Innovation Culture & Organizational Design Flashcards
7 cards from real CPI practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 7 Innovation Culture & Organizational Design flashcards as text
What does the 'exploration vs. exploitation' tension describe in innovation management, as articulated by James March?
Answer: The organizational challenge of simultaneously pursuing new opportunities and optimizing existing capabilities
The exploration-exploitation tension, articulated by James March, describes the fundamental organizational challenge of balancing search for new knowledge and opportunities (exploration) with efficient use of existing assets and capabilities (exploitation).
Which cultural attribute is most consistently associated with high-performing innovative organizations?
Answer: High tolerance for ambiguity, willingness to challenge assumptions, and celebration of learning from failure
Innovative organizations cultivate tolerance for ambiguity, encourage challenging assumptions, and normalize learning from failure, creating an environment where employees feel empowered to take creative risks.
What is 'design thinking' as an organizational capability that extends beyond product development?
Answer: A human-centered problem-solving mindset and process applicable across all organizational functions and challenges
Design thinking extends beyond product design as a broadly applicable human-centered problem-solving approach that organizations can apply to business model challenges, process improvements, customer experience, and strategy.
How do poorly designed incentive systems most commonly suppress innovation culture?
Answer: By rewarding short-term results and penalizing risk-taking, discouraging the experimentation innovation requires
Incentive systems that reward only short-term results, penalize failures, or measure activity over outcomes discourage the risk-taking, experimentation, and long-term thinking that innovation fundamentally requires.
What is a 'Stage-Gate' process and what is its primary critique from an innovation culture perspective?
Answer: A structured product development framework with approval checkpoints, criticized for slowing innovation and rewarding political savvy over experimentation
Stage-Gate is a product development framework with decision checkpoints between phases; critics argue it slows learning cycles, encourages projects to be packaged for approval rather than truth, and penalizes adaptive exploration.
What role does diversity and inclusion play in fostering innovation culture, according to research?
Answer: Diverse teams with varied perspectives, backgrounds, and cognitive styles generate more creative solutions and avoid groupthink
Research consistently shows that diverse teams—in gender, ethnicity, cognitive style, and experience—produce more innovative solutions by bringing varied perspectives that challenge groupthink and surface novel approaches.
What does 'organizational slack' mean in the innovation context, and why do innovative companies intentionally create it?
Answer: Uncommitted resources—time, money, and people—deliberately reserved to allow exploration and experimentation beyond immediate objectives
Organizational slack refers to intentionally reserved uncommitted resources—like Google's famous '20% time'—that allow employees to explore ideas and experiment without every moment being directed toward immediate business objectives.