Is Culture Adelaide's greatest asset?
First published in Indaily newspaper on 12/5/2025. Link to article here.
Adelaideans sense they’re a different breed from other Australians. The Culture FactorAustralasia’s Martin Karaffa and Christopher Organ ask whether we can we turn that gut-based conviction into hard data which prove it.
The Committee for Adelaide recently released the 2025 edition of its report, Benchmarking Adelaide.
First published in 2023, the report rates Adelaide against 20 cities selected as peers. Each has a population of between one and two million people, and all are “reputed for their livability”.
Much of the news is very good, indeed.
The report ranks Adelaide third amongst its peers in both the range of university specializations and its share of high-impact research. From July 2021 to January 2024, the city’s startup ecosystem grew at a compounded annual rate of 89 per cent, and boasts the fourth fastest growth in VC funding among peers. Like every other Australian city, Adelaide faces productivity, infrastructure and housing affordability challenges. But its competitive strengths make a powerful case for optimism, and the report maps practical steps toward further growth and prosperity.
For its many merits, the report misses a sleeper strength that the city enjoys – and it’s a game changer. Adelaide’s distinctive culture.
Instinctively, Adelaideans sense they’re a different breed from other Australians. But can we turn that gut-based conviction into hard data which prove it? Further, how does this proven cultural difference spell profit for investors or venture capitalists? How does our culture, potentially, feed the innovative businesses that will enrich us?
It starts with the ability to measure the culture of our city.
Quantifying a Cultural Advantage
Most who encounter the city form an impression of Adelaidean culture.
Gracious living, relaxed pace and gustatory pleasure. A vibrant arts scene. Architectural Digest names Adelaide the most beautiful city in the world, and UNESCO names it a City of Music.
Those are artefacts of culture, icons of time, place and generations. But real cultural insight runs much deeper.
Quite simply, wherever a group of people share an emotional preference, they form a culture. Are they unselfconscious about following impulses? Do they value independence? Do they respect or challenge hierarchies? How comfortable are they with ambiguity? Do they believe in constant, incremental change, or is change always traumatic? What do they truly value?
Such profound preferences rest deep in our emotional core and build the foundation of the cultures we create. History and sense of community anchor these emotions deeply. They underpin our cultural beliefs and show remarkable persistence over time.
The pre-eminent way to quantify these shared emotional instincts is through the 6D model pioneered by the late Professor Geert Hofstede in the 1980s.
The terms he used for the dimensions of cultural difference likely will ring a bell with readers who have studied business or the social sciences; Individualism vs Collectivism, Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance, Long Term Orientation, and Indulgence vs Restraint. For our purposes, we will use the data provided by The Culture Factor in Helsinki. They quantify how one culture differs from another.
What kind of culture pays dividends in innovation and productivity? And does Adelaide have it in greater abundance than the other cities in Australia, which compete for capital, investment, visibility and stature?
Figures are available for Australia as a whole. But Adelaide is different. We need to measure the difference before we can make a unified narrative about ourselves and present it in a clear, memorable way to the rest of the world.
Here’s why that’s important.
Does Adelaide have a culture for innovation?
Each year, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) publishes the Global Innovation Index. In addition to awarding an overall score for innovation, the GII measures five categories of input; from infrastructure, to investment in research and human capital, from institutional strength to business and market sophistication. They square these off against measures of both technological and creative output. A simple correlation exercise with global scores for The Culture Factor’s 6D data reveals what kind of culture most fosters innovation.
Global data says the most innovative societies share key traits:
- High Individualism (IDV): a belief in personal autonomy.
- Low Power Distance (PDI): a distaste for hierarchy.
- Long Term Orientation (LTO): a belief in continuous, incremental improvement
Is such a culture hiding in plain sight?
Egalitarianism and individualism
Those cultures that score highest on the GII are Individualistic; there is a robust positive correlation of 0.77 with Hofstede’s measure of IDV.
In such societies, the social fabric remains strong, but it has a comfortable, loose knit. People value the ability to pursue their own beliefs, express themselves freely and follow the paths down which their minds and hearts lead them.
Much of the news is very good, indeed.
The report ranks Adelaide third amongst its peers in both the range of university specializations and its share of high-impact research. From July 2021 to January 2024, the city’s startup ecosystem grew at a compounded annual rate of 89 per cent, and boasts the fourth fastest growth in VC funding among peers. Like every other Australian city, Adelaide faces productivity, infrastructure and housing affordability challenges. But its competitive strengths make a powerful case for optimism, and the report maps practical steps toward further growth and prosperity.
For its many merits, the report misses a sleeper strength that the city enjoys – and it’s a game changer. Adelaide’s distinctive culture.
Instinctively, Adelaideans sense they’re a different breed from other Australians. But can we turn that gut-based conviction into hard data which prove it? Further, how does this proven cultural difference spell profit for investors or venture capitalists? How does our culture, potentially, feed the innovative businesses that will enrich us?
It starts with the ability to measure the culture of our city.
Quantifying a Cultural Advantage
Most who encounter the city form an impression of Adelaidean culture.
Gracious living, relaxed pace and gustatory pleasure. A vibrant arts scene. Architectural Digest names Adelaide the most beautiful city in the world, and UNESCO names it a City of Music.
Those are artefacts of culture, icons of time, place and generations. But real cultural insight runs much deeper.
Quite simply, wherever a group of people share an emotional preference, they form a culture. Are they unselfconscious about following impulses? Do they value independence? Do they respect or challenge hierarchies? How comfortable are they with ambiguity? Do they believe in constant, incremental change, or is change always traumatic? What do they truly value?
Such profound preferences rest deep in our emotional core and build the foundation of the cultures we create. History and sense of community anchor these emotions deeply. They underpin our cultural beliefs and show remarkable persistence over time.
The pre-eminent way to quantify these shared emotional instincts is through the 6D model pioneered by the late Professor Geert Hofstede in the 1980s.
The terms he used for the dimensions of cultural difference likely will ring a bell with readers who have studied business or the social sciences; Individualism vs Collectivism, Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance, Long Term Orientation, and Indulgence vs Restraint. For our purposes, we will use the data provided by The Culture Factor in Helsinki. They quantify how one culture differs from another.
What kind of culture pays dividends in innovation and productivity? And does Adelaide have it in greater abundance than the other cities in Australia, which compete for capital, investment, visibility and stature?
Figures are available for Australia as a whole. But Adelaide is different. We need to measure the difference before we can make a unified narrative about ourselves and present it in a clear, memorable way to the rest of the world.
Here’s why that’s important.
Does Adelaide have a culture for innovation?
Each year, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) publishes the Global Innovation Index. In addition to awarding an overall score for innovation, the GII measures five categories of input; from infrastructure, to investment in research and human capital, from institutional strength to business and market sophistication. They square these off against measures of both technological and creative output. A simple correlation exercise with global scores for The Culture Factor’s 6D data reveals what kind of culture most fosters innovation.
Global data says the most innovative societies share key traits:
- High Individualism (IDV): a belief in personal autonomy.
- Low Power Distance (PDI): a distaste for hierarchy.
- Long Term Orientation (LTO): a belief in continuous, incremental improvement
Is such a culture hiding in plain sight?
Egalitarianism and individualism
Those cultures that score highest on the GII are Individualistic; there is a robust positive correlation of 0.77 with Hofstede’s measure of IDV.
In such societies, the social fabric remains strong, but it has a comfortable, loose knit. People value the ability to pursue their own beliefs, express themselves freely and follow the paths down which their minds and hearts lead them.
Martin Karaffa leads the consumer practice at The Culture Factor Group and is an intercultural marketing consultant based in Munich. Formerly a global strategy lead at BBDO and JWT, he has developed brand strategy for clients across five continents. A University of Adelaide graduate, Martin brings a research-driven approach to decoding generational and cultural dynamics, advising global automotive, leisure, and FMCG brands and institutions like the United Nations on cultural intelligence.
Christopher Organ is the Managing Director of The Culture Factor Group Australasia. With qualifications in psychology, organisation design and programme management he brings over 25 years of experience in transformation strategy across sectors from technology to government. Christopher advises executive teams across APAC and Europe on aligning culture with enterprise strategy and navigating intercultural challenges with The Culture Factor’s global frameworks.