"Business strategy, in a
word, is competitive advantage" Kenichi Ohmae
The business world is currently experiencing a
turbulent time, affected by wars such as the one that is taking place in Syria, which is about to become an international
conflict. Decisions such as Brexit (Exit of the United Kingdom of the European
Union) or the Election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, the
most powerful country in the world, have a huge impact in the business world.
In this way, competitiveness becomes crucial in
the success or failure of new companies (Start Ups) and in those that had been
in the market for long time.
The main objective of business strategy should
be to strengthen competitiveness. At this point it is important to consider the
MIT's Kenichi Ohmae's definition of strategy that states that “Business strategy, in short, is competitive
advantage." Organizations that fail to create and maintain their
competitive advantage over time will be doomed to failure and their consequent
disappearance.
If innovation becomes an organizational
capacity, it will be the next step of competitive advantage.
To make innovation a business reality, it is
not enough to create research and development areas and to invest large sums of money in these specific areas of
the organization. Numerous studies have shown that there is no direct
relationship between areas of Research and Development and the generation of
results for the organization.
Therefore, innovation must be assumed in a less
restricted way and should be an integral part of the whole organization. To
achieve this purpose must be encouraged from the culture of the organization, in
this way, innovation will move from a good desire or aspiration to a phenomenon
that is breathed and lived as a natural dynamic of the company.
For the above mentioned, it is important to evaluate if the culture of your organization
encourages innovation. The starting point is to understand if innovation is
aligned with the company's strategy, if it is
marked as one of the strategic objectives and if the structure supports creativity and continually challenges the Quo status.
For these purposes, Flat structures work much better than hierarchical
structures. Likewise, it is important that knowledge
is managed and error is taken as a natural part of business dynamics and that
recognition programs encourage creation and exceptional achievements. Finally it is important to have competent leadership that recognizes the outstanding
work in daily basis, that involve the team in decision-making
and that generously communicates important changes. It is important to have a
leader that inspires each of the team members to
give their best.
Likewise it is important to have people who are
sufficiently informed of the internal and external context, who act with
autonomy and make decisions with determination and correctness. Their attitude
towards failure must be positive and should invite them to iterate as often as necessary.
People must feel confident to assume risks that will become an opportunity for
reinvention and for generating new ways to face
the permanent changes in the markets.
Finally, we must identify the strengths and
weaknesses in order to achieve the purpose of transforming the culture of the
organization and act accordingly so that culture becomes the main mobilizer of
innovation in the company.
In this way, innovation will be the unequivocal
architect of the organization's competitiveness, generating competitive
advantage that will drive the company to a
sustained growth even in the adverse conditions that the international
environment poses.
Therefore our recommendation
is to do a technical measure of the organizational culture in order to
determine if it is fostering innovation in the company.
Oscar Javier Jiménez Yepes
MBA Javeriana University
Twitter: @Inntegrity8
Facebook: Inntegrity
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