Innovation Culture

Today's seminar really got me thinking and has driven me to publish another blog! 

The culture of a business in many aspects can be seen as the heart the way in which people go about their day to day activities and the rules/ guidelines in which they follow to complete these!

McLean and Marshall (1993) define culture to be the collection of traditions, values, policies, beliefs and attitudes that constitute a pervasive context for everything we do and think in an organisation. Which I feel is a really strong definition covering a lot of areas!

So looking at this it is simple to say that culture can really be defined for a company as the way we do things here. It can take so many terms as the way in which people do things too if looking more at employees.  This definition really does just sum the whole culture up as when comparing with the McLean and Marshall's definition each one of their points fits into this perfectly!

When looking at culture there are 4 well renowned types! Hardy (1985) researched into culture and wrote these 4 types of organisational culture.

    1)  Power Culture

                                                              i.      Occurs in small organisations

                                                            ii.      One major source of power

                                                          iii.      Decisions taken by key individuals

                                                           iv.      Success depends on the decision maker

                                                             v.      There are few rules and procedures

    2)  Role Culture

                                                              i.      The strength lies in its functions and specialities ( finance, purchasing, production and so forth)

                                                            ii.      Co-ordinated and controlled by a small group of senior executives

                                                          iii.      Job role more important than individual

                                                           iv.      Structure, procedures and rules determine what is done and how decisions are made.

                                                             v.      Civil Service, retail banking, oil industry

    3) Task Culture

                                                              i.      Teams operate together to achieve particular tasks

                                                            ii.      Teams exists until task is completed then members assigned to other teams

                                                          iii.      Key decision making body is the team

                                                           iv.      Heavily reliant on people involved

                                                             v.      Found in rapidly changing organisations

    4)  Person Culture

                                                              i.      Group of people decide that it is in the their own best interests to organise a collective

                                                            ii.      Individuals decide on their own work allocation

                                                          iii.      E.g. sharing the costs of office space, equipment and secretarial assistance.

                                                           iv.      Barristers, lawyers, doctors

                                                             v.      Organisation exists to satisfy members.

So you ask how does culture  relate to innovation?

Well its simple because. Culture needs leadership, especially culture change. To have a strong leader with the workforce on his side the business is able to do anything successfully. Culture needs a leader who is able to put his ideas to his workers and have them follow it with no complaints even when they are new ideas and new forms of working culture! Mullins (2010), defines leadership to be the relationship through which one person influences the behaviour or actions of other people. And this is exactly the key to success, if that leader can influence people getting them on his side anything can work.

I watched a video last year in Organisation Behaviour on a day in the life of Richard Branson. It was amazing to see that when he went into his office he knew the whole of his work force. He was able to speak to them all individually making jokes and knowing there names. The effect of this was obvious with the workforce smiling widely and looking happy to be there at work and when interviewed after they all expressed how they love to work for him, even though they aren't actually paid much! Now that shows leadership. Richard Branson is such a charismatic individual with always a smile of his face and a very eccentric personality and it really does rub off on his workforce. This could be why his innovations over the years have been so successful? As he has always had the backing of his workers who are willing to do bend over backwards to ensure his venture/innovation is a success!

There are many reports on Steve Jobs leadership style at Apple. Apple is the most innovative company in the world however when reading an article in the Sydney morning herald the author Sarah McInerney said that Steve Jobs was an unconventional leader he wasn't known for his consultative or consensus building approach. He was a "high-maintenance co-worker" who demanded excellence from his staff and was known for his blunt delivery of criticism. (Sydney Morning Herald,  2011). However I found another which I found to be very fascinating! Dr. James Canton worked at Apple headquarters in Silicon Valley in 1984 and was part of the team that launched the Macintosh computer. He spoke about Jobs's leadership style to be more innovative than anything he had seen and that which broke so many rules of leadership. Dr. James Canton said that "Steve first evangelized the Mac to us, the employees well before he sold the world. You have to sell the Big Vision first to your employees. If they don’t get it then customer will never. This seems obvious but too many leaders today have the right financial chops or seniority or even board support but don’t embody this lesson. Steve invented it.

Days before the Mac launch we sent around pictures of a Swiss Army knife, challenging ourselves that Mac was something else, not just a computer but a lifestyle appliance. Steve challenged us to think about the Mac as more then just a technology–it was a innovation in culture, lifestyle and learning." Jobs was making his workforce feel special, they knew that no body else knew about this and it was very clever of jobs as by getting his workforce on side allowed that product and Apple to become the great success of what is is today! He also went on to say how "Steve would remind us all that you have to enjoy the journey. Or don’t do it. He challenged us all to make a commitment to ourselves to do something big, important and meaningful. These lessons are as true today as in 1984." Steve Jobs had a very special culture at Apple, one that will never change.  

Overall, a culture of a business is all down to the innovative leaders that lead it. Having a innovative leader who gets that backing of the workers really is a massive bonus for any business and certainly in the two examples on Virgin and Apple it is apparent how well they have done through the innovative culture in which they lead. Steve Jobs's innovative leadership did surprise me he seemed the type to encourage his workers so charismatic like Richard Branson but I guess a man who has come up with so many fantastic ideas do people worry about what he is like as person? As a leader of course because you need a good organisational culture but somehow with his passion he has able to forward that on to his workers and now look where they are today. Top of the tree, most innovative company in the world. 

If you are interested, here is a list of the top 50 innovative companies in which all will have an innovative leader who will put forward his/her own innovative culture! Enjoy.

http://www.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/innovative_companies_2010.html

Hope you enjoyed reading this, I found it all very interesting anyway! Speak soon! 

Reference list

McLean A and Marshall J (1993), Intervening in cultures, working paper, University of Bath, England.

Hardy C.B. (1993), Understanding Organisations, fourth edition, London, England: Penguin

Mullins L.J (2010), Management and Organisational Behaviour, Ninth Edition, Essex, England: Pearson Education Limited. 

Sarah McInerney (2011), Sydney Morning Herald, [Online], Available from: http://www.smh.com.au/executive-style/management/steve-jobs-an-unconventional-leader-20111007-1lcmo.html#ixzz1jvvXN6B0 Date accessed: 19/1/2012

Canton J, (2011), Steve Jobs's Innovation Leadership at Apple: My Lessons Learned, Blog, [Online], Availiable from:http://www.globalfuturist.com/blog/2011/08/25/steve-jobss-innovation-leadership-at-apple-my-lessons-learned/ Date accessed:19/1/12

Richard Branson

Found this this when browsing Richard Branson which made me laugh and in my opinion summed up a lot about innovators and about him! I was reading an interview on the website "smarta" ( I will post the link at the end) and one question stood out for me.

8. Favourite song?
In which Richard replied with, That has to be My Way.

Such a ironic answer due to how Richard Branson has gone about his business in the whole of his life! Everything he has done has been in his own way, for example the hot air balloon, looking to go into space being his publicity stunts and all of his business innovation ventures have all been done in his own way!

Here is that song below:

And here is the interview! It's a really good interview and makes a very interesting read! Enjoy!
http://www.smarta.com/blog/2010/11/richard-branson-on-being-ticklish-negative-people-and-the-secret-to-his-success

Innovators quotes

Here are some fantastic quotes by some of the biggest businesses in the world on the subject of innovation! Have a read through they are very aspiring!

We are always saying to our self.. we have to innovate.  We’ve got to come up with that breakthrough. (Bill Gates, Microsoft)

Microsoft – takes the view that it is always two years away from extinction!

Only the paranoid survive! ( Andy Groves, Intel)

Innovation is the successful exploitation of new ideas. ( Innovation Unit, UK Department of Trade and Industry, 2004)

“Innovation is the specific tool of entrepreneurs, the means by which they exploit change as an opportunity for a different business or service. It is capable of being presented as a discipline, capable of being practised.”(Peter Drucker, 1985, Innovation and Entrepreneurship)

“An innovative business is one which lives and breathes ‘outside the box’. It is not just good ideas, it is a combination of good ideas, motivated staff and an instinctive understand of what your customer wants.” ( Richard Branson – DTI Innovation lecture – 1998)

“If you can dream it, you can do it.” – Walt Disney

You can’t solve a problem on the same level that it was created. You have to rise above it to the next level.” –Albert Einstein

 “The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow” (Rupert Murdoch).

References: 

 Drucker.P, (1985), Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Harper & Row, New York

The seed of apples innovation (2004) , [Online] Available from: http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct2004/nf20041012_4018_db083.htm Date accessed: 18/1/2012

Van Wulfen G (2011), Innovation management, , [Online ]Available from: http://www.innovationmanagement.se/2011/08/16/25-inspiring-innovation-quotes/ Date Accessed: 18/1/2012

Ditkoff M, (2010), Innovation excellence, , [Online] Available from http://www.innovationexcellence.com/blog/2010/05/31/100-awesome-quotes-on-what-it-takes-to-innovate/, Date Accessed: 18/1/2012

Quotations book, , [Online] Available from http://quotationsbook.com/  Date Accessed: 18/1/2012

Voices reloaded, , [Online]Available from http://www.hpb.gov.sg/staff/voices/0805/innovation.htm Date Accessed: 18/1/2012

What can we change in innovation

Understanding the what – What can be changed in innovation.

Innovation can take many forms but it can be reduced to four dimensions of change ( the 4Ps of innovation)

Product innovation – changes in what the organisation offers ( products or services) 

e.g. design of a car

Process innovation – changes in the way things are created and delivered.

e.g. manufacturing methods  for that car.

Position innovation – changes in the context in which products/services are introduced 

e.g. Lucozade.  Originally developed as glucose based drink to help children and invalids in convalescence. These associations with sickness were abandoned by the brand owners Beechams (now part of Glaxo Smith Kline, the relaunched the product as a health drink aimed at the growing fitness marker where it is now presented as a performance – enhancing aid to healthy exercise.

Paradigm innovation – changes in the underlying mental models which frame what the organisation does.  Can be triggered by new technologies, the emergence of new markets with different value expectations , new legal rules of the game, and new environmental conditions. e.g. shift to low cost airlines, provision of online insurance and other financial services, and the repositioning of drinks like coffee and fruit juice as premium ‘designer’ products. 

Below is a model showing the changes

Isaksen S and Tidd J  (2006) Page 56

When is it time for change?

The innovation life cycle/ diffusion curve



 A product will always as a rule have its growth in sales then a decline! However, don't take this decline as the end! See this as an opportunity to innovate!

The Inovation life cycle allows us to see what stage a product is at and where innovation should take place after it's decline! As you can see when the product reaches the decline stage, innovation takes place! The innovation allows for the product to keep running, to keep fresh in peoples minds all of the time and never run out! The process will then repeat itself until the product reaches its end then the innovators will focus on something new!

I hope this gives you a good overall view on the different things that you are able to change within innovation to invent a product or even make a product succeed by changing it's position etc. But all in all I feel it is clear to see the changes and opportunities available to innovator or companies when searching for ways to innovate with their existing products or new ones in the pipe line! 


References:

Bessant J and Tidd J, (2011) Innovation and entrepreneurship, second edition, Chichester, West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons.

Bessant J and Tidd J, (2007) Innovation and entrepreneurship, Chichester, West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons

Mayle D(2006) ,Managing innovation and change, London: Sage publications

Isaksen S and Tidd J (2006), Meeting the innovation challenge: leadership for transformation and growth, Chichester, West Sussex: John Wiley and Sons, 56

Innovation, A glimse into the creative world, Restart the product life cycle, blog, [online], Availiable from: http://blog.cestudios.ca/2007/07/23/restart-the-product-life-cycle/ Date Accessed: 18/1/12

Leadership and innovation - Mc-Kinsey Survey

When searching the internet I found two very interesting peices of research on the McKinsey Quarterly website, they conducted a survey of executives on leadership and innovation in September 2007, receiving responses from 722 executives at the senior vice president level and above and from 736 lower-level executives around the world. The respondents represented a broad range of industries. 

When reading I found that the best way to represent the findings was to show you them in the form of graphs which they had made I feel they are much easier to interpret and give you a much better interpretation of their results.

The finding from the McKinsey Quarterly of executives on leadership and innovation are as follows:

Executives say innovation is very important, but their companies’ approach to it is often informal, and leaders lack confidence in their innovation decisions. Top managers and other professionals agree that the biggest challenge is talent but disagree on why. Nonetheless, executives agree on some steps to improve innovation.

Some 70 percent of corporate leaders say innovation is among their top three priorities for driving growth.

Top teams can help build a more innovative culture in several ways:

    1.  Embrace innovation as a top team. It’s not enough for the CEO to make innovation a personal goal and to attend meetings on innovation regularly. Members of the top team must agree that promoting it is a core part of the company’s strategy, reflect on the way their own behavior reinforces or inhibits it, and decide how they should role-model the change and engage middle management.

    2. Turn selected managers into innovation leaders. Identify managers who already act, to some degree, as network brokers and improve their coaching and facilitation skills so that they can build the capabilities of other people involved in innovation efforts more effectively. The goal: making networks more productive.

    3. Create opportunities for managed experimentation and quick success. This approach is typically the best way to start any change effort in large organisations. Quick success matters even more with innovation: people need to see results and to participate in the change. To get going quickly and learn along the way, select an innovation theme or topic area and then create small project teams. While you try out topics and ideas, test the most effective leadership and organizational approaches for your organization. The goal isn’t to get it right the first time but to move quickly to give as many influential employees as possible a positive experience of innovation, even if a project doesn’t generate profits immediately. A positive experience will make all the difference in building the organization’s capabilities and confidence.


     Overall, I found these articles very interesting and thought I would share them with you as it is actually primary research done by Mc-Kinsey and covers a huge amount of areas to do with innovation. It shows what companies do with innovation and how they go about it when failures occur which I found really interesting to see the results! 

Reference list:
Barsh J, Capozzi M, and Davidson J 2008,  Mc-Kinsey Quatrerly, [online] Availaible from: https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Leadership_and_innovation_2089 [Accessed 16/1/2012]

Mc-Kinsey Quatrerly, 2007,  [online] Availaible from https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/How_companies_approach_innovation_A_McKinsey_Global_Survey_2069

Don't let a good idea go to waste!

(Training and advice in creative thinking and creativity)

I found this picture very amusing when searching innovation into Google, a list of all the excuses to know follow up an idea! In my view I feel that you should never be one of these people letting ideas which can have changed the world and the way people behave go to waste! If you have an idea follow it up you never know how far it may take you..! Look at Steve Jobs for example he was a college drop out and he teamed up with Steve Wozniak in 1976 to sell personal computers assembled in Steve Jobs's garage. At the time who knew what his idea would become what it is today the multi million pound business.

And Richard Branson, he and his friend originally saw a gap for a student newspaper which tied together many different schools! He called it STUDENT and from this he sold advertising to major corporations and interviewed politicians and rock, pop and movie stars! From the he then saw the gap to offer records for cheap by running ads for mail order delivery. This was a huge success and this is where Virgin began. All of these little ideas have made Richard Branson and Virgin into what they are today!

So if you have an idea, a dream maybe? Follow it! Who knows where you may end up in 20/30 years time, don't let the excuses ruin it for you!

References:

Answers, Steve Jobs, Availiable: http://www.answers.com/topic/steve-jobs#ixzz1jpNQI9AF. Date accessed: 10/1/12

Free Enterprise Land, Richard Branson, Availiable: http://www.freeenterpriseland.com/BOOK/BRANSON.html. Date accessed: 10/1/12

Training and advice in creative thinking and creativity, 2009, Availiable: http://www.cocd.org/nl/node/822, Date Accessed: 10/1/12

Peter Drucker's Theory of the Do's and Don'ts of Innovation

Within the principles of innovation there are a number of Do’s and don’ts that an innovation should follow when innovating! Drucker calls these the conditions of innovation.

Do’s

    1)Purposeful, systematic innovation begins with the analysis of opportunities. This analysis should always occur as the innovator needs to find that gap in the market to create that service or product which will satisfy the gap.

    2) Innovation is both conceptual and perceptual. The second imperative of innovation is to go out, look, ask and listen. Successful innovators use both sides of their brains which allow them to work out analytically what the innovation has to be to satisfy an opportunity. From this then you have to look at customers and users to see what their expectations, values and needs are. Doing this allows you to get the right innovation.  

    3) Has to be effective and focused. The innovation should only do one thing! All effective innovations are breathtakingly simple, the greatest praise that an innovator can receive is somebody saying “this is so simple, why didn’t I think of it?”. By them saying this allows the innovator to see he has succeeded with the acknowledgement of doing something right.

    4) Effective innovations start small and should only do one specific thing. If innovations do no start small they escalate and then there is not enough time to make adjustments so will end up most likely failing!

Don’ts

1) Don’t try to be clever. Innovations are handled by ordinary human beings and if you make something way to advanced for the manufacturers to produce and the customers to use then this is bound to fail!  

    2) Don’t diversify, don’t splinter and don’t try to do too many things at once. Innovations that stray from the core (market knowledge can be seen as a good core) are like to diffuse and only remain as ideas and not actual innovations.

    3) Don’t try to innovate for the future, innovate for the present (now!). Innovations may not even reach their maturity until 20 years down the line so you have to be persistant who knows what the future holds if you are trying to innovate for it. By the time you have come up with an idea for that product when the times comes in the future people may have already done the idea or it may even be outdated in this ever changing world! So innovate for now, today’s problems and not tomorrows!

(Drucker P.F, 1985, 122)

Drucker. P.F, (1985), Innovation and Entrepreneurial, Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann

Moving on from this there are three conditions in which all three are obvious but often go disregarded. Therefore here they are:

     1) Innovation is work. It requires knowledge and great ingenuity to succeed in such a ever changing work place. One big thing about innovators also is that they rarely work in more than one area of the field – for example look at Steve Jobs, when at apple he only ever stuck at innovating the new phones and Macs at iPhone he never branched off into anything else but stuck just with the technology field with Apple. With innovation comes hard focused, purposeful work, making very great demands on diligence, persistence and commitment. However if these are lacking then no amount of talent, ingenuity and knowledge will avail.

     2) To succeed innovators must build on their strengths. Building on their strengths allows them to become better innovators more aware of the field and become a strong force within it. The thing that innovators must ask themselves is “ which of these opportunities fits me, fits this company, puts to work what ( or I) are good at and have shown capacity for in performance?”.

    3) Innovation is an effect in the economy and society. Innovation can cause a change in the behaviour of many things such as customers with new products, teachers, farmers and eye surgeons to name a few with new ways of doing things and new products. This relates to the fact that innovation is also a change in a process for example the way in which people work (new working techniques for example with teachers with new innovative teaching styles) and they way in which a company produces things, for example new machinery at a company which can increase the speed and quality of production and save a company millions of pounds.

Therefore to sum up, innovation always needs to be close to the market working side by side allowing innovators to spot gaps and capitalise on them. Innovation also should be very market driven and always go with the market. A market driven company uses a strategy whereby a firm lets the marketplace direct its product innovation. (Product Development and Management Association) Allowing the market to direct its products/services means that innovators are never out of date with their products and never miss an opportunity!

(Drucker P.F, 1985, 126)

Drucker. P.F, (1985), Innovation and Entrepreneurial, Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann

Product Development and Management Association, Availiable here: http://www.pdma.org/view_webpage.cfm?pk_webpage=803#M ( Date accessed: 2/1/12)