How Innovative is your Corporate Culture?

Today, everyone can agree to the importance of being innovative. In a competitive landscape where small insights and ideas can quickly shift the status quo, the pursuit to stand out is a struggle that all companies face. But as companies try to rapidly innovate, they are stumbling across several hurdles; including the ability to engage their staff and customers in the innovation process.

Studies by PWC found that while over 83% of executives believe innovation is important to the success of their company, over 54% struggle to align innovation strategies with their business strategy. Why?

Because the truth is, that while it’s easy to talk about how innovation strategies relate to potential revenue growth, cash flows and KPI’s, there is often little to no discussion on how innovation is integrated into a company’s core culture.

True innovation is a collective experience embedded into the corporate culture: It is systemic, it creates value, embraces collaboration, communication, risk and failures. It is born and bred inside and outside of the organization and dependent upon the ability of all members to contribute to its collective goals.

If your innovation strategy is not mirrored in your corporate culture, it’s time to step back and assess your culture.

Advantages of an Innovative Corporate Culture

Finding the Right Fit

Defining your culture as an innovation culture sets a tone for the types of people you want to attract and helps those recruiting get a sense of what makes your company work. When you hire people who fit the culture, they perform well, they love their work and they excel beyond expectations. A well-defined culture will outperform competition by the 20% and earn 2.1% above industry benchmarks.

Reduce Turnover Rates

Turnover rates are significantly lowered in a well-defined corporate culture. A study by Columbia University found that organizations with a strong company culture have a significantly lower job turnover of 13.9% in comparison to a low company culture of 48%.

Drives Product Innovation

Organizations with a strong learning culture are 92% more likely to develop novel products and processes, 52% more likely to be the first to market with their products, and 17% more profitable than their peers.

Increase Revenue and Growth

At the end of the day, when staff are part of the innovation process, they are committed to the success of the company. According to a PWC study, 93% of executives say organic growth through innovation will drive the greatest proportion of revenue. Additionally, the most innovative companies will grow by 16% in comparison to the least innovative companies.

Why You Need to Regularly Assess Your Culture

Facilitate the pace in which Ideas Emerge

Assessing how innovative your culture is will ensure employees feel connected to their work. They make more decisions and take ownership of ideas that fit the corporate goals. When innovation strategies are implemented with a fixed top-down approach, employees will often internalise choice-less models of direction and stick closely to an idea what their superiors expect. Innovation cannot exist without a culture of collaborative and well-defined communication.

Define your Culture to your Customers

Your organizational culture is part of your customer experience, it helps your customers understand your unique process and what sets you apart from your competitors. With only 72% of executives reporting they do not understand their organizational culture, how can you expect your customers to know what makes you stand out?

Prepare for Future Disruptions

When disruption occurs, organisations need to be able to act fast to re-deploy systems, assets and people to address external opportunities and threats. By continuously assessing their culture, companies understand where their strengths and weaknesses lie; better positioning them to embrace tomorrow’s disruptions without becoming bogged by bureaucracy that brings change to a halt.

A successful innovative culture understands what makes their organisation unique, where their value and strengths lie and provide the tools to continuously exceed expectations. In order to achieve this, they must consistent measure day-to-day behaviours and rigorously determine how they drive the end goals of innovation and success.

When organisations possess a well-defined culture of innovation, they expect more for their teams and achieve more collectively. Your culture is your competitive edge.