Organizational culture as a knowledge repository for increased innovative capacity

Just as 'innovate or die' is one of the mantras of today's economy, knowledge is increasingly recognized as the key underpinning resource. Effective innovation that improves the ability of an organization to remain competitive within an uncertain environment requires the creation, capture, harvest, sharing and application of knowledge and expertise. The ability of an organization to 'learn' means that knowledge must be utilized on problems and opportunities as they emerge and is generated through an ongoing evaluation of how those responses have impacted on the organization and its operating environment. Much has been written about the process of innovation from idea generation through downstreaming and operationalization to commercialization. Organizational culture has been recognized as a primary determinant within innovation and the need to better understand this relationship or process is a necessary prerequisite to nurturing it in a more structured and systematic manner. Innovation is holistic in nature and is inseparable from the culture that facilitates or constrains the ability to 'add value'. This paper explores and presents organizational culture as a 'bundle' of knowledge repositories with storing and information processing capabilities. Drawing upon the knowledge management and innovation literature the location, attributes and characteristics of these repositories are provisionally identified and mapped. Primary data drawn from an R&D environment within telecommunications is then used to develop a tool for auditing, intervening, changing and maintaining knowledge repositories. This is a three-stage process comprising an audit tool that identifies various cultural archetypes and their respective audited knowledge layers; an intervention tool that suggests various interventions and strategies for targeted change to the audited knowledge layers and an innovation maintenance tool that proposes strategies for 'maintenance' of the desired organizational culture archetype. It will be argued that organizational learning plays an important part in ensuring that knowledge repositories are continually replenished and updated to enable efficient responses to changes in its competitive environment. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.