IEX 159: The Making of Innovation Culture
From training armies in Afghanistan to designing products the US, culture underpins the success of many initiatives. What goes into culture?
It's near impossible to tear your eyes away as the world watches, horrified, at the events unfolding in Afghanistan. In just over a week, the Taliban have taken over the country, and overpowered the National army. An army that has been funded, armed, and trained over a decade by the US Military. And yet, it barely resisted defeat for a week. Why? This must be a question that would perplex a few people. On Tuesday morning, a former CIA agent appeared on BBC breakfast and outlined that the way in which the US trained the Afghan army was exactly how they would have trained a typical 'western' army. As such, it didn't take into account the cultural aspects - notably that the Afghan people are deeply tribal and cannot and should not be treated as a homogenous group. She also suggested that the low levels of literacy meant that traditional instructions, map reading, etc. cannot always be shared or reinforced effectively in writing. Listening to her, it seemed like no effective alternative method had been used once Plan A was found to be sub-optimal. I’m pretty sure many specialists have looked at this problem, but the result was obviously short of expectations.
Culture is a strangely powerful construct. On the one hand it's malleable, amorphous, and constantly changing. On the other hand, it's strong enough to shape organisations, societies, and economies. Often considered more powerful than strategy and more fundamental than almost any other aspect for defining an organisation. And it pops up in everyday problems, at almost every level.
I was recently asked a question about innovation cultures across countries. It was an intriguing question because it got me wondering about how you would conclude whether any country has a good or a bad innovation culture. A simple example would be the number of unicorn start ups - over $1bn in valuation. The UK has 30, India has 60, and Israel has 18. China and the US dominate the 700 strong global list, as per this report. But does that truly demonstrate a good innovation culture?
After all, there UK has a very vibrant start up community but only half the number of Unicorns compared to India - is this a reflection of the level of innovation or just the market size? Also, quite a few of the Unicorns in India are replicas of models that have worked elsewhere - such as Swiggy and Oyo. And while Israel is a hotbed of technological innovation, it only has 19 unicorns. Perhaps the number of Unicorns isn't the best measure, then. Perhaps innovation culture be about the sheer number of start ups? The UK would score well, with the vibrant network of universities and seed & VC funding, and the large number of fin-tech and AI start-ups, just to name a few. Many other criteria could be used. For example the Visual Capitalist website rates the most innovative countries in the world grouped by income bands, and finds Switzerland and Sweden to be the most innovative based on R&D, High-tech production, etc.
The US is often seen as a highly innovative country. Certainly pockets like Silicon Valley have historically led the way. But it might be worth looking at the reasons for this more carefully. Sometimes the trigger is government spending on R&D, or the support and evolution of institutions such as Bell Labs from whence much of the pioneering work in communications and information technology emerged. But it may also be the role of immigration as over 50% of US Unicorns have founders born outside the US. Elon Musk was born in South Africa, Jeff Bezos was born Jorgensen - his grandfather was born in Denmark, and his adoptive father Bezos was a Cuban immigrant. Steve Jobs' biological father was Abdul Fattah Jandali. You can see the pattern. Innovation culture is clearly enriched through the cross fertilisation and immigration patterns.
Another problem where culture plays a key role for example is in vaccine hesitancy. To understand the cultural problem here, is also to recognise that simply providing more information and logic is not necessarily going to move the needle. Plenty of people are impervious to logic and rational arguments because they are victims of a number of cognitive biases. To get around this, Ohio ran a successful lottery for vaccine promotion. New Mexico has had significant success with a $100 cash reward for vaccinations scheme - which would suggest that the intellectual resistance is not all that robust. It's the same with gun ownership and mass shootings. Rationals try and fight the argument with reason and logic. But the data is, and has been irrefutable.
Even at a company level, innovation cultures need to be nurtured. Whether at 3M or Google, where employees are encouraged to tinker, or at my own place of work - TCS - where innovation is routinely funded, innovation cultures ensure that organisations have a healthier path into the future. Changing the culture of a large company can be a daunting task. Even in the world of technology and digital natives, as this story about shaking up the culture at Twitter shows. Does an innovation culture need to be confrontational? Or highly honest and transparent? In his book Creativity Inc, Ed Catmull talks through the fascinating process by which creative leads at Pixar pitch stories to each other and the kind of honest feedback and criticism process that helps shape the masterful outputs we see on screen - from Toy Story, to Inside Out. In my experience a managed level of creative tension, honest and sometimes blunt feedback, and productive criticism are all strong stimulants for an effective innovation culture.
Whether you're thinking about innovation at a national, local, corporate or team level, remember that it needs nurturing, is rooted in context and culture, and changing culture, while worthwhile, can be an incredibly difficult thing to do.
Reading This Week
Covid Vaccination: A thought provoking read on the carrot and stick strategies for getting people vaccinated. Cash rewards work, but are unfair to those who did get themselves vaccinated early, for example.
Weaponisation of Tech: Should there be a ban on autonomous killer robots?
Future of Work: Some companies are looking to pay you based on where you locate yourself for remote work. Seems unfair, because your pay should not reflect your choice of location. You’re already making trade offs.
Data Science/ Sport: The Economist crunches the data to find out if Lionel Messi is really the best ever.
AI & Intelligence: Open AI (the GPT3 guys) have released a platform that converts natural language into software code.
Drones for Good: using drones for search and rescue after the Florida building collapse.
Roblox redux: a good overview of the Roblox coding platform for kids, in the Quartz magazine.
Product Innovation: The n95 mask - from the plague, to stopping fibres in factories, to being used for viral diseases.