podcast “Business of Collaboration” or in interviews with the Collabwith Magazine which she produces.

This is a powerful book full of practical frameworks and one-page canvases which act as reminders of the value of making needs and expectations explicit. The author provides frameworks and tools that can be used to support collaboration journeys across different sectors and organizations. She also offers clarity to the reader for their innovation journey and brings a new perspective on how to innovate and understand innovation.

Jara Pascual focuses on the importance of managing emotions and feelings of frustration which can be very common during a collaborative innovation process. She explores the interaction between Emotional Intelligence and business and shows how to remove and manage frustration and how to produce a positive outcome.

Innovation and Collaboration in the Digital Era will empower the reader to take action and show how to change your conversation about innovation and collaboration.

“Jara Pascual, with colleague Celia Avila-Rauch, has been able to distill and apply the ability model of emotional intelligence to the art and science of innovation and innovation leadership. In our work we note that feelings are not always facts but that emotions as a form of data. More than that, emotions can assist or facilitate with decision making, creativity and innovation rather than getting in the way, but only if leaders are “smart” about emotions and develop and deploy their emotional intelligence skills.” Dr David R Caruso, Emotional Intelligence Skills Group, Founder Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, Research Affiliate

• Introduces a new and original concept for decentralized innovation
• Provides insight into the world of collaboration and innovation management
• Emphasizes the importance of the role played by emotional intelligence in successful business collaboration

About the Author

Jara Pascual, MBA and Master of Telecommunication Engineering, is founder and CEO of Collabwith, as well an author and an entrepreneur focused on innovation. Collabwith is an online platform bringing people together and encouraging collaborations online and offline. As a board member of the forum Knowledge4Innovation, her voice is heard regularly at the European Parliament discussing the topics of female investment, digitalization, “from lab to market” and academia/ industry collaboration. She is also the host of the innovation podcast “Business of Collaboration”. She writes about innovation and collaboration management for different online magazines, is a telecommunications engineer and has worked for 15 years in innovation management on transformational innovation culture and projects for a number of Fortune 500 Companies and R&D labs.