A Culture of Innovation - Silicon Valley Style
Surprisingly, in Silicon Valley, innovation culture is not all about technology. Recently, Jasna Sims, Group Head of Innovation Culture at Lendlease spoke about her visit to Silicon Valley as part of the “Discover the secrets of Silicon Valley’s Tech Giants” tour.
She visited Salesforce, Airbnb, Tesla and Slack amongst others.
Her take-home message about innovation in the Valley is that it’s about:
- Talent
- Customer
- Culture
Talent - Jasna was told that talent today want to “change the world”. So, your job as a business is to figure out how you’re “changing the world” (your why) so employees can connect with you in a deeper and more authentic way – and will therefore commit and stay.
Customer - The focus of the companies she visited was intensely on the customer. The customer’s voice is impregnated into every touch point of the business and every step of the innovation process, from ideation to implementation.
Culture – Culture is king – but always, through the lens of customer success. One company even had a Head of Story-Telling role to draw out a continual stream of customer success stories to enrich and inform their culture.
Is innovation through talent, customer and culture part of your strategy?