MIT Sloan Management Review – March 2013
Many executives want their companies to be more innovative. A new assessment tool can help pinpoint your company’s innovation strengths and weaknesses.
Today’s executives want their companies to be more innovative. They consume stacks of books and articles and attend conventions and courses on innovation, hoping to discover the elixir of success. They are impressed by the ability of comparatively young companies such as Google and Facebook to create and market breakthrough products and services. And they marvel at how some older companies — Apple, IBM, Procter & Gamble, 3M and General Electric, to name a few — reinvent themselves again and again. And they wonder, “How do these great companies do it?”
After studying innovation among 759 companies based in 17 major markets, researchers Gerard J. Tellis, Jaideep C. Prabhu and Rajesh K. Chandy found that corporate culture was a much more important driver of radical innovation than labor, capital, government or national culture. But for executives, that conclusion raises two more questions:
First, what is an innovative corporate culture? And second, if you don’t have an innovative culture, is there any way you can build one? This article addresses both questions by offering a simple model of the key elements of an innovative culture, as well as a practical 360-degree assessment tool that managers can use to assess how conducive their organization’s culture is to innovation — and to see specific areas where their culture might be more encouraging to it.
Six Building Blocks of an Innovative Culture
An innovative culture rests on a foundation of six building blocks: resources, processes, values, behavior, climate and success. (See “The Six Building Blocks of an Innovative Culture.”) These building blocks are dynamically linked. For example, the values of the enterprise have an impact on people’s behaviors, on the climate of the workplace and on how success is defined and measured. Our culture of innovation model builds upon dozens of studies by numerous authors. (See “About the Research.”)
To see full article please visit:
http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/how-innovative-is-your-companys-culture/
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