{"id":686,"date":"2011-10-29T16:25:00","date_gmt":"2011-10-29T15:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/open-organization.com\/?p=686"},"modified":"2011-10-29T16:25:00","modified_gmt":"2011-10-29T15:25:00","slug":"testing-perceptions-the-ge-ecomagination-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/open-organization.com\/en\/2011\/10\/29\/testing-perceptions-the-ge-ecomagination-challenge\/","title":{"rendered":"Testing Perceptions : the GE Ecomagination Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our previous post<\/a> underscored the influence of culture on the ills of the French innovation system. The notion lacks sharpness. Thus, before we take on the open innovation powerhouse that is the Ecomagination Challenge, we wish to pick up on some comments generated by the first post and deepen our understanding of culture, both as it applies to a country – national culture – <\/em>and as it applies to organizations and businesses – corporate culture<\/em>. What will appear is that GE’s foreign experience provides quite a revealing cultural perception test for the French situation.<\/p>\n

What’s culture got to do with it?<\/h3>\n

The study of national cultures received a major boost from Geert Hofstede’s work, which situates a culture within a five dimensional axiological space. France<\/a> stands out in this framework with a relatively high uncertainty avoidance value, which can be considered as a high aversion to risk. We may consider in addition Yann Algan and Pierre Cahuc’s book<\/a> (in French), which shows a relatively low level of trust in French society. Both factors are bad for innovation, as pointed out by Laurent Alt, to whom we owe these references.<\/p>\n

When it comes to corporate culture, we note that the discussion got started in the eighties mainly by two books : In Search of Excellence<\/em>, by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman, and Corporate Cultures<\/em>, by Terry Deal and Alan Kennedy. The notion remains in circulation to this day, as the title of the recent Booz & Co Global Innovation 1000<\/a><\/em> study shows : Why <\/em>Culture is Key<\/em>. Yet culture as an explanatory concept is not immune to criticisms. In a classical move, Bill Fischer’s response<\/a> to the\u00a0aforementioned\u00a0study asserts that organizational culture is not produced by aspirations, but instead emerges as an outcome from the management system of an enterprise. To refer to culture could mean worrying about something that can’t be acted upon directly, and to neglect available real levers of improvement.<\/p>\n

All considered, it would then seem preferable to abide by Peter F. Drucker’s maxim : “Don’t change culture; use it…”. But this presupposes awareness and real knowledge of a given culture. As a consequence, making use of this notion would then make sense when it is possible to show, based on concrete examples, how culture structures our perceptions. It is the kind of method of analysis used by Michael Lewis in his recent and brilliant book on the 2008 financial crisis. What at first appears to be anecdotal and isolated data can lead to uncovering the equivalent of hidden planets influencing the paths of our decisions. Let’s modestly try to apply his approach to the topic of innovation management : taking what people do outside of France, and looking at how we perceive it here.<\/p>\n

The GE Ecomagination Challenge<\/h3>\n

There is a large choice of examples that illustrate how innovation is managed elsewhere. For this post, we picked a large American corporation putting open innovation in the service of sustainable development: the General Electric Ecomagination Challenge<\/a>. Both a watch and investment tool<\/a>, this initiative is considered by thought leader Stefan Lindegaard<\/a> as a potential role model for open innovation, for the following reasons (quoted):<\/p>\n