InnovoQuest    Information :: Introduction

InnovoQuest is a diagnostic tool designed to enhance innovative capability in a firm through modifying corporate culture. It has been shown that the linkages between Corporate Culture and Innovation are unequivocal. The encouragement of innovation and innovative behaviour amongst the workforce must be a key objective of management.

The diagnostic tool establishes the dominant corporate cultures and the degree of innovative capability behaviour displayed by an organisation at a given time. The tool is based on the conceptual model developed during doctoral research conducted in 2002 linking the corporate cultures and the innovative capacity exhibited in organisations. The research showed that the two were inextricably linked, the innovative capacity of the firm being dependent on the dominant corporate cultures exhibited in the firm. The research also indicated that the dominant values apparent within the corporate cultures were fundamental to the innovative capacity. What is clear is that there are both positive and negative values that make up each of the corporate cultures in the corporate culture quadrant.

Organisations wishing to enhance their innovative capability may not need to undertake drastic cultural change. They may simply need to modify organisational behaviour to reduce the negative and enhance the positive traits. The research indicated the presence of different cultural values in each of the four quadrants some of these values were positive and enabled positive behaviours in the firm, others were negative and tended to be more destructive.

Much of the literature indicates that for many management interventions such as TQM, Just in Time, Lean Manufacturing, to work requires lengthy and expensive cultural changes. Drastic cultural changes in a firm may not be necessary and may be counter productive. Positive traits may be destroyed during the culture change exercise. Most organisations need to build on the positive traits and to reduce the negative traits that are present. In order to identify those traits the firm needs to undertake a cultural due diligence. This will establish the values that are present on the firm. The InnovoQuest tool is designed to establish both the dominant corporate cultures and also the innovative capacity within the organisation.