When Innovation Isn’t Part of the Culture

Firms in Asia face a challenge their Western counterparts might not.

I was giving a talk earlier this year when the subject of innovation came up. An employee from an engineering firm (in this case, a Western multinational’s operation in China) raised his hand and said, “In China, we were raised not to question things, not to challenge existing ways of doing things. It makes it pretty hard to be innovative.”

Good point.

I remember teaching in a master’s degree program in Singapore a few years ago and one of my students (a mid-career professional) telling me, “My job is to sit along the wall quietly for 20 years until I’m senior enough to sit at the big table.”

These environments are not naturally going to produce great innovators.

Companies in Asia need to realize that the cultural environment has often encouraged people to follow the status quo without rocking the boat. New ideas have historically been restricted to a few “great thinkers,” who in many cases are either politicians or politically-connected.

That’s not to say innovation cannot come out of Asia. Japan introduced the world to manufacturing techniques in the 1970s and 80s that improved production. Singapore has created economic policies and certain technologies that are especially useful for the island city-state’s particular situation.

True creativity, though, is hard to come by in any culture where adherence to social expectations is prized over individuality, where children are encouraged to follow “safe” careers so they will make enough money to support their parents later in life, and where teachers and professors are put up on a pedestal with their every word accepted as unquestioned truth.

I would argue that attitudes are changing as educational practices have changed, BUT it takes time for these new students with new attitudes to enter the workforce. Singapore, for example, adjusted the curricula throughout primary and secondary school starting back in 2002, but it’s only now that those students are beginning to enter the workplace, so we can finally get an idea of how that new curriculum can change perspectives.

Firms that need innovation and creativity should realize that, in Asia, creating the proper organizational culture means first addressing the national culture around them.