How much longer do you think it will take corporate Earth to get off their terrified, or comfortable, collective asses and embrace a real, live, authentic, proven solution to most of their problems?

Jaideep C Prabhu, Jawaharlal Nehru Professor of Indian Business and Enterprise at Judge Business School, Cambridge University, and innovation fellow at the Advanced Institute of Management (AIM) Research, is the latest to write passionately about the need for a culture of innovation.

“But businesses bold enough to develop a forward-looking, risk-taking corporate culture and brave enough to cannibalise existing successful products, in order to commercialise radically new ones, are more likely to dominate world markets and increase the competitiveness of their national economies.”

Bold and forward-looking, aren’t those the traits that every over-paid CEO on the planet claims to be their expertise along with how they will ‘lead’ their company into a bright new world…blah, blah, blah.

Are you as tired of hearing them as I am? They talk and talk…and talk.

Or they’re replaced by an impatient Board running from Wall Street’s demand for short-term profits.

Prabhu, along with a host of other experts, says his research shows that “Innovative companies appear to have a similar corporate culture, wherever they may be located in the world.”

“We have identified three specific attitudes and three practices within innovative firms that make them special and drive radical innovation. These are

• risk tolerance,
  
• a willingness to cannibalise existing products,
  
• future market orientation,
  
• empowering product champions,
  
• fostering internal competition and
  
• providing incentives for enterprise.”

Attention Wall Street, this stuff is not implemented overnight—or in a quarter.

Whoa. Do you think it’s possible that the silver lining in the current mess that was started and facilitated by Wall Street denizens might be a return to long(er) term thinking?

That CEOs will get canned for embracing quarterly numbers a la Jack Welch in place of radical innovation.

That investors will actually take Warren Buffet’s philosophy to heart and quit putting their faith in hedge funds, day trading and fast profits?

Whee, wanna share the stuff I found?

Your comments—priceless

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Image credit: flickr

Here it is, Saturday again, and two very different views of culture are on the menu.

Let’s look first at a topic that’s the subject of a media frenzy: Steve Jobs and Apple.

Looking at the media, old and new, a large number seem to be leaning towards some level of mass hysteria along the lines of there is no Apple without Steve Jobs.

Now, I grant that Jobs is unique, especially his gift of seeing of seeing around corners and over the horizon, but at the same time his people have been steeped deep in a culture that believes doing that is possible and that belief is at least half the battle.

For a thoughtful analysis take a look at this Knowledge @ Wharton analysis with some fascinating insights from Wharton management professor Michael Useem, among others, on the part that culture does/will play at Apple.

And speaking of radical innovation, the kind in which Apple specializes, I again refer you to Radical Innovation Across Nations: The Pre-eminence of Corporate Culture by Gerard J. Tellis, Jaideep C. Prabhu, and Rajesh K. Chandy. Here’s a good review from Sloan MIT and, as is often the case, the most interesting part are the comments.

I hope you’ll take time to think about your own company’s culture after reading these.

Innovation, not cost cutting and layoffs, is your true lifeblood.

For a little extra on culture and innovation, check out the video interview with Judy Estrin at Leadership Turn.

Image credit: flickr