Going away from the “protocol culture”: Innovation, complexity and the need for a culture of variety

Purpose – The paper roots in the largely accepted definition of culture as set of experiences or life practices, and values. After criticizing the "culture of the protocol", the paper develops a concept antithetical to it: the culture of variety, seen as necessary richness of the values endowment of the organizations that want to innovate and survive in complex contexts. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is rooted in the Viable System Approach (VSA) that conceives complexity as a cognitive subjective phenomena. According to the recent VSA lines of research, complexity depends on the information variety to face complexity; information variety is articulated in three dimensions: informative units, interpretative schemes and values. The last one (values) is just the cultural dimension and its nature (rich or poor in variety) deeply influences the cognitive capability of a system (individual or organization) in promoting, accepting or refusing the change. Originality/value – The VSA proposal to link information variety to values is new and it could lead to original insight in understanding the role of cultural values in promoting (or impeding) innovation in complex environment. Practical implications – The principle of requisite variety is a very concrete managerial principle: if an organization is not capable to change by adapting itself in response to external changes, it will not be able to survive. Here is a call for manager and researchers: a shift to a more flexible, open and responsible view of organizations, less focused on the ‘certainty’ of the structure and technology, and open to the unpredictable outcomes of the human side of the system’s dynamics which is essentially emergent in nature.