A Systematic Analysis Of Culture-driven Elements In Innovation

Innovation is universally acknowledged as the best way in modifying economic developing mode. Culture influences innovation process in an invisible way, and permeates every procedure of innovation. Culture decides the innovative environment, and determines the innovation performance through its influence on the innovation subjects’ thinking and behavior patterns. Therefore, a comprehensive study on how cultural factors affect innovation is quite necessary in an era when construction of an innovative country is promoted to a state-level policy.A cross-disciplinary perspective is adopted in this study, and the theoretical background covers fields of cultural and historical geography, innovation theories, knowledge management, regional science, social and evolutionary psychology, etc. Literature analysis, theoretical exploration, case studies and empirical studies are implemented to probe the key cultural factors that facilitate the innovation process, so as to construct the cultural system that assists the innovation process.Firstly, the study constructs a cultural system consists of national, regional, organizational and personal levels. The denotation and connotation of four layers are interactive but not following a simple linear relationship. The cultural factors of each level may work on different innovative processes or share their working effects. The symbiotic culture system is consistent while it can simultaneously adapt to the innovation needs and develop accordingly. This study focuses on the cultural factors analysis of each level and how they work on the innovation process.At the national level, the study explores into the sources of various cultures and how different cultures affect science development and innovation performance. Different cultural dimensions, such as those proposed by Kluckhohn, Hofstede, Trompenarrs, are employed in the analysis. Moreover, a national innovation capacity evaluation indicator system is designed to generate statistical data of national innovation capacity. Canonical correlations and multiple stepwise regression are adopted to study how the various cultural factors, e.g. individualism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, etc. work on the innovation process.At the regional level, the study also probes the sources and illustrations of regional cultural differences. Based on cultural differences, China is divided into several regions, and innovation performance of each cultural region is analyzed, so as to generate various cultural factors that promote or prohibit the innovation process. It is revealed that Wuyue cultural region enjoys the best innovation performance in China; hence, the typical cultural features of the culture are analyzed.Corporate culture is studied as the representative of organizational culture, since enterprises play a key role in the national innovation system. Three factors contribute to the cultural motivation system at this level, namely, typical innovative cultural, features, organizational structure under the guidance of culture, and subculture cooperation mode. The study researches how the system works on the enterprise innovation performance, and a case study is made on how high-context and low-context cultural dimensions influence the corporate knowledge innovation.Innovative culture literacy is proposed at the personal level, which is believed to be the core factor in personal innovation performance. The concept is studied in terms of its connotation, representation, formation, etc. Science literacy, the key connotation of innovative culture literacy, is studied from the cultural perspective.This study diagnoses the cultural needs of innovation process by analyzing different layers of culture in a dynamic and comprehensive way. Cultural sources of different innovation performance are studied, and key cultural factors that promote innovation performance are generated and their working mechanisms are constructed. Therefore, the complicated and non-linear relationship between cultural factors and innovation is clearly illustrated.It is revealed that although the cultural factors are inherent and consistent, the cultural system also follows a self-modification developing mode, by taking in innovative factors that may finally lead to cultural prosperity, when the system is experiencing interaction and communication with outer cultural factors. The innovative factors are integrated in the original system through biological inheritance, cognitive mechanisms, and acculturation processes, and finally lead to a better innovation performance.Cultural features should be considered in the innovation promotion attempts. For instance, Chinese culture may possess certain negative factors, e.g. prematurity and exclusiveness, yet the cultural features such as collectivism, higher power distance can be taken advantage of to form a peculiar innovation path of China. Moreover, although the values and belief system of culture are comparatively consistent, the social control factors such as education system, laws and regulations, economic motivation systems, etc. can be modified towards a better innovation performance.