Creativity and

Management of
Innovation
Creativity and Innovation
Management

Today's Organizations mainly rely on intellectual properties, and in elite

positions, creativity and innovation are the golden keys for the
organizational success.

The highly competitive nature of today’s business needs creative and

innovative ideas for dominant success. Although good service is the
essence of a successful business (in long term), novel ideas are jumping
advancements; thus, a company has no chance to win this competitive
game in the absence of creativity and innovation.

Innovation Management

Initially, innovation management was formed to provide an efficient

managing system for Research & Development (R&D), but it has now
spread far beyond this area due to the importance of innovation in
various fields of business. In general, innovation management has two
main duties to manage both input and output of innovative materials.

In the former case, innovation management must conduct the flow of

innovative ideas (like new discoveries) into the organization for
subsequent usages. In other words, it is needed to collect all relevant
external innovations to serve the internal innovative system.
In the latter case, the internal innovation should be managed in a proper
manner. According to the customer’s needs, an organization always
should have new products and services to satisfy their needs. Internal
innovative system is responsible for analyzing the external needs,
estimating the internal possibilities, and proposing new innovative ideas.

Creative People in Organization

Due to the importance of creativity and innovation for an organization,

in a modern management, it is necessary to distinguish creative people.
In general, people in technical positions, associated with elite positions
(leading the organization strategy), are divided to two groups: creative
people and their assistants.

This creative group is divided to two different groups namely initiators

and problem solvers. The initiators are indeed creative people who "have
that additional mental ability that enables them to recognize previously
unrealized problems and to evaluate their importance … It is one thing
to have an idea about specific problem; it is quite another to have an idea
about what it is that is worth having idea about” (Hilberry 1953).

Although problem solvers are key persons in an organization

(particularly in critical situations), the problems should be introduced to
them, as they are not problem finders. In other words, problem solvers
should follow the initiators (though not exactly the relationship of
creative people – assistants).
The initiators are also divided to two distinguishable groups’ viz.
discoverers and inventors. Although these two groups are usually
considered identical, they are significantly different. Discoverers work
on a higher creative position of the organization by dealing with the
question “why?” for analyzing a phenomenon or a problem; but
inventors serve the routine performance of the organization by
struggling with the question “how” things work and can be made to
work better.

It is obvious that distinguishing these creativity-based groups is an

important duty of the management system, and is only possible in the
light of modern aspects of creativity and innovation management.

Coaching, training or learning about creativity and innovation involves

mastery of at least 12 domains.

These include:

a) Creativity and Innovation differences and definitions.

Often used interchangeably, they ought to be considered separate and

distinct. Creativity can be described as problem identification and idea
generation and innovation idea selection, development and
commercialization. Creativity can also be measured according to the
number of ideas produced and their diversity and novelty.
b) Creative Types.

Are some people creative and others not? Why is it that some people just
seem to be more so? Some theorists argue for creativity traits such as
tolerance for ambiguity and intolerance of conformity whilst others
counter that traits are hard to identify and not stable or transferable
across situations. Further, motivation is more important.

c) Learning versus talent.

Is creativity a talent or can it be learned and developed? How conclusive

are nature and nurture arguments and does it improve with experience?
What do people who regularly have to produce good ideas have to say?

d) Motivation.

Motivation is arguably more important than traits. How can it be gauged,

measured and monitored?

e) Organizational culture.

Some cultures inhibit creativity whilst others foster it? We can all be
more creative so what is stopping us?
f) Organizational structure.

What properties of an organizational structure most foster creativity?

There are many reasons why an entity has a particular organizational
structure: history, logistics, market segmentation, product line, strategy
and so forth. It is often unreasonable to ask a firm to change its
organizational structure, so how do we get around this problem?

g) Team structure.

Some individuals who have worked alone have made great contributions
to society. Yet many argue that smaller teams overcome the limitations
of the individual. Still others argue that groups introduce negative such
as groupthink and politicking, which gets worse with size. So, what is
the most effective group structure for maximizing the frequency and
quality of creative output?

h) Knowledge Management.

Coaches and leaders have to understand how to maximize and

effectively use networks, collaboration and elicitation of tacit knowledge
techniques if they are to benefit from the intellectual cross pollination
that is the raw material of the idea generation process.
i) Radial versus Incremental leaps.

Everybody seems to want to make radical leaps, which has led to a

distortion of the value of incremental movement. It is an understanding
of incremental movement that is the surest fire way to radical
movement. Large movements most often result from small changes.

j) Structure and Goals.

Are structures and goals inhibitive or do they increase creative output?

Research from people who continually output material (screenwriters,
comedians, musicians) argues that structure is vital.

k) Process.

Is there a process that makes insight (also known as aha or eureka) more
likely? It seems that there are triggers and processes that can be used to
get the mind working on problems at various cognitive levels.

l) Valuation.

The first stage of innovation is idea selection. How do we make the go

or kill decision between ideas?
References

J. Balderston, P. Birnbaum, R. Goodman, and M. Stahl, Modern

Management Techniques in Engineering and R&D, Van Nostrand
Reinhold, 1984.

N. Hilberry, Elements of Basic Research Management Philosophy at

Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont,
Illinois, 1953.