{"id":417,"date":"2018-03-27T05:48:58","date_gmt":"2018-03-27T05:48:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/grosum.com\/topTalk\/?p=417"},"modified":"2018-06-04T07:18:09","modified_gmt":"2018-06-04T07:18:09","slug":"soren-kaplan-organizational-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/grosum.com\/topTalk\/soren-kaplan-organizational-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"Soren Kaplan, Managing Principal, InnovationPoint LLC"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Soren<\/a>Soren Kaplan is the bestselling and award winning author of Leapfrogging and The Invisible Advantage, an Affiliated Professor at the Center for Effective Organizations at USC\u2019s Marshall School of Business, a writer for\u00a0<\/span>FastCompany<\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<\/span>Inc. Magazine<\/span><\/span><\/a>, a globally recognized\u00a0<\/span>keynote speaker<\/span><\/span><\/a>, and the Founder of\u00a0<\/span>InnovationPoint<\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<\/span>upBOARD<\/span><\/span><\/a>. He has been recognized by the Thinkers50 as one of the world\u2019s top thought leaders in business strategy and innovation.\u00a0 For more information about Soren, visit <\/span>www.leapfrogging.com<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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What is organizational culture?<\/b><\/h1>\n

Culture is the collection of unwritten rules, norms, and values that influence people\u2019s behavior. When it comes to innovation, especially disruptive innovation, an organization\u2019s culture can be either the rocket fuel or death knell of an organization\u2019s ability to grow and thrive. Because culture is literally invisible, it\u2019s hard to decipher. When a company can create a culture of innovation that continually churns out incremental, sustaining, and disruptive innovations on a sustainable basis, they are essentially creating something that\u2019s unique to them and that competitors can\u2019t copy. It\u2019s an invisible competitive advantage.<\/p>\n

Why is innovation culture important?<\/b><\/h1>\n

Many leaders and organizations have finally recognized that real innovation and business growth don\u2019t result from just creating finely tuned processes, two-by-two matrices, or rigid business-planning templates. Products, services, and entire business models become outdated overnight. Products get copied.\u00a0 Technologies get reversed engineered. Competitive advantage can disappear in an instant. The only way around this is to continually innovate, and the only way to do that on a sustainable basis is to create a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n

You state that everyone is looking for disruptive innovation\u2026and that\u2019s the problem? What\u2019s wrong with wanting to be disruptive?<\/b><\/h1>\n

Although disruptive innovation is important, it isn\u2019t the only type of innovation that\u2019s necessary to survive, thrive, and win in today\u2019s rapidly changing world. Other types of innovation like incremental changes and sustaining innovations are equally essential. And you need everyone doing them.The problem is that most companies either go for only the big bets or get stuck with a single-minded focus on the small stuff. If we only swing for the fences, we\u2019ll miss the opportunity to score on singles, doubles, or triples as well. And if we only go for the singles, we\u2019ll never win the Home Run Derby. The challenge is that we need a balanced approach, one that\u2019s focused on all types of innovation. The only way to get all types all the time is through creating a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n

What is the biggest determinant of culture?<\/b><\/h1>\n

Most corporate visions and missions sound alarmingly alike: Become the number one provider of blah, blah, blah. These generic, broad-based goals might rev up sales teams, but they do little to spark ingenuity.\u00a0 The goal is to frame the way you want to change the world and make it about the customer. And then once you do that, you get everyone innovating to that end, no matter what role or what function.<\/p>\n

What are simple ways to get started?<\/b><\/h1>\n

Carving out time for innovation doesn\u2019t have to mean radically remaking the corporate time clock. Simply setting aside twenty minutes in a weekly meeting to explore \u201cnew ideas for making things better\u201d can be enough to start a cultural shift in many organizations. The goal is to provide mindshare focused on new ideas to improve things for internal or external customers and do that continuously. Of course, if you\u2019re going after a big disruption that\u2019s going to require a dedicated effort, but if you want a culture where everyone\u2019s focused on value creation, setting aside time for innovation can move the culture needle in the right direction.<\/p>\n

What can leaders do?<\/b><\/h1>\n

Leadership communicates what\u2019s important and valued in the organization each and every day. Actions become the symbols that transmit values and that, in turn, shape culture. Everything a leader does or says is a symbol of what is good, bad, desired, or undesirable behavior in the organization. So, leaders need to be particularly attuned to what they do and how they do it, whether consciously or unconsciously.<\/p>\n

Without awareness of what\u2019s being communicated\u2014explicitly and implicitly\u2014values can be reinforced that can either promote or inhibit trust and innovation.<\/p>\n

What are some of the most leading edge examples of how to create a culture of innovation?<\/b><\/h1>\n

One of my favorite examples from my new book is Zipcar.\u00a0 They bring customers into the office on the weekends for innovation jams.\u00a0 Adobe gives employees an innovation toolkit that contains a $1000 gift card to spend on Google ads that have links that go nowhere so they can measure traffic to non-existent products as part of their innovation process. And NBCUniversal uses their leadership development program as a real live incubator for new business models that have the potential to transform the media and entertainment industry. There are numerous never-before-seen examples that highlight the principles and practices of how anyone can start to create their Invisible Advantage in my new book.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"Do<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Soren Kaplan is the bestselling and award winning author of Leapfrogging and The Invisible Advantage, an Affiliated Professor at the Center for Effective Organizations at USC\u2019s Marshall School of Business, a writer for\u00a0FastCompany\u00a0and\u00a0Inc. Magazine, a globally recognized\u00a0keynote speaker, and the Founder of\u00a0InnovationPoint\u00a0and\u00a0upBOARD. He has been recognized by the Thinkers50 as one of the world\u2019s top […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":418,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grosum.com\/topTalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grosum.com\/topTalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grosum.com\/topTalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grosum.com\/topTalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grosum.com\/topTalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/grosum.com\/topTalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":657,"href":"https:\/\/grosum.com\/topTalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417\/revisions\/657"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grosum.com\/topTalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grosum.com\/topTalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grosum.com\/topTalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grosum.com\/topTalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}