Innovation Culture

55 ideas, not seen as advantageous, as the biggest fear for the company is to become a corporate organization (Interview 6: 46:00). A complete opposite approach to this is formulated by the respondent from Move Innovation, who is of the belief that a systematic approach for the development of innovation is needed in order to grow (Interview 4: 1:02:24).

56 Engagement is an important part of the culture in Festina Finance, as a common trait for the employees are that they think it is fun to do what they do regarding work tasks (Interview 2: 14:03), but else engagement is not mentioned by the respondents in the conducted interviews.

Risk-taking is a part of the culture in the majority of the SMEs. In Invokers they have designed a whole floor with different materials and objects that aim to make the employees experiment and try out new things (Interview 3:

18:03).

In Abtion, there is also culture of trying new things (Interview 3: 11:53), but the innovation culture as a safe environment are being questioned as in they in Abtion are challenging their employees who like stability and being in a comfort zone (Interview 1: 12:10) and challenging them on this is a part of their success (Interview 3: 12:33).

In contrast, Trustworks are actively focusing on creating a safe environment by allocating a share of the sales amount to the employees in case of an acquisition. Yet they are still aware of creating a culture where experimentation is a part of the daily activities and are driven by employees (Interview 6: 21:00).

The same environment can be seen in Move Innovation, as they want their employees to feel safe, so they can be innovative and in the pursuit of being innovative, it is acceptable to fail (Interview 6: 03:10).

For several of the SMEs, independent thinking is important as well in order to create an innovation culture. In Trustworks, it is seen as an advantage if the employees are able to do things on their own (Interview 6: 37:40).

In Festina Finance they are supporting independent thinking among employees, as they are highly reliant on employees who are able to think out of the box and thereby be innovative (Interview 2: 37:33).

Encouragement and reward of new ideas (Amabile, 1996; Worren, Moore &

Cardona, 2002,) and creativity (Amabile, 1996, 1997; de Brentani, 2001;

Ernst, 2003) must be analysed as well in order to define if these factors are decisive factors for creating an innovation culture in Danish SMEs.

57 Firstly, the encouragement of new ideas is identified in several of the conducted interviews. In Abtion, the respondent mentions that they have a culture of and support to try different things (Interview 1: 11:40).

The same is the case in Abtion, where they directly encourages their employees to experiment and try things out (Interview 3: 18:03) and this is the same belief in Trustworks, where the respondent states that an encouragement is needed or else an innovation culture can not be created, and such encouragement can be found in Trustworks (Interview 6: 54:20).

A reward of new ideas is identified as well. A distinction between rewarding on an individual level and team level though seems to be important in the organizations. An example of such is provided by the respondent from Festina Finance, where it is emphasized that the employees say “we” instead of “I” when a new product is created (Interview 2: 31:02). When asked about the motivation of employees in terms of bonuses, the answer provided was that it is difficult to create a bonus program that does not distort something (Interview 2: 34:20).

Adding to the factors of what in innovation culture encourages experimentation is toleration of creative mistakes and fostering of learning from failure (Atuahene-Gima & Ko, 2001; Botcheva et al., 2002; Cooper &

Kleinschmidt, 1995; Cummings & Teng, 2003; Day & Schoemaker, 2002;

Brentani & Kleinschmidt, 2004; Huber, 1996; Sundgren et al., 2005). In Festina Finance, the respondent emphasizes that it is more than okay to fail in the company and to be open about making mistakes. It is further argued that if openness about failing is not accepted, the failures will accumulate, and then things end up in an explosion (Interview 2: 32:40).

Disagreement among team members is important for innovation processes in an organization (Dornblaser et al., 1989; Ring & van de Ven, 1989), but only in one of the conducted interviews disagreement was mentioned. Here it was not dissent among team members that were mentioned, but rather dissent among management and team members regarding the hiring process in the company (Interview 1: 21:50).

58 Regarding innovation culture, an analysis of the research of innovation culture in SMEs, as presented by Wolf, Kaudela-Baum and Meissner (2012) is of great importance due to the field of study of the research. For a description of the four innovation profiles identified in the study, see Appendix 3.

When analysing the conducted interviews, the network-based innovation (NBI) type is by far the most represented. But the identified innovation types seldom appear in their absolute form in the studied SMEs. However, most of the conducted interviews represent traits of the NBI type, as this type gather innovation ideas from external sources rather than creating their own ideas (Wolf, Kaudela-Baum & Meissner, 2012, p. 258). As an example, the respondent from Abtion mentions that they innovate with their customers (Interview 1: 09:15).

The respondent from Festina Finance provides another perspective on the NBI form of innovation, as innovation here is formulated as an interplay between the company and the client (Interview 2: 28:24) but adds that the customers often are poor at being innovative and hereby implies that Festina Finance are the innovative entity in that interplay. Furthermore, the respondent states that the customer has the need, and the company creates the product for that need and the innovation happens as a part of that (Interview 2: 41:38).

Another perspective of NBI and how it does not appear in an absolute form is by the respondent from Move Innovation. Here innovation is defined as happening 80% externally and 20% internally (Interview 4: 49:45) and innovation here does not fit the description of NBI in an absolute form.

The respondent from Trustworks tends to provide the same. First, he argues that innovation happens pretty internally (Interview 6: 44:52), but hereafter acknowledges that development happens with the business partners who facilitate things for Trustworks.

Invokers, the one company who potentially could be defined as having a holistic innovation profile (HI), also have characteristics of the NBI profile.

Regarding the responsibility of innovative ideas that are to be implemented in the company, the respondent exemplifies this by how an employee has been visiting the client and as a result of this visit; a reduction of applications on their mobile device was made (Interview 3: 35:54). By this example, HI can therefore not be defined as the best-suited innovation profile for the

59 company. Neither can NBI, and yet again, the conclusion of the different innovation profiles appearing in an absolute form seems to be unobtainable.

Besides the four different innovation profiles, findings from the study are being defined as “successful innovation processes are facilitated by both excellent knowledge of employees and financial back-up” (Wolf, Kaudela-Baum & Meissner, 2012, p. 266). In the conducted interviews, knowledge of employees is mentioned in several of them. Especially in Trustworks, the respondent identifies the knowledge of the employees as very important. It is explicitly stated that knowledge fills in the culture (Interview 6: 07:11).

Financial back-up does not by the respondents seem to be the most essential in their innovation processes. In Trustworks, the acquisition of the original company is mentioned, but only to illustrate that the new management created processes and structures that affected the culture in a negative way (Interview 6: 05:54). The respondent mentions how the now present CIO funded the company with the money from the sale of his former company until Festina Finance had their first customer (Interview 2: 04:05).