Measuring innovation culture: Application at four case studies

Abstract

Purpose: The present article proposes a tool for the measurement of a corporate culture that makes companies more innovative. In a fast changing environment, such as the current one, the capacity to innovate has become very important. It allows companies to adapt better and faster or even leapfrog competition by creating the change themselves. Organizational Theory has come to understand corporate culture –a group of shared values and philosophies– as a powerful management tool and it is due to this that me intent to measure it.

Design/methodology: After extracting the characteristics of an innovation culture from the literature review, a group of indicators relating to these cultural traits was selected. The further revision of prior measurement tools allowed us to compare the findings and summarize our selection in a set of 67 questions. In order to contrast he validity of these, we applied the questionnaire at four innovative firms. During this process we tried to confirm our indicators and add new ones, resulting from the conducted interviews, introducing an inductive perspective to our study.

Findings: We conclude with a revised and expanded version of the questionnaire, which includes a revision of the indicators and the contributions of the interviewees. Through this process we believe to have contributed to elaborating a measurement tool for innovation culture, since we were able to apply the majority of questions selected in the first place, eliminating and redefining the others. A revised version of the questionnaire is offered for further research.

Practical implications: The measurement tool developed in this article allows those managers interested in benchmarking their company’s corporate culture against one that promotes innovation. We increased the capability of expressing one of the most significant intangibles of the company, thus increasing its visibility and value recognition.

Originality/value: The contributes in the efforts of measuring innovation culture, advanced by other authors and applies a set of indicators, which hadn’t been tested before, to practical cases. It manages to distill a tool, using a perspective, which is at the same time deductive and inductive, following up on a methodology priory used.