BOOK REVIEW: “Building a Culture of Innovation” delivers few new insights but offers good framework for culture change

Introduction

Building a Culture of Innovation challenges its readers to take a step back and think more strategically about shaping an innovative culture. Before diving into the framework on how to change a culture, the authors attempt to ground the readers on what it means to have an innovative organization. Once this baseline is established, the book presents an easy to follow framework for making innovation an integral part of your organization’s culture. Importantly, the authors make a clear distinction between innovation and invention, citing that innovation must solve “real consumer problems,” which is something that I see organizations forgetting most often. The desire to be innovative often leads to invention and “solutions looking for a problem to solve.” Before a deep dive into their 6-part framework, the authors also share what they believe are the 3 core elements of innovation — intelligence, collaboration, and adaptability.

About the Authors

Building a Culture of Innovation was written as a collaboration between Cris Beswick, Derek Bishop, and Jo Geraghty. Each have solid credentials in the innovation strategy and culture change areas. Cris was recently nominated for the 2019 Innovation Brief MVP award and consults with many companies regarding innovation and organizational strategy. Derek co-founded Culture Consultancy Ltd., a consultancy focused on culture change. Jo is a well-known expert on organizational culture and co-founded Culture Consultancy Ltd. with Derek.https://Amzn.to/34akD2nhttps://Amzn.to/34akD2n

Summary of the Building a Culture of Innovation

The book is grounded by three basic tenants: (1) innovation is more than invention, (2) organizations must embrace the three components of innovation — intelligence, collaboration, and adaptability, and (3) successful culture change is not a free-for-all, but a structured process.

The structured process presented by the authors is a six-part framework that any organization can use to shape a more innovative culture:

1. Understanding Where the Organization Is Today
2. 2. Building an Innovation Leadership Team
3. 3. Designing the Future
4. 4. Communicate and Engage People Consistently
5. 5. Build and Innovation Aptitude and Detailed Roadmap
6. 6. Embed and Sustain a Culture of Innovation

Understanding Where the Organization is Today:

In the first part of the framework is all about assessing where you are today. The focus is on understanding your current level of “innovation maturity” and mapping out your “innovation gap.” Additionally there is focus on understanding how willing your organization is to change, noting that innovation capabilities can be rolled out gradually depending on your organizations willingness to adapt.

Building an Innovation Leadership Team:

The second part of the framework focuses on how to build a team to drive the culture change associated with creating a more innovative organization. There is an argument that this type of change must be supported from the the highest levels within the organization. This section also describes the need to allow for different types of innovation — incremental, differentiated, and radical. And finally, builds a case that innovation leadership is less about tactical management of a process and more about inspiring and empowering the innovative behaviors that are being fostered.

Designing the Future

In the third section of the framework, the “real work” on culture change begins to happen. There is a recommendation to start small by looking for legacy behaviors or processes that are in direct conflict with the desired culture and abandoning them immediately. There is also discussion regarding the how to organization the “innovation group,” stating that it is usually a very bad ideas to create a separate group that is splintered from the rest of the organization. This almost always creates an “us versus them” mentality.

Communicating and People Engagement

The authors provide a framework for communicating during the forth section. They propose using the 4Es Methodology, which stands for — educate, engage, empower, and enable. Communicating culture change cannot be a one-time event, but rather an ongoing conversation with all the stakeholder involved. They also recommend using innovation agents or i-agents embedded within the organization to be internal champions and help spread the messaging and communication about culture change.

Building Innovation Aptitude

The fifth section of the framework focuses on how to continually strive to create a more innovative culture. The authors recognize that building a culture of innovation is something that is continual in nature. They urge leaders to focus on creating a roadmap and continue to self assess things like systems, policies, metrics, human capital, etc. to ensure alignment to the culture of innovation that is desired. The recommend using a 3i’s process — identify, ideate, and implement.

Embedding a Culture of Innovation

The final step in their framework is a discussion on how to ensure the culture change is sustainable. The argument is made that it is key to focus on instilling values instead of discrete results. They urge the readers to avoid “too short, too sharp, and too shallow” change actions. If the communication looses early momentum then employees will view the change as temporary and take a “this to shall pass” mentality. If the change efforts are too forceful then people will resist the change and feel threatened. If the change actions are viewed as surface level, then employees will profess agreement and seem aligned but no really change will take place. Finally, the authors make the case that in order to sustain a culture of innovation, screening for “cultural fit” will become extraordinarily important for new hires.

Strengths

• Interesting case studies in each section of the book.
• Framework is applicable for any culture change, not just innovative cultures.
• Additional resources and templates/worksheets are available to download.

Weaknesses

• Not much that you haven’t already heard before if you read a lot of books focused on organizational change or innovation.
• The construct of i-agents is a little elementary. The real focus should be on instilling values and finding champions within every level of the organization that are willing to live by and promote those values.

Conclusion

Like most books on the subject, “Building a Culture of Innovation” doesn’t offer anything earth-shatteringly new. Their six part framework for culture change is a good summary of the various stages an organization must go through to truly shift a culture to be more innovative AND make the culture change stick. Their focus on the common communication failures that happen during culture change was insightful. They argued that most culture change fails during communicating the need and direction of the change by being either “too short,” “too sharp,” or “too shallow.” In my experience, communication, and more specifically, building internal advocacy is one of the most fundamentally important aspects of culture change.

In the end, I’d recommend this book to any newly-minted managers interested in shifting or shaping the the culture of their organizations. You can grab a copy for yourself here: Building a Culture of Innovation