I had a very interesting talk today with Jan Hein Nielsen around the issue of creating innovative organisations. To Jan innovation is not about applying creative tools once in a while to come up with a new idea. It is about leveraging the potential in the organisation to create an innovative culture where innovation is not something you do once in a while or something somebody does in a special department, but a mindset and a way of every day living where everybody has his or her eyes open for opportunities for improvement or new ideas.
Some of the key factors in this kind of culture are the leaders being able to let go of control and act in the field between chaos and order, and the employees being inspired and confident to be reflective, take action and to a larger extent work together using their collective ressources instead of being isolated in departments or career tracks.
Taking this thought a bit further I can’t help thinking how to reach the level of an innovative national culture in Denmark - or the World, to be a bit more openminded… If we are to build truly innovative societies where the potential of the individual interplays with the synergetic potential of the collective and is supported by the system… then…just imagine…
Do any of you have experiences of being part of well functioning innovative systems or cultures? Or do you have experiences on how not to do in organisations or other groups? What are the key elements of innovative cultures or innovative systems? And how do we get to there from here?
4 comments so far
Hi Louise
I agree very much with you when saying that innovation culture is much about management style.
As I see it it’s a question about Management versus Leadership. A few months ago I had a post about the difference in styles – you can find it here - http://connecta.typepad.com/publicmind/2005/02/dont_tell_show_.html
I can recommend some additional reading - Ralph Stacey has done a tremendous work I writing very good stuff about complexity and creativity – take a look - http://www.google.dk/search?q=ralph+stacey&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:da-DK:official
Hi,
Having work for a year at Salomon, the ski and outdoor comapgny, I came to the conclusion that a lot of the ability to innovate they display was grounded into the culture of the company and the people who work there.
That was an interesting thing to observe the kind of socialization process at play, from the recruitement to the progressive immersion into the company’s social codes and practices, the narrative around its history of innovation and so on.
One of the definite advantage of this kind of industry is passion that ensures higher commitment from the employees. As a consequence they all participate in the innovation process and because everybody is also a sport enthusiasts they often think more as users than marketers or designers! A symbol of that was that I hardly ever heard people talking about clients or consumers but mainly of “practinioners”, people they associate themselves with.
As a consequence, the difference between the company and the outsiders was blurred because everyone have the same interest in improving the products to meet and ski together on WE… where they keep talking product development, design and emerging practices!
Therefore being in the right spot, Annecy in the Alps, was an asset because of the interaction with top skiers from all over the world in Chamonix and with other companies in the same industries. Everyone inspires everyone in a full-sized live laboratory.
Hi Jacques-Julien and Hans Henrik
Thanx for your comments!
Jacques-Julien, it is very interesting to hear your perspective on innovative culture - especially because as I see it, the innovative culture you talk about has fully incorporated the aspect of user driven or practitioner driven innovation.
And HH, thanx for linking me - I’ll check it out :o).
Hi Louise,
Actually, I question the idea that this culture as integrated the user has a driver of innovation stricto sensu. I mean, it IS happening for sure but I wonder to which extent the corporate culture has consciously incorporated the need for that. I tend to think that it is more the result, not necessarily sought after -at least originally- of the company being immersed into the ski-related culture through people who work at Salomon.
It goes back to some kind of social capital or embeddedness more than organizational capabilities as such, I would argue.
Of course, the company policy is to capitalize on that and transform this positive mindset into interesting innovation.
The problem is whether you can adapt that to other, not so sexy industries…
I wrote a synopsis on the Salomon case, let me know if you wish to read it.