Radical Innovation across Nations: The Preeminence of Corporate Culture

Abstract

Radical innovation is an important driver of the growth, success, and wealth of firms and nations. Because of its importance, authors across various disciplines have proposed many theories about the drivers of such innovation, including government policy and labor, capital, and culture at the national level. The authors contrast these theories with one based on the corporate culture of the firm. They test their theory using survey and archival data from 759 firms across 17 major economies of the world. The results suggest the following: First, among the factors studied, corporate culture is the strongest driver of radical innovation across nations; culture consists of three attitudes and three practices. Second, the commercialization of radical innovations translates into a firm's financial performance; it is a stronger predictor of financial performance than other popular measures, such as patents. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for research and practice.

Innovating for sustainability: a framework for sustainable innovations and a model of sustainable innovations orientation

“…Chandy and Tellis (1998) conceptualize the future focus of firms as the amount of attention they devote to events that are yet to occur. Tellis, Prabhu and Chandy (2009) note that a future orientation forces a firm to realize the limitations of current technologies and the emergence of new technologies that may become dominant in the future. Yadav, Prabhu and Chandy (2007) report that firms whose CEOs are more future focused are (1) faster at detecting new technological opportunities, (2) faster at developing initial products based on these technologies, and (3) better at deploying these initial products.…”

The regional and global competitiveness of multinational firms

“…For example, Balabanis and Diamantopoulos (2004) could not confirm the hypothesized relationship between economic competitiveness and consumer ethnocentrism, and they conclude that this viewpoint does not provide significant value to managers. Tellis et al (2009) investigation of radical innovation in 17 major economies in the world also suggests that widely recognized country-level metrics of labor, capital, government regulation, and culture do not have a direct impact on radical innovation. This lack of empirical support for the application of the Porter home country diamond to international marketing could be due to the methodology and framing adopted in some of these works.…”

“…This lack of empirical support for the application of the Porter home country diamond to international marketing could be due to the methodology and framing adopted in some of these works. For example, some researchers focus only on host country market characteristics in terms of demand potential and similarity of legal and regulatory frameworks (e.g., Cavusgil et al 1993;Cavusgil and Zou 1994), while some others focus on home country characteristics (e.g., Tellis et al 2009). In addition, the literature suggests that Porter's diamond framework can apply to large economies but not to small non-triad nations such as Austria, Australia, Canada, Finland, the Netherlands, and New Zealand (Davis and Ellis 2000;Rugman and D'Cruz 1993).…”

Construyendo una cultura de innovación. Una propuesta de transformación cultural

“…La revisión de la literatura permitió establecer que existe un fuerte vínculo entre la cultura organizacional y los resultados en innovación que las empresas alcanzan (Jaskyte y Dressler, 2005;Chang y Lee, 2007;McLaughlin et al, 2008;O'Connor et al, 2008;Tellis et al, 2009), y que, por ende, se requiere una cultura orientada a la innovación para favorecer esos resultados. El estudio realizado reafirma lo encontrado en la literatura en la medida en que se ha logrado establecer que la cultura organizacional es un determinante fundamental de la capacidad innovadora de las empresas.…”