BUSINESS RESEARCH

Building an Innovation Culture

A strong innovation culture is the driving force behind many of today’s most successful companies. Organisational culture is said to be largely invisible yet extremely powerful. It refers to the values, beliefs and sense of purpose that underpin the norms of expected behaviours that employees might follow.

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March 2015

According to one study of 1,026 executives and managers in the US, Europe, Latin America and Asia, there are six dynamically linked “building blocks” that support an innovation culture:

  1. Values: How leaders behave and what leaders invest in, rather than what they say or write in the annual report, e.g. the values of entrepreneurship, creativity and learning
  2. Behaviours: The actions leaders and employees take to fight for the cause of innovation such as tenacity to overcome obstacles and “scrounging” resources when budgets are tight, e.g. behaviours that energise, engage and enable
  3. Climate: An atmosphere that encourages engagement and enthusiasm, facilitates risk taking within a safe environment, promotes learning and brings about independent thinking, e.g. climate of safety, simplicity and collaboration
  4. Resources: People, systems and resources to encourage innovation – with people being the most critical because of their effect on innovation climate and values
  5. Processes: The path that innovations follow as they are developed – for example, the “innovation funnel” or stage-gate systems for reviewing and prioritising projects and prototyping, e.g. processes based on ideation, shaping and capturing
  6. Success: The extent to which an organisation values success and strives for the highest standards of performance. Success exists at three levels: (a) External, i.e. manifested in customer and competitor recognition (b) enterprise, and (c) individual

Sources: Rao, J. and Weintraub, J. (2013) How Innovative Is Your Company’s Culture?, SMR, Spring; Hogan, S. and Coote, L. (2014) Organizational Culture, Innovation, and Performance: A Test of Schein’s Model, Journal of Business Research, 67, 1609-1621.

Referenced techniques

Technique

Corporate/Organisational Culture

This concept explores how organisations build up their own culture through tradition, history and structure. It also suggests that culture provides organisations with a sense of identity.

Technique

Innovation Management

The concept determines the critical factors of innovation management. It reviews the managerial practices of successful innovators and summarises the strengths and limitations of innovative approaches.

Technique

Transformational Leadership

The concept outlines core ‘constants’ that can be used to develop effective leadership within the organisation and describes the principles that underpin transformational leadership. The concept will give you an understanding of how to adopt this approach in any organisational setting.

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