More important though than being able to measure national culture is that there are correlations with the initiation and implementation stages of innovation. Kiwi culture makes us very individualist and self-reliant, quite egalitarian, low in assertiveness, high in harmony seeking, inclined to pursue individual adventure and discovery and gives us a short time horizon. It results in us seeking our sense of self from pursuits outside of our work life.

It is very unusual in that it is so strongly and consistently biased in favour of one part of the innovation process over the other, i.e. initiation over implementation. It means that Kiwis are on average, more motivated, excited, and stimulated by initiating innovation and entrepreneurial endeavours than they are by the latter implementation stages. Implementation, remember, is where value is created and captured.

This has a whole raft of ramifications that I don’t have time to explore in detail tonight but I’d like to illustrate with an example. We are all familiar with the 'tall poppy syndrome'. It appears to be our relatively high egalitarianism moderating our high individualism. Its affects include causing underperformance and efforts to stay below the radar. Alone its affects would probably be modest but combined with some of our other cultural attributes, the results are profound.

For example when combined with our low assertiveness (amongst the lowest of the nations studied) and high harmony seeking (amongst the highest), we exhibit a profound reluctance to give, receive and act upon feedback. Remember Annette’s “if you are not failing you are not learning”. Envisage then the barriers to learning that we create when we do not welcome feedback. Envisage how difficult it is to properly engage with customers in other nations.

Bill Day made an interesting comment to me that dealing with Australians is a particular trap because they appear so similar but are really quite different. So reluctant are we to giving direct answers that people like the Germans and Dutch think at first that we are being elusive. They talk about us ‘beating around the bush’.

In case you think that national culture is some esoteric academic pursuit I’d like to tell you that national culture has real and measurable impacts — literally. More particularly to Power Distance and in this case the co-pilots deference to authority.

The important message is that KAL were able to implement strategies to compensate for a cultural ‘weakness’ in this context. They subsequently received an international award for safety improvement.

In the same study Kiwi pilots were determined to be the least likely to defer to unreasonable authority — which is a very good thing in this instance. We observe culture through what people say and how they behave in various situations. We find introspection very difficult so this first example may be surprising and challenging but it’s entirely consistent with what we would expect from the literature and from our own research.

Each of these behaviours in the three examples is a consequence of Kiwi culture. A key point is that culture is neither good nor bad — it simply influences how we think and behave in particular situations — including how we manage our businesses. When as Kiwis we can recognise the role our culture plays in the way we manage, we can adapt. Of that we can be certain — we are highly adaptable. To do that though, like KAL we need to adopt management practises and strategies and tools designed specifically to exploit our strengths and compensate for our weaknesses.

One tool that we particularly recommend is the development of intellectual asset strategies. It has been our experience that Kiwi firms let a substantial amount of value slip through their fingers. The IA assessment and strategy process is designed to explore all the value creating opportunities that already exist within the firm that may or may not have been recognised, to document those, evaluate their criticality, the firm’s resilience in the face of compromise, to determine protection options, and to uncover and develop new commercialisation opportunities. New Zealand’s inventiveness and entrepreneurial spirit, if properly managed can create and capture more value from the same amount of effort and for that our firms, sectors and nation would greatly benefit.

Tony Smale is a innovation and management consultant for Enzyme Intellect. This article is adapted from his presentation for Entrepreneurs’ Organisation, New Zealand Chapter, on 19th November