Organizational Culture and Innovation: A Chance to Change

Organization Culture and Innovation

Most organizations do not value innovation. Completing work on schedule and within budget is considered sufficient for success. All of these traditional principles create barriers to innovation, causing employees to be become stuck to some extent. As a result, organizational culture should encourage innovation in order to gain a competitive advantage and ensure long-term sustainability.

Organizational culture has a significant impact on the speed and frequency of innovation (Maher, 2014). Despite your organization's size or industry, a culture of innovation may be required to evolve and succeed in today's fast-changing world (Cancialosi, 2017). In an ever-changing environment, innovation is widely regarded as a critical source of competitive advantage (Dess and Picken, 2000).

Various Types of Innovation Culture

A culture of innovation promotes the conditions for successful innovation and digitization projects. A situation in which;

• to continuously learn from our employees' successes and failures
• new ideas emerge and are rapidly developed into prototypes
• new things are tried out, and entrepreneurial risks are taken.

Several factors influence an innovative culture, including strategy, value system, management structure and internal processes, team composition, and internal communication. There are various types of innovation culture. Each of these characteristics encourages various types of innovation.

Figure  1 Source: https://innolytics-innovation.com/what-is-innovation/

Picking the Right Innovation Culture for Organization

Companies take multiple innovation cultures at the same time in preparation for future markets

•  To ensure the stability of existing processes, they require an operational corporate culture in certain areas, in which existing processes are not touched but only selectively optimized.
• They require an innovation culture of constant optimization for the further development of existing products or process improvement.
• They require a strategically oriented innovation culture in order to develop new business fields and structures.
• They require a proactive innovation culture in order to implement more radical innovations.

Why is Creating an Innovation Culture so critical for the organization?

Many organizations recognize that innovation and digitalization are critical factors in business development.

• Companies invest a large amount of money in product development and service innovation.
• To meet the challenges of digitalization and develop innovative digital business models, innovation experiments are being established.
• Organizations establish innovation networks and hold innovation challenges.

Nonetheless, despite these efforts, innovation strategies frequently fail.

• In idea management and the continuous improvement process, the quantity and quality of ideas are insufficient.
• Companies lose competitiveness as a result of a lack of organizational innovation and process improvement.
• Innovation projects managed through an innovation process are not moving forward.

In Sri Lankan Contest 

Almost all banks in Sri Lanka is now adapting to new technology in order to be the market leader. Both the private and public banking sectors encourage new innovative ideas from employees and create an internal culture to support their innovative thoughts without breaking traditional rules.

Implementation of a smart banking system, for example, allowing customers to conduct banking transactions even after banking hours. The bank of Ceylon provides a total online banking solution at your fingertips. It enables you to manage your account from the comfort of home or the workplace.

Involvement of Human Resource Management for Innovation

Organizations with strong innovation cultures constantly looking for new ways to improve their products, strategies, and processes. But how do you begin to promote an innovation culture in your company? Here are five best practices suggestions that have been shown to be extremely effective

1. Challenge your daily routine on a regular basis! In your discussions, ask critical questions. Motivate your teams and employees to think about improvements and changes on a regular basis.
2. Hold workshops on innovation. Create concepts for new products and processes.
3. Bring together your employees and external parties (such as customers or suppliers) who have multiple viewpoints on business needs. This can be accomplished, for example, by instituting open innovation processes within a company.
4. Use innovation software to connect creative minds across your organization's divisions. Create an innovation network.
5. Hire people who are open to new ideas and want to make a difference. Create teams of creative thinkers from various backgrounds.

References

Cancialosi, C., (2017, Feb 7). Forbes, Retrieved Sep 24, 2019, from Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/chriscancialosi/2017/02/07/why-culture-is-the-heart-of-organizational-innovation/#80d98653f4d7 (Accessed: 08/08/2021).

Dess, G.G. & Picken, J.C., (2000). Changing roles, leadership in the 21st century, Organizational Dynamics, Vol 28, No 3, 18–34.

Maher, L., (2014). Building a culture for innovation, A leadership challenge, World Hospitals and Health Services, Vol. 50, No. 1, pp. 4-6.

Figure  1 Source: https://innolytics-innovation.com/what-is-innovation/

Youtube link: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4-APGd20T3Y