[svdad]

> Put another way: for self-direction to work, the culture needs to rank improvements as highly as novelty. Possibly higher.

Which it never does. At least, I have yet to experience or hear of a (software) engineering culture in which that's true.

[jacques_chester]

I began to write about Toyota and Admiral Rickover's "Nuclear Navy" cultures, but then stopped.

I'm not sure if cultures like Toyota or the Nuclear Navy can be considered under this heading, as they mostly worked at a procedural-improvement level, rather than a product-improvement level.