Entrepreneur's Handbook
INNOVATIVE VENTURE CULTURE AND DEVELOPMENT
The education and subsequent career of the entrepreneurial individual can have a significant impact on the innovation and entrepreneurship processes. These professional culture differences can often be seen when looking at engineers and marketers as different types of entrepreneurs. For example, there are anecdotes that many engineers and engineering firms have difficulty understanding market needs. This problem may arise from the formal and vocational education and professional professionalization that engineers (and other professionals in this field) pass. In addition, it may not be possible for an entrepreneur who has grown in the field of marketing to deal with technical issues in detail with his education and intellectual knowledge. Therefore, the professional culture of an entrepreneur in a start-up may not show integrity with other employees. Collaboration between different professions and cultures is needed not only by engineers, but also by people who grow up in different business cultures, such as marketers, lawyers, bankers and other financial experts (Brown & Uljin, 2004). Moreover, there may be differences between national cultures even in professional culture. To prevent this, the entrepreneur needs to build an organizational culture suitable for the business. An organizational culture in which employees, external parties and the social / cultural environment as a whole are taken into account is necessary to make business with an entrepreneurial and innovative identity permanent.
In order for entrepreneurial businesses to have an innovative organizational culture, employees have to do more than melt their differences in a pot. First of all, the symbols, rituals and myths that dominate the organization, which are important parts of the organizational culture, should be transformed in a way that is suitable for managing change and innovation in the organization, as well as sharing the transformation and changes by the employees. While doing this, two important points should not go unnoticed. First of all, a change to be made for innovation in symbols, rituals and myths related to the structure of the organization should not cause changes and jolts in the perception of the basic values that keep the organization alive. Secondly, since each member of the organization comes from different sub-cultures, the possibility that the changes made may be perceived differently by members of different sub-cultures should be considered. Based on this, it can be said that a business with an innovative organizational culture can achieve this only through a cultural transformation. In order to experience cultural transformation, certain mechanisms should be developed and put into practice. In order to build an innovative organizational culture by developing these mechanisms, the following is required.;
- Ensuring the participation of organization members,
- Developing a management approach that supports and motivates change,
- Evaluation of information from inside and outside the business and
- Establishing a comprehensive rewarding system for activities related to change (O’Reilly vd., 1991: 301).
On the other hand, with the change of organizational culture, information, support and resources are needed for the organization to have a more innovative structure. In order to provide the necessary changes for an innovative structure in the organizational culture, the following factors should be well analyzed and implemented effectively:
- To understand the previous culture well,
- Encouraging and motivating employees against change,
- To monitor important and dominant units in the organization and to use them for change,
- Not to force employees to change excessively,
- To have a specific vision,
- To develop mechanisms that will ensure the implementation of new cultural values.
It is a difficult and long journey for the entrepreneur to create an organizational culture that embraces innovation with its employees. Because organizational culture has an important effect on the attitudes and behaviors of the people in the business. Therefore, it will also play a key role in determining the attitude of business employees towards innovation. In this framework, members will show different attitudes and behaviors towards innovations according to the characteristics of the culture that dominates the organization. These attitudes and behaviors are as follows (Christiansen, 2000: 158):
- Employees can resist or support innovation.
- The messages that management sends to other employees about innovation are clear and can either lead to or complex and prevent participation.
- Management can show cowardly or courageous management behavior when it comes to innovation.
- Managers or entrepreneurs may be willing or unwilling to question and change their management understanding and values.
- Managers or entrepreneurs may be willing or unwilling to listen to and evaluate new ideas.
- Some cultures can be technically oriented while others may be marketing oriented.
- Some cultures place emphasis on rewarding success, while others may focus on punishing failure.
- Cultures' approach to mistakes made during the innovation process may also differ.
As stated above, individuals play an important role in the innovation process, in the creation, implementation and development of innovation. Their role continues from the emergence of new ideas to the spread of innovation. It is possible to evaluate these roles undertaken by individuals in the innovation process in five categories (Afuah, 2003: 37–38):
- Entrepreneurs: They are also qualified as leaders. From time to time, they may risk their current position and prestige so that innovations can be successful and new ideas can be created.
- Idea producers: Those who contribute to the generation of new ideas that will lead to product and service formation based on market and technological information, and to solve problems in the innovation process.
- Controllers and transformers: In order to generate new ideas, they often establish links between internal and external information and transform existing information within the business into new ideas.
- Sponsors: They support innovation and lay the groundwork for the emergence of new ideas and protect innovators. They act as a kind of mentor in the innovation process.
- Project managers: They plan and manage the process carefully and effectively to ensure successful completion of innovation projects.
The roles mentioned above are very important in terms of showing how much innovation will be adopted, how quickly it will spread and be implemented within the business. However, the ability of employees to fulfill these roles effectively depends on the cultural structure of the enterprise. Because the good performance of these roles by the employees will be shaped by the values, beliefs, interactions and behaviors shared in the organization. Therefore, the more the cultural structure of the organization motivates individuals to assume and perform these roles, the more individuals will contribute to the innovation process with these roles (Afuah, 2003: 106).
Creating an innovative organizational culture also requires coordination between different units of the business. For example, R&D, marketing and production units need to have a constant communication and cooperation in order to produce, share and implement a new idea. Communication channels, which will ensure continuous communication and cooperation, are expected to make valuable contributions to the root of the innovative culture. The transfer of necessary information and information requires not only the effective operation of the communication systems, but also the willingness of the employees to produce and share information. Employees will be encouraged and supported in innovation and by building a culture that enables them to easily access new ideas and information, and it will be ensured that they develop relationships both inside and outside the organization.
As a result, strong management support, effective internal and external communication, paying attention to customer needs, forgiving mistakes in innovative efforts and rewarding success are very important for the development of an innovative organizational culture.