In the current landscape of the entrepreneurial renaissance 2.0, there are a lot of new ideas floating around. Some of them turn into long-standing, game changing products and services, while others get bought up, die out or stagnate. Strong leadership can make the game changing difference, when it comes to the longevity and success of a project.

New leadership isn’t simply about business prowess and financing, a lot of today’s successes come from innovation. It’s a progressive, active approach that’s guiding today’s most celebrated companies and helping turn them into household names. However, what makes an innovative leader and what do they need in order to succeed? Here are four traits that can set them apart:

Actively Make Observations

Building a company up and then folding into the status quo doesn’t exactly make for innovative practices. Innovative leaders take a keen interest in what’s going on in their company, their market, their consumer base and the general public. They’re seeing who else is adapting new ideas to other disciplines and reapplying their findings to how they lead and how their companies operate.

Innovative leaders watch how people react to products and services, pay attention to what they like and what they don’t like and try and discover what they need that they aren’t getting. This isn’t a process solely used in launching a company or product but an ongoing one that occurs regularly. Observation is where innovation starts and it’s the groundwork for how to allow it to continue.

Networking Against the Norm

It may sound a tad passé but networking can the innovative leader’s best friend. While many of your peers are out there looking for the next big fish client, the innovative leader is seeing what other industry professionals are working on, how they’re launching new projects and looking for ways to collaborate. They’re also meeting people with similar visions, passions or motivations that can become key partners, employees or otherwise. While traditional business networking is still alive and well, it’s important for the innovative leader to take a newer approach based on observation, collaboration and insight.

Dedication to the Project

In the end, dedication is what helps bring an innovative idea to life. Without it, the best-laid plans won’t come to fruition in any meaningful way. A successful innovative leader has a drive and determination to see their vision come to fruition, despite obstacles along the way. This kind of passion keeps people involved for the long term, instead of quickly burning out.

Another important factor in dedication is the drive to innovate again. A new approach can be enough to get a service out into the public light but it can’t stay there forever, without furthering those novel ideas. An innovative leader with strong loyalty to the project constantly looks to create the next project or allow the current one to grow, instead of looking at their work as finite.

If You Fall Down, Record It

It’s one thing to pick yourself up and dust yourself off; it’s another thing to carefully assess what happened and use that data to update your work or launch in a whole new direction. The dedication of the innovative leader will keep them from scrapping the project and starting over, while that habit of making and applying observations will turn those missteps into important changes. Recognizing errors, detailing them and then applying the findings is a huge step in the innovative leader’s approach.