Chapter 11: Conclusion

As mentioned in the beginning of this project, we’re moving rapidly toward a world where other expectations on organizations are forming. To tackle these issues it’s essential to build the organizational culture. So, how might we enable startups to build their culture? From this project it’s presented that the culture building aspect should have a foundation in a dedicated practice, reflection, experimentation, and bringing in the human element to the organization. Being human-centered through all of this seem to be of most importance, which suggests that the culture changes as more people join and it should therefore be seen as a living breathing part of the organization. By using an iterative framework that’s set up to enable people to come together as a team through a human lens and consideration of what culture is, such as the Double Diamond of Culture, I hope this project provide opportunities for organizations to move further away from the managers and assembly lines of the industrialization age and become even more human.

Next steps

I’m eager and motivated to keep working on this project after the deadline. My next steps would be to get more feedback on the framework from the industry and find a startup and/or accelerator to test the framework with so I can keep iterating. I’d like to stay true to the framework itself and keep it open and transparent while developing it. I’d also like to develop tools for each part of the framework, but that is something I’d have to pursue after the testing to see what would be viable to develop.

Future research

Since this is a very broad research project there are plenty of topics to dive into for future research:

• Using reflection in the organization
• Culture prototyping
• What are the essential tools/processes for teams to go through to build their culture?
• The prototyping organization
• Graphic facilitation in teal organizations
• What is a fun work environment?
• Would the framework work in other cultures, for example the Nordic, China or South Africa?
• … and many more.

As well as developing tools for each part of the framework.

Limitations

This research project has been conducted mainly in New York, USA, meaning there might be a cultural bias in the designed framework as well as the data. It’s possible that the framework doesn’t work in other cultures and/or that other factors has to be taken into consideration if it’s used outside of the USA.

Having only 15 respondents from three main categories, the project represent a very small sample of how startups, accelerators and organizational consultants view culture and what’s important. The data provides a very broad overview on the chosen topic.

I also acknowledge that it would’ve been more substantial for this research project to have interviewed a greater percentage of startups to increase the validity and to make the framework even more startup-friendly.

Thank you

Tash Willcocks, my program manager at Hyper Island, for your support and creative mind. Thanks for never stop believing in your students, questioning me, and for always being available.

All of the interview participants, without you this would’ve never been possible. Thank you for your insights, for taking the time to talk to me and answer my questions, for being so open and honest, and for sharing your networks.

New York, the greatest city in the world. I’ll be back.

Jatinder & Cesar, better roomies will be hard to find. Thank you for letting me cover your walls in post-its and for making me take a break when I needed it.

DMM Crew 6 & DXD Crew 1, without you none of this would’ve been possible. Thank you, thank you, thank you for all the feedback and support I’ve received during our time at school.

All of my terrible Tinder dates, for badgering me about my thesis so I had to come up with a really simple way of explaining what this project was all about.

Next: Chapter 12: Reflection and personal learnings
Previous: Chapter 10: The Double Diamond of Culture

If you’d like to get in touch, you can find me on Twitter.
Hyper Island — MA Digital Media Management
Industry Research Project