Wanted: A managerial culture that embraces cultural differences

CAN innovators become transnational managers? Obviously the answer is yes - we have only to look at the examples: Bill Gates (Microsoft), Jack Ma (Alibaba) or Wang Jianlin (Dalian Wanda). They have developed from small beginnings to be global forces. Or the many automotive managers who have transformed local into global operations. Yet these guys are few in number if one considers all the highly innovative, often backyard, firms in the world. Their owners, with their friends, often work hard on an idea only to find eventually that it will not sell. Most innovations fail (many rightly so), but there are others that deserve to succeed locally and, perhaps, transnationally. How can we achieve a higher effective transition rate from backyard to commercial success?

The answers lie in several directions. Some would say that we need more venture or angel capitalists to provide seeding finance to bring the young product to commercial success. But even a vibrant capitalist marketplace such as the US has failed in recent years due to the economic slowdown after 2008, and not all nations have such a liquid capital market.

There is also a global lowering of trust. Innovators worry about intellectual property theft, capitalists worry about payback, and potential customers reject the weasel-words of marketing gurus. Research by Deborah Dougherty as long ago as 1992 showed that the styles used by people in organising their thinking and actions about innovation, which she called "interpretive schema", are major barriers to linking and collaboration. Overcoming these barriers requires cultural solutions, not just structural ones.