Creativity and Innovation in Business and Beyond

Social Science Perspectives and Policy Implications

Leon Mann, Janet Chan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781136840630
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Développement commercial

In many modern economies, creativity, the essential prerequisite for innovation, tends to be assumed or neglected while the catchphrase "innovation" dominates the field of business as the key to national performance and competitiveness. Creativity and Innovation in Business and Beyond illustrates the ways in which creativity spurs innovation and innovation enables creativity – not only in the realms of business and management, where the innovation is regularly acknowledged and discussed, but throughout the social sciences. With contributions from experts in fields as far-flung as policy, history, economics, economic geography, sociology, law, psychology, social psychology and education, in addition to business and management, this volume explores the manifold avenues for creativity and innovation at many levels including nation, region, city, institution, organisation, and team across a multitude of sectors and settings.

1 Introduction

Creativity and Innovation

Janet Chan and Leon Mann

Worldwide Interest in Creativity and Innovation

The terms “creativity” and “innovation” traditionally referred to separate spheres of social life: creativity was primarily associated with activities of the arts, while innovation was linked to scientific discoveries or technological advances. Where creativity evoked images of paintings and sculptures, innovation brought to mind new products and technologies. This apparent separation was further exacerbated by the link between technological innovation and economic productivity, while the creative arts were considered socially valuable but nonetheless “non-productive labour” (Potts 2007). Hence the creative arts were sustained by government welfare in the form of grants, subsidies or special funds, whereas science and technology received both public funding and private investments.

The situation changed dramatically around the beginning of this century. “Creativity” is now increasingly twinned with “innovation” and mentioned in association with the economy. Here are some examples. A 2008 government report Creative Britain: New Talents for the New Economy saw “creativity as the engine of economic growth for towns, cities and regions” (UK Department for Culture, Media and Sports [DCMS] 2008, 6). It called for public funding to “stimulate creativity and sharpen Britain’s creative edge” and set out a blueprint to make Britain “the world’s creative hub” (2008, 6). The European Union declared 2009 the European Year of Creativity and Innovation.¹ The aim was to “raise awareness of the importance of creativity and innovation for personal, social and economic development; to disseminate good practices; to stimulate education and research; to promote policy debate on related issues” (European Union 2009). In Australia, a report, Imagine Australia, prepared for the Prime Minister’s Science Engineering and Innovation Council (PMSEIC), argued strongly for a “comprehensive approach to fostering creativity” in order for Australia to be “globally competitive” (Australia, PMSEIC 2005, 5).

Why is the term “creativity” now so closely linked to innovation and the economy? One obvious reason is that over the past decade, the notion of a “creative economy” has come to the forefront in public policy in many countries. The decline of the industrial economy has highlighted the importance of the so-called “knowledge economy” and, more recently, the “Creative Class” (Florida 2003) as a driving force of this new economy. The report Creative Britain states that in the UK, the creative sector employs two million people, contributes £60 billion a year to the British economy and has grown at double the rate of the economy as a whole over the last ten years (UK DCMS 2008). The report defines the creative sector as including “advertising, architecture, the art and antiques market, crafts, design, designer fashion, film, interactive leisure software, music, the performing arts, publishing, software and computer services, television and radio” (2008, n. 1).

The new interest in creativity as a partner to innovation is not limited to the creative industries; the idea is that creativity should be applicable to all areas of the economy (Redhead 2004). The Imagine Australia report explicitly discusses “the role of creativity in the innovation economy”. It is in favour of investing in creativity so as to develop a “creative and innovative society, culture and workforce” (PMSEIC 2005, 7). The report includes a quote from the prime minister of Singapore: “For many years we concentrated on the economic side. But if you want the economic side to flourish, you need more entrepreneurs, you need more creativity. The two must go together” (2005, 6). The European Union similarly advocated nurturing creativity “in a lifelong learning process where theory and practice go hand in hand”; making schools and universities “places where students and teachers engage in creative thinking and learning by doing”; transforming workplaces into “learning sites”; promoting a “strong, independent and diverse cultural sector”, scientific research and “design processes, thinking and tools”; and supporting business innovation that “contributes to prosperity and sustainability” (EU 2009).

In the world of high-tech industry, the processes of creativity and innovation are viewed increasingly as highly connected as some of the world’s leading companies search for new ideas in the areas of pharmaceuticals, electronics, optics, information technology, energy, etc., for the “engines of tomorrow” (Buderi 2000): the more original the ideas generated for new products and services, the more successful the companies will become. Large innovative multinational companies such as Proctor & Gamble, Eli Lilly and IBM look to the “ideas pipeline” for new ideas sourced from leading-edge customers, firms in other industries, university laboratories and their own research centres. Companies such as Rolls-Royce, Pfizer and Microsoft also establish research collaborations and knowledge networks to access novel ideas and new knowledge external to the organisation for translation of that knowledge into company innovation. The quest by high-tech industry to find or discover new, creative ideas to turn into new products and services has spurred a growing interest in how best to manage creative researchers and professionals (see Mann, Chapter 10 this volume), how to foster and develop creative ideas and concepts in organisations (see Dodgson, this volume) and how to design research organisations to balance creativity and control (West, Chapter 12 this volume).

Unfortunately some of these new developments linking creativity and innovation have been accompanied by hype and exaggeration, especially in the tendency by some commentators to uncritically describe any new idea as creativity and any change as innovation. As one author observes:

creativity and the creative industries have been oversold. Definitions of creativity and the creative industries have been deliberately extended and manipulated, partly for self-serving reasons, partly to paint an inviting picture of our social and economic futures. In the process, the idea of creativity has been disconnected from the values which give it meaning and reduced to a banal pursuit of novelty. The creative industries have been similarly decontextualized, singled out for special mention as the cutting edge of a new economy. In reality the creative industries and the creative economy represent a shift in the way the economy as a whole is functioning, rather than a coherent category or industry sub-sector. (Bilton 2007, xx)

Similarly, Richard Florida warns against seeing creativity as a commodity: “Creativity comes from people. And while people can be hired and fired, their creative capacity cannot be bought and sold, or turned on and off at will” (2003, 5).

There are other good reasons to be cautious about jumping on the creativity – innovation bandwagon. Words such as creativity and innovation are “in danger of being over-worked and over-hyped” (Cutler Report 2008, 15). Like many other buzzwords such as community, partnership, social capital, etc., creativity and innovation are “hurrah” words that are tagged on to policies or programs to make them seem new and ground-breaking. Creativity, according to a critic, is a word that has been “debased” by “a generation of bureaucrats, civil servants, managers and politicians, lazily used as political margarine to spread approvingly and inclusively over any activity with a non-material element to it” (Tusa 2003, 6). Bruce Nussbaum went as far as pronouncing that “innovation” is dead: “It was done in by CEOs, consultants, marketers, advertisers and business journalists who degraded and devalued the idea by conflating it with change, technology, design, globalization, trendiness, and anything ‘new’” (Nussbaum 2008).

Myths and Misconceptions About Creativity and Innovation

The hype about creativity and innovation is also exacerbated by a host of cultural myths and misconceptions that are not based on serious or systematic research. Berkun (2007) made a list of ten common myths about innovation, some of which also apply to creativity (cf. Sawyer 2006). For example, there is a myth that creativity is about personal talent. According to this myth, creative people are either geniuses or slightly mad. In other words, creativity is either a gift that a person is born with or a consequence of some mental abnormality. It is exemplified by the fairy tales of overnight success when a star is born through the discovery of hidden talent. Such a view ignores the knowledge, skills, training and persistent work required in creative achievements. It also underplays the degree to which creativity is the result of mutual help and collaboration between people.

A second myth cited by Berkun (2007) is that of the “lone inventor”. As pointed out by Robert Merton (1961) and by Dean Simonton (2003), scientific “multiples”—multiple discoveries made by two or more scientists independently—are actually quite common: Simonton’s (2003) research found 449 doublets, 104 triplets, eighteen quadruplets, seven quintuplets and one octuplet. The common occurrence of multiples can be explained by the way science works: the accumulation of scientific knowledge, the frequent interaction between scientists and the institutionalisation of scientific methods, so that “[o]nce the needed antecedent conditions obtain, discoveries are off-shoots of their time, rather than turning up altogether at random” (Merton 1961, 473). However, Simonton’s analysis suggests that scientific creativity exhibits the characteristics of a constrained stochastic process: it “demands the intrusion of a restricted amount of chance, randomness or unpredictability” (2003, 476). This means that, given the way scientists work, the probability of several researchers independently making the same discovery increases with the number of scientists working on the same research question, using the same techniques and concepts.

Another myth is that innovation involves “Eureka” moments—discoveries and breakthroughs that are dramatic or even earth shattering. As Eureka moments are rare in the history of science, breakthroughs are seen as a matter of luck or accident, rather than persistent hard work. In fact, discoveries and innovations involve many incremental and plodding steps that precede the final breakthrough. As Berkun points out, “there is no singular magic moment; instead, there are many smaller insights accumulated over time” (2007, 7): nearly all innovations of the twentieth century (the Internet, the Web browser, the search engine, and so on) are the result of years and even decades of work and the contributions of numerous people and organisations.

Finally, there is a misconception that creativity is a universal quality independent of social and historical context. The misconception is based on the assumption that the novelty and value of a creative product or innovation will be recognised and acknowledged whenever and wherever it occurs. Yet the judgment of a product as creative, as “new and valuable”, as “original” and so on, changes with time and depends on a host of factors. An artwork may be regarded as ordinary or brilliant as determined by the current sensibility of the art world (Danto 1964). Similarly, a scientific breakthrough may not be recognised as such until there is a “paradigm shift” in the way the scientific community looks at a problem (Kuhn 1962/1970). “Novelty”, as Bilton (2007, 3) points out, “is always relative”. A creative product is judged by the relevant authorities in a field—for example, artists, art teachers, critics, collectors and curators—who operate within a domain of knowledge (Feldman, Csikszentmihalyi and Gardner 1994). If an artwork or innovation is too far ahead of its time, it may be seen as novel without being valuable (Bilton 2007). Creative products that break boundaries or are too far “outside the box” are in danger of being ignored or dismissed.

An aim of the present volume is to debunk common myths and misconceptions about creativity and innovation by clarifying the meanings of and the connections between these terms. We do this by reviewing the social science research literature and drawing on the research undertaken by the volume’s contributors to identify the conditions for fostering creativity and innovation.²

The Meanings of Creativity and Innovation

In everyday usage the adjectives “creative” and “innovative” are more or less interchangeable: being creative is no different from being innovative. Thus, we can talk about a creative (or innovative) person, an innovative (or creative) solution to a problem or a creative (or innovative) product—the crucial feature is that the solution or product is new, novel or original. But the abstract noun “creativity” is not the same as “innovation”. Very often, creativity refers to the quality of being innovative in thinking, planning or doing, whereas innovation refers to the end result of such creative thinking, planning or doing. Creativity is also conceived as a capability or a pattern of behaviour. Thus, the Imagine Australia Report sees creativity as “an innate and universal human trait”, an “imaginative capacity to generate new ideas, images and ways of thinking; new patterns of behaviour; new combinations of action” (Australia, PMSEIC 2005, 6). In contrast, innovation is a product, a process or a solution that is new, revolutionary or inventive. Cutler defines innovation as “creating value through doing something in a novel way”, or simply “good ideas put to work” (Cutler Report 2008, 15). Pratt and Jeffcut summarise some of the ways a distinction between the two concepts is made:

Certainly, it is common knowledge that creativity is the “ideas” part of innovation; innovation usually being characterized as the practice of implementing an idea.… Others dispensed with creativity altogether replacing it with stages of innovation … For others still, creativity is quite different from innovation. Creativity encompasses new knowledge, whereas innovation may not be creative and can be incremental … Despite their differences most points of view acknowledge that context is important for innovation and creativity. (2009, 4)

They suggest that creativity and innovation should be “addressed as a process (requiring knowledge, networks, and technologies) that enables the generation and translation of novel ideas into innovative goods and services” (2009, 4). It is important to recognise, however, that the meanings of these concepts are not static—creativity and innovation are increasingly defined in terms of “the social and collective” rather than the individual as a result of social, cultural and technological changes (Hall 2010, x).

The Creativity Continuum

Creativity research within psychology has been divided into two camps: those interested in “Big-C” creativity and those more interested in “little-c” creativity. Big-C (eminent) creativity refers to creative works and creative genius, while little-c (everyday) creativity focuses on problem-solving activities that non-experts engage in routinely. Examples of Big-C creativity are the works of geniuses and masters (cf. Simonton 1994, 2004). As explained by Dean Simonton in an interview on creativity and intelligence:

when you are talking about Big-C creativity … you’re talking about being able to generate new ideas, generate some kind of product that’s going to have some kind of impression on other people. It may be a poem, it may be a patent, it may be a short story, it may be a journal article or whatever. But it’s something that is a concrete, discrete product that is original and serves some kind of adaptive function. (Plucker 2003)

Big-C involves solutions to very difficult problems and the ultimate Big-C is the production of significant original works. Big-C is the stuff of deep domain knowledge, schematic thinking, substantial memory and so on (see Sweller and Mann, this volume). In some circumstances Big C-creativity leads to the transformation of a domain.

In contrast, little-c creativity refers to simple problem-solving activities people engage in every day, e.g. modifying a recipe because an ingredient is missing, figuring out a short cut to avoid a traffic jam, using a coat-hanger to make a tool for retrieving an object. We make use of little-c creativity all the time. That basic problem-solving kind of creativity is very closely related to intelligence. The study of little-c is based on the assumption that creative potential is widely distributed and that all people can be creative (Kaufman and Baer 2006; Sternberg, Grigorenko and Singer 2004). Little...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• 1. Introduction: Creativity and Innovation
• 2. National Innovation Systems and Creativity
• 3. Innovation and Creativity in Industry and the Service Sectors
• 4. Space, Place and Innovation
• 5. Historical Approaches to Creativity and Innovation
• 6. Economic Approaches to Understanding and Promoting Innovation
• 7. Creativity and Innovation: A Legal Perspective
• 8. Promoting Creativity and Innovation through Law
• 9. Towards a Sociology of Creativity
• 10. Social Psychology of Creativity and Innovation
• 11. Creativity and Innovation Management: Play’s the Thing
• 12. Inducing and Disciplining Creativity in Organisations under Escalating Complexity
• 13. Creativity and Innovation: An Educational Perspective
• 14. The Psychology of Creativity and Its Educational Consequences
• 15. Creativity Meets Innovation: Examining Relationships and Pathways
• 16. Creativity and Innovation: Principles and Policy Implications
• List of Contributors
• Index