Want Breakthrough Innovation In Your Company? Or Even Country? It’s ALL Practices

Apparently “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”, a phrase originated by Peter Drucker and made famous by Mark Fields, President at Ford, however the more important question is why? Because an embedded culture is accepted where as strategy ( even when necessary and correct ) will often be fought and cause innovation to be killed as in one of the most famous examples with Kodak who 1st created the digital camera in 1975 and who never profited from it / dominated the market with it’s technology. How can this be fixed ? Skunkwork Slingshots.

In “National Personality Profiles and Innovation: The Role of Cultural Practices” https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/caim.12075 we quickly learn that a negative national bias towards innovativeness virtually disappears as soon as national cultural practices are adopted and just how it worked in Singapore which went from a virtually unknown design and innovation economy in 2007 to being ranked 5th in 2017 from being ranked in the 20’s only 10 years previously. After examining 33 countries, even this study might be limited given the 195 countries in the world today. however one might also guess that ANY effort where cash and resources are put towards something is where action happens. Not necessarily so and as in the case with Kodak and it’s digital camera breakthroughs in 1975.

More specifically we see that national innovativeness is more closely related to cultural factors ( what is paid for and valued in the culture/country/company ) than to national personality profiles or a populations personal and individual profiles as people taken separately from their vocation, where time is spent and attitudes toward probably the most important factor: uncertainty avoidance correlated with high future orientation. Translation – do we see the same vision then innovation is assured and as in an excellent example Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 started in 2016.