Generolo Jono Žemaičio Lietuvos karo akademija

The article deals with the analysis of the Czech company Linet in an effort to reveal a sustainable business model. It describes the company in the historical context (birth and gradual development), the organizational context (infrastructure) and the innovation context (sources of innovation). The main aim of the article is to find out answers to questions how the company´s journey looked like from zero to the position of European leader in the hospital beds production and what prerequisites the company had to fulfil in order to create a creative culture and what are the imaginary seeds from which its innovations are growing. Fulfilling this goal required to search for literature sources dealing with innovation, innovation sources (opportunities windows), innovation process and innovation companies and also to create a case study that focused on the company´s innovation practice in years 1990-2016. The Linet study is based on six structured interviews with both the founder of the company as well as its current CEO. Research has shown that the company achieved rocket growth thanks to two basic principles, namely constant improvement and respect to people and market focus (openness to the outside world). These principles were applied in practice through controversial thinking, staff inexperience, learning infrastructure, learning and learnership. Openness to the outside world has been identified as an important source of innovation. This openness was ensured by systematic monitoring of the internal and external environment which consisted of staff testing, centres of excellence, patent scanning and the Academy of Productivity and Innovations. The results of the study have led to the conclusion that the company has achieved high innovative performance through ability of absorbing theoretical knowledge, applying it to its processes and principles and integrate it into a comprehensive system that responds to its needs (adapt).

This article deals with the question of how we perceive organizations – as machines for making money, or as living systems with specific needs and objectives. In accordance with these views, a model of a biotic organization has been created with the research aim to measure the level of representation of biotic organizations in the business environment. The model of a biotic organization consists of four principles: amorphous structure, leadership, shared vision and service to its own environment. In practice, the existence of the individual elements of the biotic organization were evaluated by quantitative and qualitative research. Answers were sought and found to the four partial questions put forward, namely: What is the purpose of the existence of the organization? What type of structure is applied in organizations? Is there a shared vision within organizations? Which of these principles, management or leadership, is applied more in practice? The results of the research show that only five percent of organizations in the business environment are biotic organizations. This confirms the research hypothesis that this organizational form is not prevalent in the current economic environment. The low level application of biotic principles reveals that most companies are still organized on the basis of the principles of mechanistic organizations. This is reflected in formal hierarchies, a pyramidal structure and traditional management that create an environment of command and control.