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D
utch State Mines (DSM)
was formerly a coal
mining company with
a future about as bright
as the average dodo’s.
Today DSM is a highly
successful multinational
specializing in cutting-
edge solutions in health, nutrition and
materials.
‘Radical’ hardly begins to describe DSM’s
portfolio transformation. Had they stuck with
mining, they would have followed the path
of the dodo. But by consciously choosing a
different future, they pushed into new terrain
– and survived.
DSM embraced a ‘culture of innovation’,
which is becoming a condition of survival in the
new digital landscape. Today, organizational
success has more to do with ideas and emotions
than traditional models of production.
“Innovation is to sustainability and growth
in the 21st century what the steam engine
was to the industrial revolution. Organizations
will either come to understand this and
engineer innovation states, or they will be
left behind,” affirms innovation consultant
Henry Doss
, Managing Partner at Rainforest
Strategies LLP in North Carolina.
CULTURAL (R)EVOLUTION
Companies that are consistently innovative
don’t so much ‘do’ things differently as
encourage everyone to ‘be’ different.
“The difference between innovation and
non-innovation is culture. This is a factor of
leadership, role models, and of an intentional
focus on cultivating value systems – social
contracts – that encourage the ‘behavior’
of innovation: risk-taking, trust, paying it
forward and so on,” says Doss.
“What gets rewarded, what kinds of
behavior are seen as exemplary – if you ask
that question about any company, you can
get a sense of their innovation status.”
As the word ‘culture’ suggests, this isn’t
something that changes overnight. Doss
describes culture as “a state of being” that
comprises two components: hardware
and software. The hard assets include such
things as processes, metrics and governance,
while the soft include values, attitudes and
emotions. The ‘culture’ is the sum of all
these factors – and all must move forward in
alignment.
Moving forward doesn’t have to involve
radical, game-changing transformation – it’s
also about consistency, says
Daniel Roos
,
principal at Arthur D. Little’s Gothenburg
office, the leading innovation consultancy in
the Nordics.
“It can also be about small, incremental
improvements. Being successful comes down
to improving all the time, year after year. You
have to constantly ask: how can we keep on
finding new ways to create value and better
services and business models to consistently
stay on top,” says Roos.
feature
Just as a shark drowns if it stops swimming,
a company that stops moving forward is
doomed to sink. In the digitized world,
organizations sail ahead by embracing a
culture of innovation.
Innovate
or die
TEXT
SILJA KUDEL
PHOTO
KARL VILHJÁLMSSON & KONE
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