Transforming Legacy Organizations

CHAPTER 11FROM STATUS QUO TO CONTINUOUS INNOVATION: CULTURE HACKS

It is vital that an organization has a strong innovation culture if augmenting innovation is to take place within its core. And that culture is unfortunately not present in all companies. Many established organizations have a status quo culture, as we discussed in Chapter 2, when we reviewed the status quo bias – the one that causes you to prefer avoiding loss over winning. This attitude is a barrier to change and holds innovation back. Therefore, many established organizations will need to transform the culture of their organization from being a status quo culture into a culture where all employees are incremental innovators.

Here, I define an incremental innovator as someone who thrives in constant change, within certain boundaries. It is important to emphasize that we are talking about change within certain boundaries, because those within the mother organization are working to upgrade the core, not to challenge the core. When challenging the core, you need radical innovators who thrive in constant change without boundaries. But you don't want too many of them in the core organization, because this would lead to chaos and anarchy.

Radical innovators are a special type of people who have a high tolerance for risk. They are overrepresented among startup founders and people who practise extreme sports. They are the ones who think it's cool to draw their pension and put all the money into a project that is unlikely ...