The goal of sustainable development in organizations, societies and nations are to enhance the quality and standard of living of the citizenry. However, in the absence of strategic and adaptive leadership, achieving innovation and sustainable development may be difficult if not impossible. This study examined how strategic and adaptive leadership help to foster business innovation and sustainable development in corporate Nigeria ambience, in the information age of the 21st century. To achieve these objectives, articles from indexed journals with high impact factors related to strategic and adaptive leadership, business innovation and sustainable development were reviewed. Findings from the literature reviewed and that of focus discussion group of senior executives of corporate organizations confirmed the importance of strategic/adaptive leadership in fostering business innovations and sustainable development of corporate organizations. Dearth of strategic/ adaptive leadership skills in managing change and innovation are also reported as major challenges militating against innovation and sustainable development in corporate Nigeria. This paper, therefore, recommend that captains of industries in Nigeria should adopt a more pragmatic strategic leadership practices in mainstreaming innovation: continually finding important corporate problems, solving those problems and implementing the solutions; and a determination to building global leadership competencies and budgeting of more fund for research and development, that we lead to the development of new products and service that will improve the standard of living of the citizenry.
