BUSINESS RESEARCH

Rethinking Creativity and the Creative Team

Creativity is a ubiquitous management buzz word, often hyped as the silver bullet for unleashing competitive advantage. Yet, few leaders (and practitioners) really understand the concept, its process and its practical applications: how should organisations create the creative team? Are creativity and innovation synonymous? To rescue the term from eventual management fad status, researchers are beginning to explicate the foundations of creativity at work – in short, what it is and what it’s not.

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March 2012

According to Dr. Mark Batey, Associate Professor in Organisational Psychology at Manchester Business School, “Creativity is the process of generating ideas to solve problems and embrace opportunities. Innovation is when you then adopt those ideas and put them into practice”. He adds, “Leaders invariably confuse the two, trying to get into the innovation phase before they have fully been through the creative phase”.

In order to facilitate true innovation, creative teams are traditionally assembled to “deemphasise” conformity to norms of the past. However, recent research suggests a rethink on the “creative team” (see Ideas, Innovation and Research section). The study finds that the best radical-innovation teams comprise three types of people, or ‘cognitive styles’: creatives, detail-oriented individuals and conformists. About 50% of people have a mix of cognitive thought patterns, but for others, leaders should pay attention to the cognitive makeup of their teams to maximise end value creation.

Referenced techniques

Technique

Innovation Management

The concept determines the critical factors of innovation management. It reviews the managerial practices of successful innovators and summarises the strengths and limitations of innovative approaches.

Technique

Innovation Capital

Innovation capital is critical to building a competitive advantage in the knowledge economy. The concept explains how organisations can leverage their unique organisational knowledge to create economies of scale and scope, as well as differentiation.

Technique

Types of Innovations

Innovations may manifest in a variety of forms and are a critical competitive capability of most firms. Case study evidence presented alongside practical implementation steps, assist business leaders to understand how different types of innovation help to build an innovation culture.

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