Culture of Innovation

Culture of Innovation Survey of Tratos, a cable manufacturing company

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

“This may seem a strange way to begin with an autobiography. A confession: I hate having to use the first person. Nearly everything I have done in my life has been accomplished with other people.” (Welch 2003). Yet when you write a book like this, you are forced to use the narrative “I” when it is really the “we” that counts.

I want to mention everyone who has helped to shape my character, my values, and my career. My ancestors: those with whom I got the honour of sharing a part of their lives; My great-great-grandmother Emilia; my great-grandmothers Giuseppa and Rita; my great-grandfather Silvestro; my grandfathers Amleto, Amerigo and Pietro; my grandmothers, Maria, Viviana, Marina, (I was surrounded by love); my parents - my loving mother Giovanna and my father Germano (the only man that I have ever envied); my sister Sara, my brother-in-law Vincenzo (who has more than once reviewed this work); my nephews and nieces - Tommaso, Luca, Rita, Teresa; my loving wife Alessandra, my daughters Giulia Maria, Lucia Maria, Elena Maria and Anna; my family - my uncles Marcellino, Fulvio, Gabriele; my aunties - Anna, Silvana, Giulia; my Godchildren - Daniele, Fabio, Elettra; my parents in law: Franca and Pino; my teachers - in particular my English high school teacher Prof. Burroni, Prof. Rizzo, Prof. Teti; my bookteachers- Don Luigi Giussani, Jack Welch, Mervyn King, Warren Buffett, Winston Churchill; my priests – Gilfredo, Evio, Virgilio, Juan Carlos, Severino, Francesco; my classmates in school and Universities - Domenico, Francesco, Federico, Rocco, Luca, Massimo, Teresa, Conor, Costa, Vivien, Maria, Roberto; my bosses - Albano, Marta, Ennio, Elisabetta; my mentors in business - Silvano, Alfredo, John Light, John Cooper, Thomas, Neil, Jeanette, Bridgett, Ottonel, Stephan, Leonardo, Alberto and Prof. Roberto Ruozi; my Cass supporter- Lorraine; my guardian angels - Elena, Martina, Enrico, Lucrezia, Sally, Denise and Paolo; my truth-seekers in the academy- Prof Paul Dobson, Prof. Ajay Bhalla, Prof. Gianvito Lanzolla, Dr. Alessandro Giudici and Prof. Davide Ravasi, in particularly for his patience: my cluster mates- Simone, Sergio, Piero, Raffaella; my colleagues and believers at Tratos - James and Rodger Card, Kevin, Peter, Jon, Philip, Cindy, Veronica, Zilah, Rainer, Craig, Andrew, Barbara, Vincenzo, Francesco, Alan, Kath, Sue, Gianfranco, Chris; the Tratos shareholders/owners, who have given me their trust; and my friends from all the walks of life.

“No man is an island, /Entire of itself, /Every man is a piece of the continent, /A part of the main. / If a clod be washed/away by the sea, /Europe is the less. /As well as if a promontory were. /As well as if a manor of thy friend’s /Or of thine own were: /any man’s death diminishes me, /Because I am involved in mankind, /And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; /It tolls for thee.” (Donne 1624)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Tratos had to break with traditional market places and products to grow - by building unique business modules, forging direct stakeholder relationships (customers, suppliers) and refusing to deal with distributors or agents.

In short it has survived and flourished for 50 years thanks to a focus on innovation. As CEO, I lead a business that is part of one of the fastest-moving commercial environments, a sector driven by innovation and repeatedly defined by the art of the possible.

The business is cable manufacturing, but at Tratos we do it differently. Innovation is one of the pillars around which the business has grown. There’s still much to do - to find out more about innovation in business, and how a culture of innovation can be nurtured. The best was to do this was to look at the best practice in the space, and apply the thinking to Tratos to establish how deep innovation was ingrained and what more could be done to encourage it.

We talk to our customers, we deal with them directly. That means we can establish, firsthand, their technical needs. This direct line to customers’ technical people creates the opportunity to produce radical technological solutions alongside our customers. As a result, Tratos stopped selling a cable product, and began selling innovation-led solutions.

By identifying the hot spots for innovation within Tratos earlier, and facilitating an easier route to practical innovation, how might that accelerate the business? The survey results provided a clear path to better innovation.

For instance, the survey of Tratos employees saw the company rated highly externally (3rd out of 18) on innovation, its disciplined approach to innovation and its ability to develop new capabilities from its work (6 out of 18).

Yet employees ranked certain individual components of success poorly. Its inability to minimise rules, polices and bureaucracy; its accountability of responsibilities and decision-making and entrepreneurialism (exploring opportunities) and `the action-orientated company’ (the ability to avoid analysis paralysis by exhibiting a bias towards action when a new opportunity is identified).