In today's world, national leaders have immense power to make decisions affecting millions of lives, both domestically and internationally. Yet questions about the performance of these leaders, and specifically what psychological or external factors determine whether they will be innovative and effective or will muddle through, have received surprisingly little attention. An introductory section presents main themes in the study of innovative leadership and in addition reviews the existing, inadequate state of our knowledge. The two subsequent sections further explore the basic questions through case studies of leaders in democratic systems and in transitional or authoritarian systems. By looking at the individual records of such major twentieth-century leaders as De Gaulle, Adenauer, Gandhi, Gorbachev, Sadat, and several American presidents, the authors contribute fresh insights about the particular leaders, consider how the type of system in which they functioned enhanced or constrained their innovativeness, and shed light on the broader questions of what factors encourage or inhibit successful innovation in the international sphere.