Culture for Breakthrough Innovation

Why are some companies expecting success in breakthrough innovation (this being automatically disrupting market behaviours) without considering the change needed in their employees?

Recently I have undertaken the interesting project of analysing the challenges our members face so we can provide them a better and integral service. Whilst uncovering and mapping the trends, the breakthrough challenges caught my attention.

As expected, due to the level of competitiveness in markets at the moment, there has been an increase in challenges related to 'having success in breakthrough innovation'. Within these challenges a common thread exists: Companies know that having success in this type of innovation is reflected by the processes and measurements the company chooses to use, therefore, they want to know about processes, metrics, etc.. This assumption is fair, but not entirely complete. All of these challenges have a focus on improving their techniques, measurements, ideation, but interestingly they all overlooked one of the most influential factors: company culture.

At the beginning of the year, we attended CoDev 2012 in San Diego, California. Among the positive feedback that came from this event, I was drawn towards the comment "Nobody but Siemens mentioned culture as a key element for delivering Open Innovation..."

Company culture is a terrifying thought for managers to consider changing. Mainly because it means a change in how the company works, elevating risk in long-term success of the business. However, having success in breakthrough innovation is linked to having a 'free-thought, risk-taken, pro smart-failing' culture in the company. It requires much more than just an effective process; there is a reason why the 'out-of-the-box thinking' is still practised.

On a recent ILP event held in London, UK, our expert clearly stated the Innovation Strategy of a company has to be directed by the Corporate Strategy and enabled by the Company Culture. So why not embrace holistically your culture to see how it can improve your projects, or even just start simple with minor incremental changes? Use the tools and techniques that facilitate new ways of thinking whenever possible, celebrate successes and failures. But above all, have good communication processes to make sure every employee understands why this change is important to the future success of the business. The starting point of change is inside an employees mind.