EDHEC MBA, Suzana Gorea Reaction Paper: Session 4 Informal Organization: Culture Word Count: 595 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Culture isnt

t just one aspect of the game, it is the game. In the end, an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value. states Lou Gerstner, the man who turned around a failing IBM in the 90s. Just at about the same time and just as IDEOs founders, Gerstner focused, above all things, on the customers profiles and needs, and built an internal organization capable of delivering on a daily basis on those needs. A second most important principle both organizations applied is the one-stop shop format, delivering on the at the end of the day, in every industry there is an integrator prophecy. IDEO took the perspective to a superior level: it integrated and seamlessly aligned its business strategy, its innovative market proposition that went beyond the specialist approach of traditional consultancies, into its processes, capabilities, human capital and architecture to create the ultimately innovative business proposition culture. Refuting the traditional mindset of predefined series of orderly steps, the idea of design/ ecosystem/ integrative thinking encapsulates the very essence of a human-centered product development disruptive strategy. What is incommensurably striking about IDEO is the degree to which the integrated culture supported business nodes, those elements of the informal organization, support the successful delivery of its business strategy. As IDEO develops everything with the end users daily usage in mind, its human-centered business proposition pervades its interdisciplinary culture. Both its business strategy and organizational culture anchor that the lone genius inventor myth is no longer relevant in our flat, loop backed, globally integrated, interconnected world. Team-based - enthusiastic interdisciplinary collaborators with integrative thinking project work is the new norm for successful innovation. Its forceful immersive innovation approach required by the idea/ creative/ attention economy, which no longer creates products but added-value services, processes, interactions, entertainment and collaborative experiences - strongly resonates with both its business model, strategy, organizational processes and core culture. Beyond IDEOs genuine respect for new ideas and its Tube knowledge-sharing collaborative platform, the open, collaborative platform idea democracy model is successfully practiced by companies such the first fully-integrated and collaborative global advertising agency, TBWA. IDEOs instilling a learning organization through drawing lessons from clients experience, archiving and recycling unused ideas, is matched by formerly pure learning organizations such as Nokia. IDEOs organization and culture leverage the fortunate delivery of both behaviors and skills, semiotics and aesthetics, bias to action and nimbleness, holistic approach and rapid prototyping, ergonomics and quick feedback, performance validations and reality checks, empowerment and experimentalism (matched by Google and ART with 20% tinker time), thirst for variety and failure-acceptance. One step deeper into IDEOs culture-supported business delivery value chain lays the importance of setting and spotting the right context: empathy, social and psychological behaviors. Clotaire Rapailles Culture Code findings support the growing relevance of experiential innovation. Empirical and theoretical literature concords the contingent value of culture or culture as a competitive asset in highly competitive environments. What about game changers? What about highly disruptive business model companies? What about companies engaged in the innovation continuum? What about brand value vs. mere business performance? To sum up, the open, informal culture of disruptive organizations nurtures the stretching and morphing of the innovation ecosystem by co-creation opportunities such as Dells open innovation platforms, crowd-sourcing, mashing up initiatives beyond the incipient settings. In the future, only strong informal cultures will able to achieve the desired degree of integration, stimulating experiential innovations by going beyond conventional consumerist approaches to strike the essential cord of the participation economy where people engage in meaningful and authentic experiences. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------