Innovative Organizational Culture

12 Key excerpts on "Innovative Organizational Culture"

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  Re-inventing Drug Development

  • Jeffrey S. Handen(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  Organizational culture refers to values, beliefs, and assumptions held by the members of an organization and which facilitate shared meaning and guide behavior at varying levels of awareness (Denison, 1996). Research shows that inno-vative organizations often have a culture of entrepreneurship, openness, learning, risk taking, informality, and adaptability (Knox, 2002). Also, they reward innovation, have a shared strategic mission and vision, encourage trust relationships between managers and employees, and are customer oriented (Brentani and Kleinschmidt, 2004; Martins and Martins, 2002). In a study of 759 public firms from 17 countries, Tellis, Prabhu, and Chandy (2007) revealed corporate culture—not government policy, labor, or capital—was the strongest driver of innovation across nations. In par-ticular, organizations’ cultural characteristics of a willingness to canni-balize resources (i.e., reduce the value of its own prior investments), future orientation, and tolerance for risk as well as practices of using product champions, innovation incentives, and internal markets (i.e., the level of internal autonomy and competition) were positively associated with radical innovation. Furthermore, a recent meta-analysis by Büschgens and colleagues (2013) shows that flexible and externally oriented cul-tures were associated with an organizational focus on innovation, while 94 Lindsey Kotrba, Ia Ko, and Daniel R. Denison a hierarchical culture emphasizing control and internal orientation was negatively linked to innovation. In terms of the link between organizational culture and innovation outcomes among pharmaceutical companies, empirical research is scarce but a few studies provide interesting findings. Dorabjee, Lumley, and Cartwright (1998) conducted a survey study in five pharmaceutical compa-nies in the United Kingdom with the intent to identify the overall cultural characteristics of the pharmaceutical industry.

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  Innovation

  A Systems Approach

  • Adedeji B. Badiru(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  BusinessWeek , 2007), is considered a premiere leader in the development of the breakthrough spirit. With the recent emphasis being placed on innovation throughout the business world, it is not surprising that hundreds of articles and publications have been written on the characteristics of an innovative culture. Several common threads appear within the leading studies that help define the key characteristics: strong customer focus, collaboration, effective processes, creative people, inspiring leadership, risk-taking, and motivation/reward systems.

  • The right organizational structures
  • The right processes
  • The right people
  • Inspired leadership
  • Orchestration from the top
  • Collegial culture with individual rewards
  • Consistent business and technology integration
  • Customer focus
  • Teamwork and collaboration with others
  • Appropriate resources
  • Organizational communication
  • Ability to select the right ideas for research
  • Ability to identify creative people.

  Strong Customer Focus

  The research suggests that organizations who place their existing and future customers at the forefront tend to be more innovative. Strong customer focus does not just mean delivering what customers ask for but rather “capturing their ideas or actually allowing them to innovate on their own behalf” (American Management Association, 2006). According to Kelley and Littman (2001), co-founder of IDEO, true understanding comes not by talking to customers but by watching them and becoming immersed in their environment. As a result of this strong customer focus, organizations are in a better position to implement disruptive product and process innovations that transform the marketplace and decimate the competition. Demonstrating this point, Christensen and Raynor (2003) reviewed the extensive market analysis conducted by a quick-service restaurant chain with regard to milkshake sales. The group examined not just what the customers wanted, but why they wanted it, when they wanted it, who they were with, and what they would be doing if they were not there buying a milkshake. They essentially focused on the job the customer was trying to get done.

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  Best Practice

  • Mohamed Zairi, Richard Duggan(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Closely allied to the concept of climate is culture. Organizational culture refers to deeply held beliefs and values. In one sense, therefore, culture is a reflection of climate, but operates at a deeper level. Where climate is observable in the practices and policies of the organization, the beliefs and values of culture are not, but exist as cognitive schema that govern behaviour and actions to given environmental stimuli. To illustrate the interlinkage, 3M has adopted the practice of setting aside a certain amount of time for employees to do creative work on their own initiative. To support this, specific seed funding is provided, and the individuals are encouraged to share and involve and become involved each other's projects. This environment of support (climate) makes individuals believe that senior management values innovation (culture). Culture thus appears to stem from the interpretations that employees give to their experience of organizational reality (why things are the way they are and the how and why of organizational priorities).

  If the notion of innovation culture is to be useful, it is important to be clear what we mean by the term. Failure to specify it clearly leads to confusion and misunderstanding. The question ‘What is innovation culture?’ is pertinent, yet complex, partly because of the way the concept has evolved and partly because of the inherent complexity within the concept itself. It is perhaps important to remember that the concept of corporate culture has developed from anthropological attempts to understand whole societies. The term came to be used to describe other social groupings, ranging from nations down to corporations and departments and even teams within businesses.

  There are many definitions of culture but most describe it as the pattern of arrangement or behaviour adopted by a group (society, corporation or team) as the accepted way of solving problems. As such, culture includes all the institutionalized ways and the implicit beliefs, norms, values and premises that underline and govern behaviour.

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  Exploring Management

  • John R. Schermerhorn, Jr., Daniel G. Bachrach(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Learning Objective 9.1 Explain the Nature of Organizational Culture 169 170 CHAPTER 9 Organizational Cultures, Innovation, and Change Learning Objective 9.2 Discuss How Organizations Support and Achieve Innovation. Things to Remember • Organizations pursue process, product, and business model innovations. • Green innovations advance sustainability goals. • Social innovations seek solutions to important societal problems. • Commercializing innovation turns new ideas into salable products. • Disruptive innovation uses new technologies to displace existing practices. • Innovative organizations share many common characteristics. The iPad, Kindle, Post-it Note, Super Soaker Water Gun, ATM, streaming movie and video game rentals, overnight package delivery, and more. Name your favorites! These examples are all brought to us through innovation, the process of developing new ideas and putting them into practice. 18 The late management consultant Peter Drucker called innovation “an effort to create purposeful, focused change in an enterprise’s economic or social potential.” 19 Today’s organizations and entrepreneurs thrive on cultures of innovation. Organizations Pursue Process, Product, and Business Model Innovations. Innovation takes different forms. Process innovations create better ways of doing things. Product innovations create new or improved goods and services. Business model innova- tions create new ways of making money. 20 Consider these examples: • Process innovation—Southwest Airlines streamlines operations to fit its low-cost business strategy; IKEA sells furniture and fixtures in assemble-it-yourself kits; Amazon’s “one-click” option makes online shopping easy; Nike lets customers design their own sneakers.

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  Building an Innovation Powerhouse

  Maximising People Potential to Grow Your Business

  • Andy Wynn, Jim Hick(Authors)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  But culture is also a living thing, just like the people that create it, it develops, it grows and it evolves as new employees start, or people leave, as new strategies are announced, new organisational structures are rolled out and new projects and initiatives are started. All of these things change the nature of the people that form the culture and change the context within which the culture exists. And in just the same way that the development of a person can be shaped, influenced and directed by training, role modelling and suggestion, whether positively or negatively, so a company’s culture can be developed and directed, by reorganising reporting structures, terms and conditions of employment, incentives, and a thousand other things. Yet without a clear sense of where you are as a business and where you want to be, and without a plan of action to guide culture in the direction that will contribute positively to the future, all your actions as management will only serve to push and pull the culture in different directions, however well-meaning the decisions you make and act upon, leading to ambiguity and confusion for many employees in your business.

  So given this context of what culture means in terms of business, an innovation culture therefore describes the specific facet of the overall culture that is focused on promoting innovation within a company. Though I refer you back to the importance of first defining what innovation means to your business to avoid ambiguity and misinterpretation. If you have taken note of the previous two books in this series, then you should appreciate that for a business to grow through innovation, it needs an end-to-end innovation process in place that involves all departments, and an organisation that brings all functions into play to deliver on the processes, and therefore the innovation culture should truly span right across the organisation in a way that shapes and influences all those attitudes, behaviours and ways of working together that are woven into the culture, such that all employees want to contribute positively. This is critical for success because whilst the innovation processes give people the tools and the organisation sets the right environment it is the culture that makes people want to take part and deliver.

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  A New Theory of Organizational Ecology, and its Implications for Educational Leadership

  • Christopher M. Branson, Maureen Marra(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  Moreover, such a culture produces a steady flow of curiosity, creativity, and innovation, which reenergizes the employees and 112 A New Theory of Organizational Ecology the organization, and further strengthens trust. Within this chapter, literature from the fields of psychology, neuroscience, sociology, complexity theory, and business science are used to more clearly define and describe these essential organizational forces of curiosity, creativity, innovation, and divergent thinking, along with explanations for how these are best nurtured. More specifically, this chapter first discusses organizations as quasi-dynamic systems that, like it or not, are constantly adapting to change. The chapter then illustrates how organizational change more readily develops from innovations that arise out of a creative idea and leads to a new and better way of doing things. Hence, the chapter proceeds to explore the nature of creativity and how it can be promoted and supported. Discussion then ensues with respect to the current acknowledged importance of creativity and innovation in both corporate and educational organizations. Here, it is acknowledged how the full benefits of creativity and innovation can only be realized within an authentically connected and relational culture as promoted in our ecosystem understanding of organizations. The chapter then describes the implications for leadership practice of this knowledge about how successful organizational change is explicitly dependent on the encouragement, support, and promotion of employee creativity and innovation. Some practical examples pertaining to this understanding, as gained from our research and consultative activities, conclude this chapter. Organizational Life in a Changing World For the most part, we accept that life does not stand still, that nothing stays the same.

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  Contemporary Issues with Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Social Science

  • Yusuf KADERLI, Engin ÇAKIR(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Peter Lang Group

    (Publisher)

  As a result of the research, it was determined that the innovation culture positively affected the entrepreneurship and innovation ability within the organization. In addi- tion, it has been observed that innovation culture has a partial mediating role in the impact of intra-organizational entrepreneurship on innovation capability. Keywords: Organizational Entrepreneurship, Innovation Culture, Innovation Capability 1 Introduction In today’s world, businesses can survive and do not disappear, depending on the understanding of competition, creating a competitive advantage. Innovation can generally be thought of as new ideas, new ways of looking at things, new methods or products with value. In today’s business world, companies must constantly innovate in order to compete and survive in the long term. Most practitioners and scientists argue 150 Kezban Talak that the ability of any business to continuously apply innovation is linked to the individual innovation of employees. Employees can apply innovation either as part of their job descriptions or by expressing voluntary innovative work behaviors. This can be explained by the existence of innovation culture. Radical innovations occurring around the world shape major changes in the world, while increasing innovations continually feed economic change. Innovation is one of the few business concepts that can be appreciated by everyone: it is seen as a contributing factor to strengthen an industry’s com- petitiveness, meet customer expectations, create quality jobs, and motivate employees. In the global age we are in, commercial environments have become a single market, which forces businesses to constantly change and follow innovation. Otherwise, it is not possible for enterprises to continue their continuity or com- petition race and gain a competitive advantage. Businesses need to have an innovation culture in order to meet these needs and to innovate.

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  Impact of Globalization on Organizational Culture, Behaviour and Gender Role

  • Mirjana Radovic-Markovic(Author)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Information Age Publishing

    (Publisher)

  Namely, given that culture results from experience, stories, myths and models of behavior that may be a few decades to a few centuries old, culture tells people what is good and what is not. Hence, the most appropriate definition can be that entrepreneurial organizational culture is a model of basic assumptions a group of people accepted since they are proven to be effective in solving the problems of external adaptation and internal integration, and therefore teaches the newly employed in the company that it is a correct way of think-ing, feeling and perception in relation to the above problems . A similar definition is proposed by the scientist Watson (1994), who claims that “entrepreneurial culture can be understood as a human creation that helps people avoid mis-takes that can easily make. It is based on experience, principles, norms and values that are adopted over the years of the company’s existence.” This is further explained and elaborated by Lynch (1997) who defines organizational 6 IMPACT OF GLOBALIZATION ON ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE culture as set of beliefs, values and a learned manner of management, which is reflected in the structure, system and approach to the development of the corporate strategy. Culture is based on the past and the present in the work of the company, on the existing technology and natural resources as well as on the objectives of all the employees in the firm. During the life cycle of an enterprise, the organization has an important role and influence upon the employees, the company and the society within which the company operates. The older the organization is the more com-plex it becomes. Hence, it is not always easy to establish an organizational culture which does not occur spontaneously. It is developed gradually, mostly by the founders of the company and a small group of people.

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  Effective and Creative Leadership in Diverse Workforces

  Improving Organizational Performance and Culture in the Workplace

  • Bethany K. Mickahail, Carlos Tasso Eira de Aquino, Bethany K. Mickahail, Carlos Tasso Eira de Aquino(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  2017 ).

  Companies and individuals, understandably, have different plausible conceptions of how to develop an innovative culture . For example, in September 2017, a division Vice President and Chief Technologist at Corning R&D Corporation offered insights about creating an innovation culture , gained from many years of experience at various corporations. He discussed six ideas for developing an innovation culture: (1) “practice innovation parenting,” with creative organizational members, following a philosophy of laying out key organizational priorities and objectives, but providing flexibility to operate efficiently within those parameters as they see necessary, (2) “bust hierarchy,” to depart from traditional communication or staff interaction hierarchies and bureaucracies, (3) “encourage the unreasonable,” (4) “don’t die of indigestion” encouraging creative people or personnel to engage in innovation processes pursuing those projects within their capabilities to manage, (5) “cultivate external relationships” as they would expand the organizational knowledge, and (6) “hire the best and fast,” by aggressively “identifying, recruiting , and retaining” personnel essential to generate creative ideas and innovation (Ishak, 2017 , pp. 125–127).

  An innovative culture may also be developed through preplanned strategies such as five suggested by Wunker and Farber (2015 ) in the popular Forbes Magazine. Strategies suggested included: (1) understanding the type of innovation to pursue (“profit models, product, process, policies”), (2) precluding obstacles generated by the traditional hierarchies, (3) redefining traditional metrics and organizational rewards as they may not be suitable, (4) providing organizational members resources needed to present and channel novel ideas, and (5) creating “safe spaces” within the organization where creative ideas are encouraged and protected (Wunker & Farber, 2015

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  Managing Organizations in the Creative Economy

  Organizational Behaviour for the Cultural Sector

  • Paul Saintilan, David Schreiber(Authors)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 13 Organizational culture in creative organizations

  DOI: 10.4324/9781003262923-13

  Apple Inc.

  Apple Inc. is a technological giant with strong links to the creative industries. It has been the technology company of choice for generations of designers and creative professionals and drove the digital transformation of the music industry through the iTunes platform and iPod. It is also a company that is widely seen to possess a strong corporate culture (Isaacson, 2011 ). When a company develops a culture that differentiates it from other companies and is motivational for attracting creative talent, staff and customers, it provides that company with a competitive advantage and a potential increase in its economic value.

  Figure 13.1 Apple Inc. Photo credit: TungCheung/Shutterstock.com .

  Former Apple leader Steve Jobs quickly fired employees who did not meet his high standards, creating an expectation of excellence and little tolerance for under-performance (Isaacson, 2011 ). This is an example of the behaviour of leaders becoming enshrined as a practice throughout an organization. Values that Steve Jobs tried to cultivate at Apple were: excellence, creativity, innovation, design elegance and simplicity, attention to detail, secrecy and confrontation where necessary to uphold excellence (Isaacson, 2011 ; Meyer, 2015 ; Thomke & Feinberg, 2009 ). These values became enshrined within the organization and came to define its culture.

  What is organizational culture?

  One of the most popular and enduring definitions of organizational ‘culture’ is ‘the way we do things around here’ (Bower, 1966 ). The Apple example above shows a particular approach and style of working based on shared assumptions, meaning and values. The management theorist Henry Mintzberg has described culture as ‘the spirit of the human hive’ (Mintzberg, 2013

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  The Routledge Companion to Innovation Management

  • Jin Chen, Alexander Brem, Eric Viardot, Poh Kam Wong, Jin Chen, Alexander Brem, Eric Viardot, Poh Kam Wong(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Most researchers emphasise the importance of the organisational culture and climate for creating innovations. Stimulating innovative activity requires a specific organisational culture. The climate and innovative culture determine the creative possibilities of the organisation, because from them flows the inclination of employees to take innovative endeavours. Organisational culture is defined as a set of created norms developed on the basis of the assumptions, values, and norms of the models of operation, showing employees how to achieve the company’s goals. The basic cultural patterns conducive to innovation are openness to risk, change; willingness to experiment; tolerance of uncertainty; and the use of opportunities, creativity, trust, cooperation, mutual support and error tolerance. What is also important is the autonomy in action, validation, freedom to submit ideas, supporting new ideas, and tolerating discussions on the submitted ideas (Brilman, 2002, p. 172).

  Thus, in enterprises with an innovation culture, employees deal with uncertainty themselves, based on their own knowledge, skills, and experiences, and dynamic networks of cooperative ties are created.

  The innovative climate is focused on the development of employees, including the assessment of their qualifications, skills, and potential. An organisation with such a climate has a flexible organisational structure, where formalism and strict subjection to regulations and organisational procedures are reduced to a minimum. There is a cult of professionalism, risk tolerance, freedom in action, individualism, and permission to take risks and be innovative. Moreover, there is a large tolerance for errors, because it is thanks to them that the organisation can access new solutions. The goals of the organisation are treated by the employees as challenges (Ekvall and Ryhammar, 1999). The role of the management staff is to encourage and stimulate the employees to submit their own ideas for improving the work or products or services offered by the organisation. Non-formal channels of communication and free flow of information between employees and their superiors are also promoted. This is to enable employees to disclose and exploit their creative potential.

  Another factor that may increase the chances of building an efficient innovation team is trust. Trust is defined and interpreted in various ways in the literature. According to a psychological approach, it is a kind of mental state that is related to the willingness to take risks and accepting them. It can also mean being ready to be sensitive to the actions of the other party based on the belief that the other party has done specific actions important to the trusting party, which are independent of the ability to monitor and control. It is also readiness based on the assessment of the other party’s credibility in a situation of interdependence and risk.

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  Exploring Management

  • John R. Schermerhorn, Jr., Daniel G. Bachrach(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Even your college or university is under the disruptive threat posed by the availability of massive open online courses (MOOCs). 30 Taught by professors at top universities and distributed—often for free— MOOCs are challenging the cost and value of traditional on-campus classrooms. Innovative Organizations Share Many Common Characteristics. Do you view Microsoft as a firm whose strategy and culture drive an innovation powerhouse? Or do you see what PC World once described as “a stodgy old corporation churning out boring software”? 31 Microsoft’s CEO certainly wants to the company to fit the former description, not the latter. Truly innovative organizations—from large corporations such as 3M and Amazon to small start-ups—tend to share features such as those shown here. 32 Disruptive innovation creates products or services that become so widely used that they largely replace prior practices and competitors. HIGHLY INNOVATIVE ORGANIZATIONS Strategy includes innovation Culture values innovation Structures support innovation Staffing builds talent for innovation Leadership drives innovation In highly innovative organizations the corporate strategy and culture embrace innovation. The strategies of the organization target innovation and the culture of the organization values an innovation spirit. If you go to the Web site for the design firm IDEO, you’ll find this descrip- tion: “Our values are part mad scientist (curious, experimental), bear-tamer (gutsy, agile), reiki master (hands-on, empathetic), and midnight tax accountant (optimistic, savvy). These qual- ities are reflected in the smallest details to the biggest endeavors, composing the medium in which great ideas are born and flourish.” 33 There’s little doubt that core values at IDEO en- courage innovation and allow new ideas to flourish. In highly innovative organizations, organization structures support innovation.

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