Culture an Innovation Accelerator?

Driving home with a friend from a presentation today on why business leaders shouldn't leave out Facebook, Google+, and social networks in general.

The question arises, "May I ask, what you perceive of what I am doing and especially my value proposition?"

His answer, "I frankly don't know what you are doing!"

... a clear answer. But why am I troubled?!

About six months ago the head of Dresden Marketing, the city of Dresden's own marketing company, Dr. Bettina Bunge called me the "Alpha-Blogger of Dresden" during a workshop about the value proposition of the local creative class for business, research, tourism, and general economic well-being. A nice description of my work for about two decades by now, which states my personal love, and passion for the city pretty much to the point. Yet where is the value proposition seen in that perception? Who does share that there is value in connecting people, building bridges across countries, cultures, and disciplines, and on the sideline promotes Dresden across the globe?

Maybe we have a more scattered "culture landscape" than we might imagine and asked ourselves. Edgar Schein, professor (emer.) at MIT Sloan School of Management has written a well known book bringing more light to the issue, called "Organizational Culture and Leadership".

We really don't know about reality until we ask the honest question, accessing our own ignorance. And from there we learn as our emotions (clearly mine) accelerate and rise high. As long as the cultures of the giver and taker have not arrived at a shared understanding of each other innovation is on a stony path, and the "horsepower of entrepreneurs" can't be put effectively onto the road.

... so is it true that "Culture is the Way to Innovation"? What's your personal experience?

Behavioral Economics - when clusters do not work

Today I learned - once again- from a local cluster manager that any event inviting experts (which of course cost a few Euros) is not feasible nor doable. The local hightech companies would not be in the position to do so. Especially as the Eastern German part of the country still is the "extended work bench" of Western Germany, or other global corporations.

What I have seen for the last 18 years (1993 I was working as an assistant in the archeological institute in Dresden for 8 weeks, pretty much entrenched into the Eastern German culture and history) there is potential in the locals and local companies to raise well on top of the corporate world. However something is in play in the economic "system" that hinders the uprise.

Copyright: http://bit.ly/gKYLnr

May it be the state funding that is constantly being infused into the country? May it be "closed circles" of "men in grey flanell suits"? May it be a lack of money on the banks and VCs that almost are non-existent (compared with the Silicon Valley situation)?

Who knows. What I know is that there is something happening underneath the surface, nobody wants openly to talk about.

What is the unquestionable that hinders entrepreneurs, startups, and free-thinking people to get to their real potential in life and work?

A short glance in Edgar Schein's book about culture opens new worlds of understanding.

What do you think is reasoning the behavior?

Love & Culture = Economic Growth!

If you ever wondered where the subsidies for large cultural institutions run into, read this New York Times article. It covers the economic impact opera houses, as the Semperoper for example, or the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden and their work have on not so familiar areas, such as economic development.

Sometimes one has to go far to see close - like I had to visit a conference in Oman to meet some relevant folks in the social business, like Frauke Godat, co-founders of the SelfHUB (closed in 2010) in Berlin.

There are always "hidden bends" in the course of life that create value for the whole the very moment you don't concentrate (with your eyes or measuring instruments) on the ROI or concrete results!

"If an organization wishes to benefit from its own creative potential, it must be prepared to value the vagaries of the unmeasurable as well as the certainties of the measurable." (quoted from 'Orbiting the Giant Hairball' by Gordon McKenzie)

Unintended Surprise

Who do you think is the real "designer" of a firm?


Supposedly you think it is the management team up in the top ranks. Right they have the overview from above but can they see what really drives action?


How often do we see the C-level folks down in the lines working side by side with the operators? How often is the engineer (or specialist) talking to the C-level or operators and in which attitude?


The operators within the three cultures of a firm (executives, engineers, operators) are the ones who tackle the uncertainty of daily work that could not be predicted by engineers 100% in advance (EdgarSchein, MIT Sloan School of Management, The Cultures of Management - The Key to Organizational Learning). They are probably the most underrated people within the organization.


To cope with the challenges of the 21st century EdgarSchein proposes the following (which I can underwrite through own experience within the three cultures at an automotive plant):

"Until executives, engineers, and operators discover that they use different languages, make different assumptions about what is important, and until they learn to treat the other cultures as 

valid and normal, we will continue to see failures in organizational learning efforts. We will see powerful innovations at the operator level that are ignored, subverted or actually punished, we will see technologies that are grossly under-utilized, we will see angry employees railing against the impersonal programs of re-engineering and down-sizing, we will see frustrated executives who know what they want to accomplish but feel impotent in pushing their ideas through complex human systems, and we will see frustrated academics wondering why certain ideas like employee involvement, socio-technical systems analyses, high commitment organizations, and concepts of social responsibility continue to be ignored, only to be reinvented under some other label a few decades later."(taken from the above article)

We certainly have the chance in our hands as executives, engineers, and operators to co-create our future together - dialogue will be the first step. For doing the dialogue it needs time we should put into place a "new" management philosophy. On that in my next post in
about week.

Cheers and looking forward on what positive experiences you have done yourself within your own organization with the "three levels of culture"