When we think about innovation and creativity, we think about where does it fit within an organization. And so one way to look at this is to think about how corporate culture influences innovation and creativity. So we're going to take a look at corporate culture and how it shows up. So here are some ways that we can see how corporate culture actually shows up in an organization. One is what we call a sense of collective behavior. How well do people work together? How well do they get the job done? Is there a common corporate vision? And that really shows up if people are motivated and identifying with that particular corporate vision and that corporate vision could be a goal of, it could be a non-profit organization's goal to do some very good stuff or it could be an organization that is high profit oriented or it could be an organization that is high technology oriented. All of these things fit into shaping a corporate culture. There's a common set of goals, shared beliefs and shared values and are common working habits and language, there's a jargon that comes with certain organizations, that's part of the corporate culture. Some organizations have a certain kind of jargon, you would imagine that let's say an auto manufacturing organization would have a lot of auto jargon, a lot of car jargon. An aircraft manufacturing company might have aircraft jargon perhaps much more scientific jargon. In any event, those are the kinds of things that show up, but we also know that corporate culture is made up of a lot of individual employees, and from research, we know that there's a lot of diversity in organizations, and that diversity does contribute to the nature of the corporate culture In any organization. So here are the elements of any organization's culture. There are the core beliefs, what is it that people really believe in while they're there, the value system that they have, the fears that they have. What their competitors doing. Are they worried about whether they're going to have a job tomorrow morning. These are fundamental things that affect how people behave in organizations. And then their behavioral norms, the way in which the organization structures the way that people work on a day to day basis. And then there's finally the infrastructure, the physical infrastructure and the organizational infrastructure that guides how people do their work from day to day. All these things are part of an organization's culture. So we can say that there are three types of corporate culture, a bureaucratic culture, an innovative culture and a supportive culture. A bureaucratic culture, probably pretty easy to describe that if all the things that we don't want to see in any entrepreneurial or innovative organization is hierarchical, it's procedural things has be done in a certain way, it's structure is ordered as regulated, it has established a norms and is very cautious. And it's power oriented, power oriented in the sense that it's a top-down directed organization. So on the other hand, in contrast with that, and you can see the innovative organization here is risk taking, it's results orientated, it's creative, it has a certain amount of pressure and stimulation. But it's challenging, it's enterprising. And it drives people to be creative and innovative. A third type of corporate culture is supportive, not a bad thing, but it's not necessarily as results-oriented as the one in the middle, the innovative organization. So it's collaborative, it's good, have working relationships. People are encouraged, they're sociable. It's a nice place to work, and all that is good. And if you can have accommodation of both an innovative organization and a supportive organization, that would be an ideal arrangement for any corporate culture. So what we're going to look at now, is the work of Gurt Austeen and this is a scholar who looked at cultural dimensions of organizations from the perspective of a global look at organizations. Global in the sense that he looked at organizations that were from every part of the globe. And so what he found were a number of half a dozen different types of dimensions of how people operate in cultures. And what he found also was they were connected to where people originated from. And how people were shaped in their own learning, and in their upbringing. And so you could be either individualistic in terms of your corporate culture or you could be collective. Collective means essentially that it's the group that makes the decisions and it's the group that benefits from everything. Individualistic is much more entrepreneurial, much more western a masculine, feminine dimension. Some cultures really place men at a higher form of influence and women at a lower form of influence. This is a fact in cultures out there. Some cultures tend to want to be very very cautious, and very very fearful of any failure. And then there's power distance, which is a way in which some organizations around the globe would tend to operate where the power's at the top, and that influence at the bottom was very, very distant. So you had people running the organization that were at a great distance from the people who actually had to do the work. Then you have kind of a time perspective of how people saw their role in the organization and how they felt about it. And then finally, you had the dimension of indulgence versus restraint. And, people will either tolerate or they wouldn't tolerate what was going on in the organization. And so the reason that I'm sharing this with you, is it's a premise for a way to look at differences in organizations, and it's a way in which. Ultimately, will have an effect on how you see innovation and creativity showing up in an organization because you're going to have diverse organizations. And these are some examples of ways in which diversity does show up. So, in this slide here, what we see here are, each of these bubbles represent A national culture model. And you can see on the lower left hand side. It's kind of a linear approach to how organizations operate. Very straight forward. The USA is down there in the lower left hand side. On the upper right hand side, you see a different type of model. And it progresses from something on a lower right, all the way to the top. So what you see here are different nationalities, different cultures behaving in different ways. And so what we get from this diagram, really is the recognition that, while different organizations in different parts of the world behave in different ways, and they have different cultures in their organizations. You can also consider that people who are coming from these different locations, from the global economy, as we often have now in most organizations, we're going to have a great deal of diversity. We're going to have people who see their organizations operate differently. Who behave differently and who operate differently and have creative Input in a very different way. So, this is just an observation about a corporate culture of Drucker. Basically says, corporate culture is what it is. Don't try and change it but try and work within it and so I think this is kind a bit a recognition that you are going to have a great deal of diversity in your organization and the challenge is to try and. Both recognized it, understand it, and then make it work for you. So would take a quick look at a couple of companies here and their corporate cultures and how they work. Fast company here is a publication that publishes the world's most innovative companies and basically around not only what they do but how they operate. What their corporate culture is and so where we can learn a lot from how publications like this one and others rank companies around their innovative qualities. So here's an example of a very innovative company. IDEO is a small design firm that is really a consultant to many, many major corporations, they're located in Palo Alto, California. And what you see here is, in the narratives that surround each of those bubbles the influence of corporate culture on every aspect that a company like IDEO does, influences their strategy, influences the talent that they find, influences how they operate, influences what they produce, all of these things have an effect. Here's another example. A great example, Google. Google's innovative culture is essentially very very influenced by creativity and innovation, and so ideas are everywhere. This is part of the culture. It's not just, it's a mandate, but if you are an employee at Google you know that everybody is capable of surfacing an idea. There's an emphasis to focus on for instance focus on data, not politics. Organization politics even know of organizational politics certainly does show up in every organization. The emphasis is on, what do we know? What is the evidence? What is the data? What can help us? And they worry about image and users, but not about money, and well, I'm not sure about that. But there's an emphasis on creativity and an emphasis on innovation. And they don't kill projects but they morph them, they nurse them. They see if there's still life in them and so they see value in every idea. And so they try and maybe they don't carry out every idea that is there. But they keep them in kind of an incubator and so they return to them when those ideas become more relevant in the marketplace. So the takeaways here for corporate culture are that an organization's culture really represents its unique personality and functionality. And os being able to see that, having a lens to recognize it is a powerful way to understand it and use it. And we need, now we know that in most organizations in our global economy now, even here in the United States, and certainly everywhere around the world, different ethnic groups and nationalities do influence the nature of corporate culture, and the interactions within it. And so that is something that has to be recognized and has to be accommodated. And leveraged, to make creativity and innovation work. And where you can make an innovative culture work for you, it would foster creativity, flexibility and it can tolerate failure. Those these are all things that will help make an organization much more innovative.
