The internal environment..

The most successful innovative companies have an organizational structure that is entirely focused on innovation. This has effect on several parts of the culture like the hiring process, the reward system and employee empowerment. 

The first step in facilitating ongoing innovations is creating a culture that allows innovations to take place. This will be an open culture that allows ideas to be fostered and innovations to grow. This has to come from the top because the “normal” corporate culture does not encourage the employees to do so. The second step is to adapt the habits and processes accordingly. The employees should become used to being creative, and when new employees are hired they should understand this flow. This can be done by building innovation into the companies human resource policies, meaning that a systematic approach needs to be created to run the business, with innovations foremost in mind.


Corporate climate and culture.. 

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To facilitate ongoing innovation, you need to create a culture that allows innovations to take place. This will be an open culture that allows ideas to be fostered and innovations to grow. This has to come from the top because the “normal” corporate culture does not encourage the employees to do so.

Dominating companies in the future won’t be the ones that solely focus on product and service innovations, but they are the ones that manage to create a sustainable environment focused on innovation, via an appropriate culture and climate.
The social environment of a company has influence on the creative behavior, but an organization cannot simply decide to become innovative unless they create an environment where the employees feel comfortable regarding innovation creation. The culture is an important part in this since it has to ability to enhance the innovative tendencies of the employees. The climate can be defined as the company’s true priorities, encompassing the procedures, practices, incentive system and daily operation. The culture normally refers to the beliefs and values of the company and in some way is the same as climate, but at a deeper level. A company that is able to create a strong culture has staff members which truly believe in the processes, products and customers.The question if the corporate culture enhances the innovative process strongly depends on the norms, set by the company. Without a good, strong and companywide culture, it does not matter how strong the desire to innovate is and few ideas will be generated.

There are two factors which leaders should accomplish in order to create a successful and endurable innovative culture. The first is that leaders should be aware of their environment and the impact which they have on it, so that they are able to communicate properly without the gap between the management and operational level. The second factor is that the leader should be able to accept the ambiguity that occurs when working with innovations. Without ambiguity, only routine actions will be produced, undermining the entire innovative concept. 

Human resources..

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The company’s internal resources are an important asset regarding competitive advantages due to the specific and hard to copy nature. 
The human resource department plays an important role in the innovative process since they are responsible for the recruitment of the right people for the job while creating the ideal mix of skills. By using for example the Myers-Briggs type indicator test, the HR department is able to measure psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions. Together with the Belbin team role inventory, which differentiates 9 different types of roles, an ideal mix of employees can be formed. Another task of the HR department is the training of employees since this is one of the key success factors in employee driven innovation. By implementing innovation and creativity training programs, the skills and performance of the employees are increased. 
The success of a project will depend on the human resource practices of the company and needs to be superior to the competition. Furthermore, they have to play a role in new service developments, they need to be part of the strategic business planning and they have to be able to change according to market needs. This will make it difficult to copy, along with the fact that valuable staff members will be attracted, making the employees a competitive advantage rather than a cost factor