Here we are in 2010, some seven years after Henry Chesbrough published the book Open Innovation and we are still seeing a wide disparity in results from open innovation initiatives. In addition, there are many companies that are still trying to determine if they should even try or pilot an open innovation program. What does organizational culture have to do with the success of open innovation?

Hill and Jones defined organization culture in their book Strategic Management (Houghton Mifflin, 2001) as “the specific collection of values and norms that are shared by people and groups in an organization and that control the way they interact with each other and with stakeholders outside the organization.”

If we break this definition down (at a very high level) and apply it to open innovation can we glean any insights?

First, let’s explore the phrase “collection of values and norms that are shared by people and groups in an organization.” If an organization has always relied on internal resources for innovation and all of the major successes have originated internally, then it will by default be hard to convince this group of people to suddenly change the way they have innovated in the past to look broadly outside of the organization for co-development partners. On the other hand, if there have been innovation successes that have originated through supplier or university partnerships in the past, then this group of people will be much more receptive to changing to be more open to new innovations that originate from outside the firm.

The phrase “control the way they interact with each other and with stakeholders outside the organization” lends insight as well. Here “interact with stakeholders outside the organization” is insightful. Many times we have seen an organization overcome the hurdle of reaching broadly outside the organization to search for new co-development partners only to hit a wall when having to assess what they find from outside the organization and build agreements for co-development and sharing of intellectual property.

One of the lessons I have learned over the years is that you cannot directly change culture. You can change individual behaviors and through this process slowly change culture. In looking at organizations that have benefited from open innovation, what I have seen is an emphasis on changing behaviors through training, rewards, recognition and managers that constantly ask – Have you looked outside? What did you find? How did you use what you found?