Companies spend enormous amounts of time crafting strategy, and yet many fail. Not because they were wrong, but because the organization was incapable of executing them.
Strategy is a plan. Culture is behavior.
You can design the most innovative strategy on paper, but if the culture punishes risk, avoids experimentation, or resists change, the strategy will remain theoretical. Culture defines what is acceptable. It shapes how people react to uncertainty. It determines whether employees feel safe proposing new ideas.
Consider companies like Kodak. They understood digital photography. They even developed early prototypes. The problem was not lack of strategy. The problem was a culture that protected the existing business model.
In innovation-driven environments, culture often matters more than strategy because innovation cannot be forced. It emerges from behavior patterns, trust, and openness. A strong culture aligned with innovation allows imperfect strategies to evolve and improve.