I disagree with response #11 saying that culture is essentially people. I think there is a distinction between the culture of the company or the culture that the company tries to portray to the public (e.g. when recruiting) on the one hand and the people on the other. Having said that I still agree with Ken's emphasis on culture. A strong culture can really shape the attitudes of the employees. A caveat would be shunning away people to don't fit into the culture but also do great work. So balancing between a strong culture while embracing diversity is really important.

I agree with Potay. Becuase of the nature of being a company and having a marketing team, a company will try to portray itself in a particular manner. I am sure everyone has heard that google is a great place to work and that it has amazing company culture. Really laid back and unique. The truth is that it can be true that the tone exist at the top level but as you look deeper into the company you find different subcultures. I think it is perfectly fine that a company does not have one culture that pervades the entire company structure. I am a fan of subcultures because like Potay noted it is a way of embracing diversity. With diversity, everyone can sort of mesh off of each other and evovle. As we evovle we begin to see better in terms of how we can take a company to the next level. I would be more afraid of a static company where everyone is the same, than a company that values diversity and lets change happen naturally.

The kind of teambuilding culture that Mr. Wilcox dove into in some detail is something that has been mentioned in someway by most of the speakers this quarter. What really impressed me about Wilcox's talk was that he really expressed ways in which his company took pains to observe the talk by walking the walk. Although there may be smaller subcultures in a company, I believe it is very important to have a holistic company culture. I feel if the employees are all going in different directions as directed by their subcultures, there is no unifying feeling between everyone and this negatively impacts the productivity and development of the company. Thus, there is a strong relationship between how closely a company follows a cohesive corporate culture and the final success of a company.

I think Ken's ideas on culture relate to what many of the previous speakers have said about needing to enjoy what you do.  A trend I've seen with the speakers this quarter is that they are all very passionate about what they do - and all mentioned this fact at least once in their speeches.  This is one of the major lessons I will take away from this lecture series.