Intercultural innovation: Leveraging multi-cultural thinking

Rather than seeing different cultures in the workforce as a problem, it could be an un-utilised asset under our nose. Frank Wyatt and Lynda Ford explain how the online incubator cultov8 drives intercultural innovation.

Imagine four different cultures addressing the same problem from their own cultural perspectives, not normalised to only re-generate Eurocentric thinking. Imagine the diversity and creativity we would see.

Perfect examples of this exist all around the world, right under our nose, yet we don’t optimise this opportunity, we normalise it.

Different cultures solve the same problem in different ways, adding their own diverse nuance to the solutions. For example:

Housing: Different cultures solve the issue of housing in different ways, utilising space, materials, relational perspectives in different ways.

Food: Bread is a traditional staple in every culture, with the exception of the Japanese who for a couple of centuries banned the eating of occidental food. Bread is a staple food, made from different grains, in different ways and used ceremonially differently in every other culture.

Mobility: Historically different cultures resolved the issue of mobility in different ways. Even today, the Japanese manufacturing processes have provided the world with solutions that otherwise didn’t exist from the Chicago or Northern Italian car industry.

Relationships: Relationship management is governed by cultural determinants. Even though in the West our relationship norms have become more fluid, traditional communities retain norms to solve problems, which we sometimes don’t even see as we’re not living in their shoes, in their land, in the pattern of dominant ideas and cultural norms.

Interestingly, we’ve accepted the fusion of so many foods into our day to day life as we eat pasta, sushi, miso soup, sausages from 45 different nations of the world, Indian curries and now bread from Sudan and Ethiopia. We’ve done the same with clothes, housing styles and so many other aspects of our life – all responding to our hunger for innovation and diversity in our lives.

First coined by Lynda Ford, Director of iGen Foundation Ltd the name Cultovate is an abbreviation of two words: intercultural + innovation. We drive intercultural innovation through our online incubator called cultov8.

This term represents the fostering of productivity growth for managers and that which occurs in businesses when they apply the mindsets of different cultures with diverse innovative problem solving processes. Australia does this well in some quarters, yet could leverage it much more with management leadership.

The purposeful leveraging of the different perspectives and thinking patterns of cultures works by blending these capabilities and optimising the solutions generated by this process, as they learn from each other to produce a result that can be represented as 1+1+1+1 = 10.

Rather than seeing different cultures in the workforce as a problem, we should see it as an un-utilised asset under our nose, awaiting our insight into how this complex of cultural solutions can be leveraged to generate innovation and business diversity.

Using un-utilised assets to generate value is one version of business model innovation!

So how could you go about doing this?

• Organisational cultural changes

Very little change occurs, and resistance will be evident, when you leap from one approach to another, so do this in stages and with heaps of encouragement. Remember that in many cases people’s perspectives from their place of origin have rarely been drawn upon in their previous experience, even though in their homes they may use their ethnic origin to deal with day to day problems, so give them permission to use their cultural approach.

• Identify a problem

Is it an entry level problem? It may require a solution that draws upon your team’s different perspectives.

• Invite a cross cultural team to use their own problem-solving approach

Recognise that team members have different backgrounds with rich traditions of solving problems in their place of origin. Remind them that you value their diversity. Invite them to bring to the table solutions based on their approach to solving problems.

• Dominant voice versus respect for diversity

This is not about the dominant voice normalising or forcing a single view; this is about respecting each other’s unique thinking and decision approaches, perspectives of solution process, and how they might solve the problem. Create an environment that allows all voices equal access to the conversation – in some cases you may need to draw this out as cultural norms toward authority or lack of confidence in English proficiency, amongst other issues, may act as barriers to full participation.

• Capture all approaches

Now that you have the creative juices flowing, capture all their approaches, invite them to tell the group how they would approach the problem and how they view the problem. Compare and contrast the different perspectives.

Maybe invite them to draw how they see the problem and share these pictures.

Creative visualisation is a strategy designed by de Bono to enable people alternative approaches to articulating their visualisation of an idea.

Then separately, invite them to draw what it might look like if solved and again compare the pictures.

• Integrate the solutions

Now invite your team to choose the approaches that might best solve the problem and be creative about the way they work together to tackle these issues. Cultural approaches don’t extend only to problem-solving but also to implementation.

Please let us know about your experiences in your culturally diverse workforces. We’d like to capture intercultural innovation ideas and share them.

Co-authored by Lynda Ford and Frank Wyatt from iGen Foundation Ltd. This article was first published here and is republished with the permission of the author.