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Informal Organisation - Culture

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EDHEC MBA, Suzana Gorea Reaction Paper: Session 4 – Informal Organization: Culture Word Count: 595 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------“Culture isn’t just one aspect of the game, it is the game. In the end, an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value.” states Lou Gerstner, the man who turned around a failing IBM in the ‘90s. Just at about the same time and just as IDEO’s founders, Gerstner focused, above all things, on the customers’ profiles and needs, and built an internal organization capable of delivering on a daily basis on those needs. A second most important principle both organizations applied is the “one-stop shop” format, delivering on the “at the end of the day, in every industry there is an integrator” prophecy. IDEO took the perspective to a superior level: it integrated and seamlessly aligned its business strategy, its innovative market proposition that went beyond the “specialist” approach of traditional consultancies, with its processes, capabilities, human capital and architecture to create the ultimately innovative business proposition culture. Refuting the traditional mindset of “predefined series of orderly steps”, the idea of design/ ecosystem/ integrative thinking encapsulates the very essence of a human-centered product development disruptive strategy. What is incommensurably striking about IDEO is the degree to which the “integrated culture supported business nodes”, those elements of the informal organization, support the successful delivery of its business strategy. As IDEO “develops everything with the end user’s daily usage in mind”, its human-centered business proposition pervades its interdisciplinary culture. Both its business strategy and organizational culture anchor that the “lone genius

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