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Culture and Innovation: How They Blend and Why They’re Important
Innovation isn’t just about technology. It’s a mentality, a strategy, a culture.
5 Min Read
Rosaline Napier via Alamy Stock
Innovation does more than just equip enterprises with new solutions. It reveals fresh perspectives on leadership, enables profits even during instability and allows us to discover new ways to make an impact.
However, before innovation can take root, it needs ignition -- and this is where some enterprises struggle. While leaders prepare themselves for challenges, they fail to notice the internal constraints holding them back and slowing down their progress.
To address these constraints and replace them with efficiency, C-levels should examine the norms and behaviors behind their enterprise, discovering points of innovation ignition and potential improvement areas.
The Role of Company Culture in Innovation Adoption
It’s not uncommon for more conservative leaders to feel intimidated by change as they associate it with instability. This mindset results from basing company culture on the promise of a finish line. Any decline from a planned route is perceived as a potential setback, which robs executives of their confidence.
This is one of the reasons why, out of numerous businesses investing in innovation, only 30% manage to succeed. Despite wanting all the benefits of digital transformation, executives often get overwhelmed by the prospect of driving such an impactful change for their employees. As a result, they would rather stay with slower and less efficient performance models while facing the risk of falling behind and ultimately losing their market. This is what happened to companies like Kodak, Xerox, and Blockbuster Inc. The latter had to file for bankruptcy after failing to keep up with the change and prepare for the rise of Netflix and other heavily digitized services.
How can an innovation-proof culture prevent such scenarios?
Enabling fear-free transformation. Fear is the innovation paralyzer. According to McKinsey, many executives agree that the fear of uncertainty and career outcomes often prevents them from adopting new technology. While such concerns are logical for titles in charge of transformative processes, they usually stem from the high risk of organizational resistance, which is often the result of lack of transparency and communication between executives and teams. The right company culture helps patch such gaps, turning innovation into a collective effort. By establishing clear feedback loops across each department, executives become more confident in the road ahead and the results they will achieve through innovation.
Building up resilience. Many enterprise leaders seek to secure stability. However, stability implies enduring change -- but when change occurs frequently and unpredictably, preserving stability can lead to organizational rigidity, missed opportunities, and resistance to innovation. So, instead of going for stability businesses should pursue resilience -- the ability to adapt, not endure. Succeeding at that task requires executives to adjust their organizational mindset accordingly by establishing and nurturing a culture that prioritizes flexibility, responsiveness, and proactivity over permanence at any cost.
Creating an environment for innovation. It’s not enough to hire the right people for the right task. It’s also important to ensure they can do their job. In 2022, nearly a quarter of employees surveyed across 15 countries admitted feeling depleted and burned out. In 2024, around 76% of workers reported experiencing workplace burnout. Aside from poor work-life balance and an overwhelming volume of unnecessary, monotonous tasks, employees are also affected by the lack of opportunities to test their skills and share improvement ideas. This is particularly true for professionals hired for their talent, but not provided with conditions and opportunities to apply them where it counts. For example, IBM became one of the most prominent examples of improving employee task execution and productivity by transforming its perfection-focused corporate culture into an environment that encouraged creativity and experimentation, which led to greater team engagement and accelerated operations.
3 Foundations for Innovation
Innovation is directly correlated with the collective mindset of an enterprise. It's not only the C-Suite or the tech executives who should be hyped about delivering improvement -- managers and employees also should be inspired by the change instead of feeling overwhelmed by it.
To achieve such synergy, leaders and teams need to secure three fundamental aspects of an innovation-friendly mindset:
1. Focus on people, not solutions.
Occasionally, executives center their transformation around technology and place it on a pedestal, expecting it to solve pain points on the spot. However, any technology is only a tool. The person using this tool is the one driving outcomes and delivering value.
Therefore, if enterprise transformation is focused solely on the features of the technology, investors won't be satisfied with the results. To drive the impact that matters, they should consider how technology will empower their most valuable asset -- people. It's imperative to address the diversity of talents, perspectives, and experiences across the company and explore what tools can unleash their full potential and how to make change more convenient and intuitive.
2. Out with the old, in with the new.
Readiness for the change doesn't require executives to uproot all their current tech and legacy systems at once. Instead, it encourages them to leave some room for transformation and replace rigidity with adaptability.
Essentially, executives need to master gradually letting go of outdated and slow-performing software before it affects the company's expenses while timely identifying and embracing potential replacements.
3. Keeping the road flexible.
Change is inevitable. Technologies, practices, and business models constantly evolve. For an enterprise to stay innovative, it means staying dynamic -- to continuously improve and allocate resources where needed.
While this is not an easy journey, it can be made manageable by consistently reviewing enterprise processes that benefit from the change and adjusting business strategy accordingly.
The Real Change Starts From Within
There is an area where the goals of innovation and organizational culture intersect -- delivering improved experiences to people.
Whether facilitating employees’ work or helping customers with a new service tailored to their specific needs, the wish to drive more meaningful impact makes blending innovation and company culture possible.
Nurturing that wish and embedding it into corporate culture, business values, and norms is the key to reducing resistance to change and managing it efficiently at every step of the journey.
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