Innovation and organisational culture
Wednesday, September 6th, 2006Whilst listening to the Innovation in Established Organizations panel discussion from Supernova 2006, I was struck by a remark made during the Q&A session. Unfortunately, the person making the remark didn’t attribute it (so I’ve no idea of the source ) but the general idea expressed was: In order to improve the efficiency of core business processes, you must remove all variation; yet in order to improve innovation in business processes, variation must be increased.
There’s always been a tension in organisational culture between the need to innovate and the need to make money more effectively, and for me, this apparently straightforward observation reveals an awful lot about the clashing ideologies that we all encounter from time to time.
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