Is culture Adelaide’s greatest asset?
Adelaideans sense they’re a different breed from other Australians. The Culture Factor Australasia’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.
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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.
Strong IDV cultures invest more in human capital; there’s a watertight positive correlation of 0.84 with the GII measure. That’s combined with a strong sense of egalitarianism, which shows itself in a low correlation with Power Distance (r = -0.56), Hofstede’s measure of hierarchy. Good ideas can come from anywhere and anyone. Innovation is everyone’s job, not the exclusive domain of the boss or other elites.
Is Adelaide more individualistic and less hierarchical than other Australian cities competing for investment?
Arguably so, and it goes back to our roots.
A legacy of personal autonomy
Australia’s capital cities all have their strengths. But only one began as a deliberate experiment in freedom, fairness and civic ambition.
Every Adelaide schoolkid knows the origin story. South Australia wasn’t built by convicts or controlled by authoritarian military governors. It was founded in 1836 by free settlers who purchased land through the South Australian Company, driven by a belief in middle-class self-determination and moral self-governance.
From the start, this was a city of volition, not coercion.
That legacy matters. It seeded a culture that values autonomy, flat structures and social progress – long before these became buzzwords in management textbooks.
Adelaide was the first place in the world to grant women both the right to vote and to stand for parliament. It removed property qualifications for political office. It built one of the most successful public housing systems in Australia – not as a safety net, but as a launchpad for working-class prosperity. In 1975, South Australia became the first place in Australia to decriminalise homosexuality, decades ahead of many other jurisdictions in the English-speaking world.
These weren’t just policies. They were expressions of a deep cultural preference for fairness over hierarchy, and capability over class.
Personal freedom fosters freedom of thought. And that freedom of thought turbocharges innovation. The data prove that cultures with lower power distance and balanced individualism consistently outperform in innovation.
They trust their people rather than control them. They reward initiative and adapt faster. That’s exactly the kind of culture Adelaide has quietly cultivated for nearly two centuries.
For us, such a culture is money in the bank.
A belief in constant, incremental change
The report flags the need for a “continuous improvement mindset”. That cues the cultural attribute of long-term orientation – there’s a correlation of 0.74 with that dimension.
Long-term oriented societies believe in the permanence of change. They put flexible plans in place. They prepare plans which they expect to adapt to circumstance, so they are better able to flex and respond creatively to challenges. Pragmatism rules.
A culture of continuous improvement
In many cultures, change is perceived as a disruption – an unwelcome force that unsettles the status quo. In such short-term-oriented societies, change often triggers anxiety, leading to overreactions and resistance. Initiatives are launched with fanfare, only to be abandoned when immediate results aren’t realised. This “boom and bust” approach hampers sustainable progress.
Adelaide, however, tells a different story.
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It’s a story so familiar to Adelaideans that we overlook how extraordinary it is. We live in the world’s first planned city.
Colonel William Light’s 1837 design laid out a city with expansive parklands and a structured grid, emphasising livability and future growth. The grant of a town acre literally grounded the recipient in future prosperity. It was an important symbol of the city’s strong planning ethos.
This belief in long-term planning met South Australia’s greatest challenge after WWII.
In the Playford era, the city transformed its economy from a service centre for agricultural and mineral wealth to an industrial powerhouse. It was achieved with a belief in the rewards of a disciplined, long-term outlook. Adelaide built an entire new city to the north at Elizabeth, to house technologically demanding industries and their differently-skilled workforces. As a result, the South Australian Housing Trust became the state’s largest builder. It provided affordable housing, fostering community stability and economic mobility. We can sometimes forget what an exceptional feat of innovation and forward thinking it was.
Adelaide proved it can handle the disruptive effect of new technologies with ease and grace. In the 1970s, the Dunstan Era showed that the city could handle disruptive social change in the same way. The city embraced the new social momentum with educational and cultural investments, promoting critical thinking and diversity. Dunstan’s initiatives strengthened public education and positioned Adelaide as a cultural hub.
These milestones reflect a culture that doesn’t just adapt to change, but sees and anticipates it, plans for it, and triumphs. What other city would so prioritise the future that it invested in the world’s most expensive hospital? The answer: a city that is oriented toward the long term. One that an investor can count on as future-proof.
What if we could measure that?
History sets a stage. But data seal the argument.
Does our progressive culture persist into the twenty-first century? And how do we prove it? If our values have changed, what can civic and business leaders do to reshape values and rekindle the spark?
Imagine being able to say, with confidence and data, that:
- Adelaide is less hierarchical than Sydney or Melbourne
- Adelaide residents are more empowered to challenge ideas and shape change
- The city is culturally primed for innovation, not just equipped for it
That’s a story investors don’t hear every day – and a narrative Adelaide is uniquely positioned to tell.
The Committee for Adelaide states that we’ve dropped out of the top 100 most visible cities. The last time Adelaide featured in the Resonance Consultancy/IPSOS list of the World’s 100 Best Cities was in 2021, when it appeared at #75.
At the time, the dominant component of its appeal was its “People score”, an amalgam of diversity, educational achievement and visitor appeal. Adelaide ranked seventh in the world on its People score, higher than any other city in Oceania. In short, the list quantified Adelaide’s culture. And so must we.
Are we our own worst enemy?
In the report, the Committee for Adelaide criticises civic leaders for well-meaning but disparate, unfocussed narratives.
In the words of that fine South Australian institution, the Ehrenberg Bass Institute for Marketing Science, we haven’t created strong memory structures among our global audiences. It hampers our city’s mental availability among decision makers, influencers and investors. The Committee calls for clear and bold storytelling. Our people, and our culture, must anchor the many stories we need to tell.
But the things that make us great potential innovators can hold us back. The high LTO belief in constant, incremental improvement can foster a paralysing perfectionism. High individualism and egalitarianism can create an environment where nobody feels the power to lead.
If we index the WIPO GII data for innovation outputs from institutions against what cultures have put into them, another dimension comes into play.
Low Uncertainty Avoidance indicates a comfort with ambiguity and an acceptance of calculated risk. And it fuels the leaps of faith necessary to turn what you know into what you do – there’s a +0.44 correlation between the acceptance of uncertainty and a higher return in creative output, and a +0.50 correlation with higher technological output.
Does Adelaide have an aversion to uncertainty?
Two of our most dynamic sectors are healthcare and academic research, both of which must maintain high standards of certainty, and whose professionals calculate the risk of error precisely. It should not surprise us if Adelaide is a high-UAI city. A noble practice. But it can shrink the bang we get for our innovation buck.
To drive progress, we must first gather hard facts about our cultural dynamics. Currently, cultural data exist only at the national level. We can fix that.
Such knowledge helps craft a clear, meaningful narrative. Data-based proof can give us the courage to speak boldly about what we know to be true. If the data identify cultural roadblocks, they also give us tools to address them.
It’s time to look inward, to compete outward.
We measure skills, patents, transport, productivity and GDP. It’s time we measure how people actually think, lead and collaborate.
That’s the first step. Not only to construct a compelling narrative, but to empower civic leaders to shape our culture well into the second quarter of the twenty-first century.
At The Culture Factor, we help cities, brands, nations and organizations measure the shared emotional instincts that drive behaviour, collaboration and change-readiness. The Culture Factor Australasia is headquartered in Adelaide. If you’re part of the conversation about our city’s future, we stand ready to help.
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.
