Radical Innovation: The Real Brake Is Organisational Culture

There is no radical innovation without a suitable organisational culture. That is the thesis Susann Fiedler, professor of Business and Psychology at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, brought to Alpha Innovation Live, the annual conference run by NOI Techpark in Bolzano. Her starting point is a common assumption, that people are naturally cautious and need to be guided through change with patience. For Fiedler the real question is different: how well companies can encourage innovation. In Italy, and more broadly in Europe, the focus is strong on performance and on carrying out tasks correctly. But innovating means doing things in a new way, and where there is no single right answer you are, by definition, dealing with ambiguity, which adults in particular find hard to accept.

The Weight of Outcome Bias

Fiedler then explained why judging only by results is risky. When an initiative goes well, we tend to conclude the original decision was right. But in uncertain areas a choice can be sound and still end badly because of later factors, or the reverse. Judging only the outcome leads to wrong assessments and weakens decision making. On top of this comes a very human habit: people avoid risk and prefer to adapt to the system rather than put their own position at stake.

Celebrating Mistakes You Can Learn From

If the system itself holds certain behaviours back, the answer is to change the system. How many organisations allow people to say openly that they got something wrong? How many block those who are afraid to act differently? For Fiedler the value of experimentation lies in what you learn, and learning should be the real goal of companies, today focused almost only on results. The practical advice concerns managers: faced with a failed initiative, the right question is what was learned, not what went wrong. It is not enough to ask people to be more innovative: they must be allowed to explore, good decisions must be separated from good results, and changes of opinion must be accepted. Asked about their own organisations, the conference audience landed close to the balance point: answers were almost evenly split between focus on the core business and freedom to explore new ideas (48% and 52%), with a slight lean toward experimentation and learning (56% against 44%) over risk aversion.

The Durst Case: Ideas Every Friday

In the discussion that followed, Harald Oberrauch, chairman of Technicon AG, said he did not fully share the approach, because in his view it does not apply equally to established processes, and placed himself somewhere between core business and innovation. His experience at Durst, which moved from darkroom equipment to industrial digital printing systems and is now expanding into digital production, automation and advanced manufacturing, shows a culture built with method. Every Friday there is an open session to gather ideas. When someone brings one, the company checks in the field whether real market demand exists. And whoever wants to start an innovation path, in a spin off logic, can count on a dedicated budget.

Spaces, Decisions and Structures

Jelena Spanjol, director of the Institute for Innovation Management at LMU Munich, moved the discussion to a more structural level. Where does radical innovation happen? In a physical space, such as a dedicated room or a place outside the company, or in a digital one, with platforms to collect ideas. Then come how decisions are made and whether there is a reference figure, perhaps a Chief Innovation Officer. On this last point Oberrauch holds the opposite view: in his organisations there is no dedicated role, because innovation must be in everyone’s head. There is, however, a committee of three people that evaluates new ideas, and in his experience the best results came when its members did not share the same opinion.

What It Means for Companies

A culture that rewards learning also changes how leaders are chosen and developed. The ideas that emerged in Bolzano are close to Euren’s work: using assessment to understand how a manager reacts to error and uncertainty, building development paths that train the courage to experiment, supporting organisations with change management when culture needs rethinking, and looking through executive search for leaders able to guide in ambiguous contexts. As Fiedler herself reminds us, innovation does not need people who always do the right thing, but people with the courage to act.