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

The paper starts with 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 the necessary richness of the values endowment of the organizations that want to innovate and survive in complex contexts. The paper is framed in the Viable System Approach (VSA). According to the VSA, information variety is articulated in three dimensions: informative units, interpretative schemes, and values. The last one 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. The VSA proposal linking 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.