{"id":13890,"date":"2020-01-02T15:44:53","date_gmt":"2020-01-02T20:44:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.berdeogroup.com\/?p=13890"},"modified":"2021-05-04T12:00:36","modified_gmt":"2021-05-04T16:00:36","slug":"leading-on-the-cutting-edge-the-five-key-culture-traits-that-drive-innovation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.berdeogroup.com\/leading-on-the-cutting-edge-the-five-key-culture-traits-that-drive-innovation\/","title":{"rendered":"Leading on the Cutting Edge: The Five Key Culture Traits That Drive Innovation"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Innovation has been the king of business buzzwords since before the VCR and home computer hit the mainstream, and its relevance grows by the day\u2014as low-hanging competitive fruit like headcount reductions become increasingly long in the tooth. A relevant question in the face of this reality is whether any leader in any company can make their organization innovative, regardless of industry and maturity.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Let\u2019s turn to Fortune\u2019s<\/em> three most admired companies for a possible answer. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak met at the Homebrew Computer Club<\/a>, and Wozniak said of the Apple I, \u201cIt was to really show the people around me, to boast, to be clever, to get acknowledgement for having designed a very inexpensive computer.\u201d Larry Page and Sergey Brin built a web crawler called BackRub<\/a>\u2014which grew into Google<\/a>, now Alphabet\u2014as a thesis project at Stanford based on Page\u2019s fascination with tree-like information structures and Brin\u2019s affinity for complex mathematics. According to Jeff Bezos, Amazon represented a \u201cregret minimization framework<\/a>,\u201d spurring him to leave his prestigious Wall Street post over nagging remorse for not having participated in the internet boom sooner.<\/p>\n

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While a relatively small sample size, these titans of innovation are woven of a cloth common to other innovators at their level\u2014too free-spirited (and expensive) to work for you. But to stop at that realization would be just about sinful given the extreme value innovation brings to today\u2019s enterprises. After all, the market caps of Apple, Alphabet, and Amazon<\/a> were $0 at the time of their founding ideas. As of this writing, they have grown to $616, $543, and $405 billion respectively.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Still, never fear. These companies are of a size now that the jaw-dropping new toys and services they produce aren\u2019t the brain-children of their founders anymore. They\u2019re coming from employees. You have employees\u2014probably the right kind of employees. But they don\u2019t know it\u2014yet.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"Enemy<\/p>\n
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WASSERMAN<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>
Enemy of innovation<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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This is because human nature is highly transactional. How do you shop? Pack for a major trip? Cook a meal? We make and\/or think in lists. It\u2019s no different in business. Our calendars are glorified lists as are our inboxes, agendas, and project schedules. This organic transactionality is our nature. It is also an enemy of innovation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Yet, the aforementioned giants hire people who put their pants on the same way yours do. The difference is that from the time their only employees were the officers on their corporate filings, they began with an innovation culture and carried it forward. Innovation is what they\u2019ve always been, through and through.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Your task\u2014admittedly not small, but the rewards are staggering\u2014is to create a similar culture where list-checkers begin to look to the sky of possibility, taking their new creations to market effectively. The elements of that culture are:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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