The culture of innovation styles: Are our corporate cultures tuned for innovation?

Systems engineering work is requiring increasing collaboration among various enterperprises, nations, and individuals to innovate to meet the comlex needs of large numbers of stakeholders. This indicates a need to better understand the cultural differences in innovation styles that can enable or hinder collaboration. This paper argues that applying the Hofstede Cross-Cultural Dimensions to enterprises will provide useful insights for systems engineering enterprises in working with cross-cultural teams. Furthermore, this paper seeks to apply the Hofstede dimensions to identifying enterprise cultures conducive to innovation, radical and incremental. By exploring the relationship between the Hofstede Dimensions and Miller and Friesen's Conservative and Entreprenurial Innovation Models, and between the Hofstede Dimensions and Brown's System Model of Technological Innovation, this paper seeks to help enterprises match their culture to the type of innovation their enterprise culture supports. Furthermore, it suggests future research to investigate and compare the Hofstede dimensions of defense organizations and of the companies listed on the BusinessWeek Most Innovative Companies List.