Building a culture that energizes innovation: creating an innovation culture is notoriously difficult. Here are some fresh insights and a roadmap for tackling the culture conundrum.

• Author: Jaruzelski, Barry
• Position: Strategy

Certain companies always appear to be first to market with clever new ideas, while others manage just fine by making numerous incremental improvements on their past successes. Some companies seem to generate one great new product after another, while others depend for years on the same old stand-by offerings. Some companies seem to slide slowly into irrelevance and bankruptcy, while others succeed in emerging reborn from years in the doldrums.

What drives these fundamental differences among companies and how they innovate? All else being equal, there are two things working together: strategy and culture.

Strategy encompasses the conscious decisions companies make regarding how they plan to innovate and take their products and services to market. Some organizations are determined to be first to market with products developed in tight collaboration with customers (such as The Procter & Gamble Co.). Others leverage their technological expertise to develop new products with a singular focus on having a deep understanding of customer needs (think Apple Inc.).

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Stilt others prefer to be so-called "fast followers" picking up quickly on what's working in their markets and introducing similar products at less expense to the company and its customers (such as Samsung Group).

Culture, on the other hand, is typically a much less conscious element of corporate life. Within the realm of corporate culture, innovation cultures differ, just as innovation strategies do.

Companies with cultures that strongly support innovation capabilities--such as Google Inc. and P&G--usually combine openness to new ideas from within and without with a healthy respect for the opinions of customers.

Those with cultures that do not support innovation capabilities, by contrast, are frequently the victims of their own past success--when old ideas continue to bring in revenue, even if less and less each year, the drive to innovate can all too often seem little more than a hard-to-justify expense.

The key to success in innovation, of course, lies in making sure these two critical aspects of innovation--strategy and culture--are in alignment and working together. So companies that seek an advantage through innovation are well advised to choose a strategy that fits within the context of its overall corporate strategy.

Perhaps more importantly, leaders in innovative companies must ensure that their culture fully supports and energizes their specific innovation strategies and goals.

It is critical to seek a synchronicity between a firm's business strategy, innovation strategy and innovation culture. There is no single ''right" culture, but rather the one that is aligned with a company's business and innovation strategy.

That the two elements of innovation work together is critical. For the past seven years, Booz & Co. has conducted an annual study of the link between corporate research and development spending and innovation...