Socio-Cultural Dimension of Innovation

Determined by many factors such as existing cultural conditions, education, and aesthetics innovation capacity is one of the critical dimensions for economic development. Therefore, by analyzing the factors that promote or constrain the innovation capacity of a society could benefit the economic and social welfare. For the very reason, in this paper, we tried to assess the role of culture in determining innovation capacity of a society, since it is believed that the culture is matter in terms of improving the innovation capacity of a society. For this purpose, we employed Hofstede Index, which is used to measure cultural differences across countries to explore the relationships between culture and innovation. Moreover, inasmuch as innovation capacity is crucial for economic development, we need to consider these questions: could we improve the innovational capacity of a society? If yes, what are the strategies or methods to do it? Although formation of a culture supporting creativity or learning to be creative is tough issue, many scholars claim that it could be learned by following some strategies. Therefore, one may conclude that creativity is a skill that can be developed and a process that can be managed. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.