W. L. Gore & Associates has been called “the most innovative company in America” by Fast Company magazine –and has been named to that magazine’s current Fast 50 list of innovative companies. It’s consistently been listed as one of the best places to work. And its corporate culture de-emphasizes hierarchy so much that its current CEO became CEO only after her peers nominated her. It’s no wonder that W.L. Gore’s current CEO, Terri Kelly, thinks the company’s corporate culture has a lot to do with its ability to innovate.
As Kelly said in a recent presentation at the MIT Sloan School of Management,
A lot of companies ask about ’How do you innovate ? What do you invest in R&D?’ They’re not really the right questions to ask. We would flip that and talk more around ‘How do we create the right environment where collaboration happens naturally — that people actually want to work together, that they actually like to be part of something greater than just the individual contribution?’ And if you get that part right, all the other pieces fall in place that allow us to creat this great innovation cycle within Gore.
Kelly’s 55-minute presentation describes how W. L Gore’s unusual culture nurtures innovation through a variety of atypical practices and values — from a preference for small facility size to the idea that “leaders….are only leaders if someone wants to actually follow them.”
Her talk is well worth listening to and offers an example of how one company has, over time, distributed leadership and developed a culture of innovation. It’s tempting to highlight a number of individual practices here, but, as Kelly points out in her speech, “it all has to work as a system.”
Posted in: Innovation, corporate culture
February 18th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
Really, it´s an impressive way of pushing an organization to become innovative.
It remains the challenge of managing all the contributions and ideas that are worth implementing. Is there a way of doing so at L.W. Gore?
Cheers.
February 19th, 2009 at 11:32 am
[...] me enteré vía una publicación del MIT Sloan Management Review que Gore fue seleccionada por la revista Fast Company como la empresa más innovadora en América y [...]
February 20th, 2009 at 12:05 am
[...] SOURCE: Improvisations MIT Blog [...]
February 21st, 2009 at 3:49 am
It’s impressive way of thinking to take companies to become innovatives which is always unkown. Dr. Muhammad Naeem ul Fateh
February 23rd, 2009 at 4:40 am
[...] W.L. Gore & Associates - we believe one of the outstanding companies in Management Innovation. Watch CEO Terri Kelly’s inspiring talk at the MIT Sloan School of Management. [...]
March 4th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
It is definitely a presentation worth watching, as much as I could. It’s a pity I haven’t been able to see the whole presentation as it always gets stuck after 15 or 20 minutes.
March 5th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
I had a similar occurrence (2x now) as Carlos so have not been able to see the entire presentation.
October 5th, 2009 at 10:11 pm
[...] W.L. Gore & Associates – we believe one of the outstanding companies in Management Innovation. Watch CEO Terri Kelly’s inspiring talk at the MIT Sloan School of Management. [...]