106 ◾ The Guide to Entrepreneurship: How to Create Wealth for Your Company
5.7 Creating Your Own Innovation Culture
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
An innovation culture is concerned with (1) the discovery of hidden oppor-
tunities and (2) the systematic commercial exploitation of proprietary
technologies. As Gary Hamel, the Harvard business strategy guru stated,
“Pursuing incremental improvements while rivals reinvent the industry is like
ddling while Rome burns.”
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An innovation culture is one of the key drivers for the success—or
failure—of a startup organization. A good, well-aligned culture can propel
it to success. However, the wrong culture will stie its ability to adapt to a
fast-changing world. So, how do you attempt to understand your corporate
culture? In addition, what steps can you take to create a strong corporate
culture that will best support your organization’s activities?
As founder, you must decide what type of organization culture your orga-
nization will follow. Organizational culture is the collective behavior of
humans who are part of an organization and the meanings that the people
attach to their actions. Culture includes the organization values, visions,
norms, working language, systems, symbols, beliefs, and habits. It is also the
pattern of such collective behaviors and assumptions that are taught to new
organizational members as a way of perceiving, and even thinking and feel-
ing. Organizational culture affects the way people and groups interact with
each other, with clients, and with stakeholders.
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Deal and Kennedy
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dened organizational culture as the way things get
done around here. They created a model of culture that is based on four
different types of organizations. They each focus on how quickly the orga-
nization receives feedback, the way members are rewarded, and the level of
risks taken.
1. Work-hard, play-hard culture: This has rapid feedback/reward and
low risk resulting in stress coming from quantity of work rather than
uncertainty. High-speed action leads to high-speed recreation. Examples
include restaurants, software companies, and shoe manufacturers.
2. Tough-guy macho culture: This has rapid feedback/reward and
high risk, resulting in stress coming from high risk and potential
loss/gain of reward and focus on the present rather than the longer-
term future. Examples include police, surgeons, politicians, and
sports gures.