Identification des principaux enjeux de développement d'une culture d'innovation au sein d'une PME

Abstract

Innovation and culture have been favourite topics for researchers in recent years. Today, there is no need to specify that innovation is an effective and essential lever for successful companies. Nevertheless, studies on the economic development and performance of Quebec SMEs show a decline in innovation initiatives in participating organizations in recent years. Thus, the Productivity and prosperity in Québec - 2015 report, published by the HEC Montréal Center for Productivity and Prosperity, clearly states that if Quebec wants to return to economic prosperity, we must work to develop a culture of innovation, specifying that it is a "key element of growth and productivity at work". Despite all these writings and findings, the fact remains that the development of an organizational culture that encourages innovation is still a vague concept, difficult to decipher and mostly to apply for all of those who wish to reach it. Our research also shown that innovation is a subjective concept that will find different definitions depending to whom you are talking to. So, in regards to those findings, how to successfully support a company that wants to ensure its growth, but especially its sustainability by undertaking the shift toward the development of a culture that promote and facilitate creativity and innovation? What are the challenges they will have to face in order to change the corporate culture towards a culture that promotes innovation and creativity? This research project attempts to answer these questions. It took place within a Quebec SME founded almost 45 years ago and that wanted to develop a greater capacity for innovation and creativity in order to face the challenges of the market. Based on action research and more specifically conducted under the key principles of Schein's Clinical Inquiry Research (CIR), the results of the interventions led us to conclude that there are five major issues to be addressed and faced by anyone responsible for making a change in organizational culture. These issues can be resumed by: 1. the evolution of the personal culture of the leader; 2. the identification of the basic underlying assumptions of the current culture of the organization; 3. the exploration of the mental mechanisms at work and the reasoning and defensive behaviours used; 4. the maintain of the motivation and the level of mobilization of the team at each stage of the change; 5. the clarification of the individual perceptions and their influence on the understanding of the situation, and the actions to be taken. Finally, this project reveals that even if some brakes on innovation and creativity can be relatively easy to identify by observing the ways of doing business, making lasting changes by eliminating these brakes is a real achievement because it requires to the participants a personal work on the analysis of their own culture, their beliefs, as well as the identification of their personal inconsistencies that may ultimately be the only limits to the achievement of the targeted goal.

Date	17 Dec 2017
Original language	French
Awarding Institution	École de technologie supérieure
Supervisor	James Lapalme (Supervisor)