Sunrise to Sunset: How Rituals Build Real Innovation Cultures
What a coffee shop in Sagres taught me about the power of rituals
Previously on Open Road Ventures: in the last episode of Venturing Insights, we explored the Try Before You Buy approach to startup collaboration, investing and acquisition. If you missed it, you can catch up here!
I’m just back from a few days wandering between Seville, the Algarve, and Lisbon.
Time moved slower there. Different air, different light. I came back with my mind a little clearer, my notebook a little fuller.
One morning in Sagres, where the land falls into the Atlantic, I found Picnic Sagres, a small café tucked between quiet streets, already stirring with the early light.
The scent of espresso reached me before anything else.
Inside, a few surf and lifestyle magazines lay scattered across the counter, their corners curling slightly from the salt air.
The kind of small detail that tells you exactly where you are and where you’re meant to slow down.
My readers know by now that I’m a specialty coffee nerd. I can’t help myself: when I find a good place, I can tell.
And this was one of those places.
At first, it was the coffee that caught me, the kind of cup you search for and rarely find. But then, other details started to unfold.
The opening hours, handwritten: 07:11. 07:09. 07:08.
Different every day, almost secretive.
A small sign explained: opening at sunrise, closing at sunset.
It sounded like poetry, a sweet touch to fit the mood. Curious, I checked the sunrise and sunset times.
And it was true.
Every day, they shifted their hours to follow the sun, without fuss, without announcements.
Even the WiFi password (sorry for the leak), carried the same rhythm: sunrisesunset.
No slogans, no storytelling for Instagram.
Just the quiet stubbornness of a place built around a belief, one that shaped every small action, whether someone was watching or not.
The detail that mattered
The first time I noticed the shifting hours, I thought it was a nice story to match the location.
But the longer I sat there, the clearer it became: it wasn’t storytelling. It was how they ran the place, every day.
Someone checked the sun’s movement. Someone adjusted the hours, quietly, manually, without anyone needing to know.
The people sitting at the tables seemed tuned to the same rhythm: surfers, remote workers, locals reading quietly.
No one rushed. No one demanded.
It felt like the customers were part of the place — not just passing through, but belonging to that way of moving slower, breathing deeper.
There was a sense of loyalty in the air, unspoken but tangible.
And everything about how they ran the place — from the way the tables were arranged to the way orders were taken — was coherent.
Not a branding exercise. Not a curated “experience.” Just a living, breathing extension of what they believed.
They didn’t brand themselves around sunrise and sunset. They operationalized it.
It’s easy to talk about purpose. It’s easy to stick a poster on the wall, craft a mission statement, or run a few workshops.
But living it, embedding it into silent, invisible daily behavior, that’s different. And that’s rare.
The best companies, and the most innovative ones, aren’t born from slogans. They’re the product of cultures where belief turns into behavior.
Where purpose becomes the architecture of what you actually do, not the decoration around it.
That’s not innovation theater. It’s innovation lived from the inside out.
The anatomy of real innovation culture
The more I thought about that small café, the more it echoed something bigger.
It mirrored what research and real-world experience tell us: innovation doesn’t flourish in the abstract.
It needs an innovation culture — one built consciously around values, stories, heroes, and rituals.
Data backs it up clearly:
Organizations with a deeply embedded purpose outperform the market by 5–7% annually over a decade (HBR).
Companies with innovation-aligned cultures are six times more likely to achieve above-average profitability and five times more likely to grow faster (McKinsey).
And yet, up to 80% of corporate innovation initiatives fail (BCG) — not because the ideas aren’t good, but because the culture doesn’t change.
Startups often build these innovation-friendly cultures from scratch.
They can shape rituals, incentives, and beliefs around agility, speed, and boldness from day one.
Existing organizations, instead, face a harder challenge: rebooting deeply rooted habits and assumptions.
And it’s not enough to declare change. Culture has to be hacked, thoughtfully and systematically.
Taking also inspiration from what Steve Blank wrote in a recent article, building an innovation culture means:
Assessing the real values and beliefs lived inside the organization — not the ones printed on brochures.
Defining the new values and beliefs that need to guide the future.
Listing the disconnects between the aspirational culture and the actual one.
Identifying obstacles, including outdated processes (and sometimes, outdated mindsets).
Aligning incentives — compensation, bonuses, promotions — to reward the right behaviors.
Communicating clearly, consistently, and credibly why the shift is happening.
Creating new rituals, stories, and heroes that embody the culture you want to build.
Without this careful, coordinated work across leadership, HR, and finance, any innovation effort risks becoming just another empty initiative.
The result of doing it right is an organization that doesn’t just talk about innovation, but one that supports it, scales it, and delivers it with speed and purpose.
Sunrise to sunset
When I left Picnic Sagres that morning, the light had shifted again.
Surfers with boards under their arms wandered past the windows. Someone was setting fresh pastries behind the counter.
Everything moved with a quiet, certain rhythm.
No posters explained the values. No announcements broadcasted what mattered.
The belief was built into the way the place breathed, hour by hour.
In the world of ventures, corporate innovation, and endless new ideas, it’s tempting to think success comes from bold slogans, cleverness, or speed.
But standing there with the sun climbing overhead, it felt simpler — and more durable — than that.
Innovation begins where belief becomes behavior. Where purpose stops being something you say and becomes something you live, sunrise to sunset.
Maybe the real work of building innovation cultures, in companies or ventures, isn’t about moving faster.
It’s about moving more truthfully.
As usual, a soundtrack for you: