Culture and Innovation

Culture and Innovation

Culture is and always has been one of the most important assets to innovation. Creating an environment which allows for innovation to evolve is necessary for a companies progression in it’s field.

In an interview below, David Kester (CEO of Design Council, 2009) reveals that; every leader must create an appropriate culture for innovation to facilitate.



“That culture is something to so with openness, its something to do with allowing ideas to be fostered, its about allowing creativity to flourish, but also creating controls”. (Kester, 2009)

“Culture has to come from the top”. (Kester, 2009)

Kester’s ideas are influential but questionable when he talks about creating an innovative culture having to come from the top. It has been seen before that a culture can be defined and controlled through minority groups, and its seen all throughout society that decisions can be highly influenced by smaller minorities. Therefore I think it is highly questionable and frankly naive to think that an innovative culture has to be controlled dependently through managerial compasses.

I am not saying that it is wrong to control a culture from the top, because a culture is a completely participative process but from all entities. Everyone needs to be involved to create the culture suited best to the company and everyone has their input whether they are low down in hierarchy or not.

I think that management and higher up person’s are more suited to controlling/managing the culture, once it has been created. This will be seen through the way people are disciplined for not following the culture or disruptive behaviour, but also in sieving through the applications of new employees to hire the right people suited to their businesses culture. This idea of innovation being capable in a participative culture comes from Hurley and Hult, “higher levels of innovativeness are associated with cultures that emphasize learning, development and participative decision making.” (1998, p, 42).

Reference List

David Kester. 2009. Creating a Culture of Innovation. Available from:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyqHGdIMcas&feature=BFa&list=FL_Ytrb6CZeR0ysQuPenJaeg&lf=plpp_video
Accessed on 22/12/2011

Robert F. Hurley and G. Tomas M. Hult. 1998. Journal of Marketing. Vol. 62. Available [Online]:
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:lj_19NWt6QUJ:iic.wiki.fgv.br/file/view/innovation,%2Bmarket%2Borientation.pdf+participative+culture+for+innovation&hl=en&gl=uk&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEEShhOfO1p9v7hmSGwp29EBYSFk3YiyCZYGzueTytt2GeBn5TTYem9Y7uEHLrYb9UsmioaU8YEKQXh1JRgYSkKyqlyOPER0BFPpELuAhOQW9I9qQsOYBS_ZoOCFJnBiEJtASFzuP5&sig=AHIEtbQCWlaZfXHK7MVyAxOP2N5O0pEL5g
Accessed: 21/12/2011