Cross-Cultural Innovation : New Thoughts, Empirical Research, Practical Reports

Cross-cultural means not only the differences between ethnic, racial or national groups. It is more. Cross-cultural confrontations arise by the differences of genders, educational levels, differences in thinking of diverse companies` departments (e.g. production versus research & development, marketing versus finance), the mix of musicians or styles of painting. However, there is a lot of danger in cross-cultural collaboration: Diversity means different views, opinions, values and objectives easily generating misunderstandings and quarrels possibly ending up with serious conflicts. The conflicts may trigger new approaches and breakthroughs or lead to a state of frozen relations and stagnation. Sensitivity to the values and views of other cultures, open communication and aware leadership are traits helping to capitalize on cross-cultural influences. In further discussions with our friends of the EACI board we changed our mind for the new conference topic to CROSS-CULTURAL INNOVATION. Cross-cultural Innovations are new and origin problem solutions, which are generated in confronting problems with cross-cultural aspects. In many cases such solutions are breakthroughs and the start of a paradigm shift. Another advantage of such solutions is that they even influence the subconscious of stakeholders’ problems. Only cross-cultural solutions minimize the risk of hidden problems which develop under the surface in merger projects. Especially mergers of big companies are successful if change-managers are able to transfer cross-cultural conflicts in new challenging objectives. Bridging cultural gaps by visionary leadership is the way to bring people together and to create new common innovative enterprises or departments.

Beyond Business Planning The Role of Creativity in Sustainable Entrepreneurial Development (S. 58-59)

Matthias Eickhoff and Christoph Jakob

Managers do things right, leaders do the right things!" (Warren Bennis/Burt Nanus)

The following model is not based on research results, but outlines the research needs in an area of entrepreneurial development which is growing in importance, that of the creative phases. As a supplement to earlier, primarily analytical approaches, it describes the need businesses have to continuously rediscover themselves in a fast-changing environment. The aim of this approach is to present the entrepreneurial development process as an evolutionary process, thereby providing businesses with further useful working tools. The model is presented as a discussion paper and therefore has deliberately avoided a highly theoretical, referenced approach. Furthermore, we would like to thank the members of the German Society for Creativity for their numerous inspiring discussions, in particular the contributions of Prof. Dr. Horst Geschka, Darmstadt and Prof. Dr. Jörg Mehlhorn, Mainz.

Generally speaking, nowadays producing a business plan is seen as a vital step along the path of forming a business. At the same time it is used to both measure success and is a success factor in its own right.

A business plan is necessary, because both banks and individual or private venture capitalists will only grant credit or participate in the business if the business plan convinces them and promises success . Success from the bank s point of view means the capital invested is repaid with interest, for the venture capitalist this will mean a possibly continuous interest yield, as well as capital gains if they decide to withdraw their interest in the future.

At the same time, the business plan gives the entrepreneur a measuring rod, which he can use to judge his own business. From a business point of view it is a hypothetical construction, which summarises the constituent parts of the business decision-making process, mentally anticipating complex developments which are likely to take place in the near future. Amongst other things, it describes the Unique Selling Propositions (the USPs) of the business, helps predict performance objectives, and transfers entrepreneurial decisions and market circumstances into units of success, which the above-mentioned providers of capital use in order to make their decisions. Thus it provides a measuring rod used to judge success as well as serving as the base for necessary changes, which may have to be made if unforeseen problems arise, or when the anticipated development reaches certain milestones.

What is often even more important is the educational effect of the planning process itself, forcing the entrepreneur to reflect on his own business model, exposing the origins of and obstacles to value creation, and transmitting the feeling about where the money is made . The plan, or to be more precise, producing the plan, becomes an element of success in itself for the budding enterprise.

The central idea of the considerations presented here is a model of creativity and idea-management, which we wish to expand step by step: starting from a concrete question, idea-management first begins to enter a creative, divergent phase. During this phase, ideas should be gathered from a wide radius. Thoughts should diverge from the particular to the general, capturing as many ideas as possible. This first phase should not be concerned with either the technical practicability or economic feasibility of the ideas. Even ideas, which will never be used, are valuable, because they may become catalyst ideas for other, ultimately even better ideas.