Innovation Strategies and Creativity

    Developing Innovation Strategies:

• Innovation strategy is part of overall business strategy
• It determines when and where innovation is required to meet the aims of the organisation
• Innovation strategies depend on the particular organisation, its culture and business aims

Strategic Innovation takes the road less traveled – it challenges an organization to look beyond its established business boundaries and mental models and to participate in an open-minded,creative exploration of the realm of possibilities.Strategic Innovation is the creation of growth strategies, new product categories, services or business models that change the game and generate significant new value for consumers, customers and the corporation.

                                         ------- Palmer &  Kaplan (2007)

Traditional strategy versus Strategic Innovation

Differences between traditional approaches to strategy and Strategic Innovation are:

                                                                   ------- Palmer & Kaplan (2007)
          http://www.innovation-point.com/Strategic%20Innovation%20White%20Paper.pdf

Today, innovation performance is a crucial determinant of competitiveness and national progress. Moreover, innovation is important to help address global challenges, such as climate change and sustainable development.

More recently, the importance of innovation has been reinforced both by globalisation and by rapid advances in new technologies, notably ICTs, which have enabled new forms of competition and opened new markets for the creation and delivery of innovative products and services. Globalisation has also increased the pressure on OECD countries to move up the value chain and engage in a continuous process of adjustment and innovation.

Ref: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/2/31/39374789.pdf   (2007)

Innovation and Technology Strategies
Just as technology is critical to a business strategy, innovation is essential to business strategy for those businesses that are going to compete nationally, internationally, and globally from now on. With technology development and innovation and managerial innovation becoming more directly tied to productivity and profitability, it is time to formulate the right technology strategy and integrate this in the business strategy to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage.
                                                                                             (Soares, 1997. p27)

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hhXSP3WONz4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=innovation+and+Technology&hl=zh-CN&sa=X&ei=_h0TT83fNYWohAednMyUAg&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAA#


"Innovation is about convergent thinking.
 Creativity is about divergent thinking.”
  --Ikujiro Nonaka
         http://www.innovation-point.com/Strategic%20Innovation%20White%20Paper.pdf

There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns.
                                                                                              —Edward de Bono

As Serrat refers that the definitions of creativity and innovation are:
Creativity is the mental and social process—fuelled by conscious or unconscious insight—of generating ideas,concepts, and associations. Innovation is the successful6 exploitation of new ideas: it is a profitable outcome of the creative process, which involves generating and applying in a specific context products, services, procedures, and processes that are desirable and viable. Naturally, people who create and people who innovate can have different attributes and perspectives.

What Is The Difference Between Creativity and Innovation?

(Laird D. McLean, 2005)
Throughout the creativity literature, and particularly the literature focused on organizational creativity, the term“innovation” is often used and the distinction between creativity and innovation is an important one. Sternberg and Lubart (1999) define creativity as “the ability to produce work that is both novel and appropriate. Although the measurement of creativity deserves a lot of attention, words associated with this definition of creativity include idea, invention, and breakthrough. They go on to write that “innovation refers to the process of bringing any new problemsolving idea into use. It is the generation, acceptance, and implementation of new ideas, processes, products, or services”. This process can take place in many different domains; it can be technical, to be sure, but also organizational.  To bring an idea from concept to market, it must be recognized for its potential; it must receive funding in an environment of scarce or at least competing resources; and it must overcome potential obstacles such as technology challenges, competitive pressures, and a variety of other obstacles. The process by which this happens is referred to as innovation and it is an important process when talking about creativity in the context of organizations. It would not be a stretch to say that when it comes to organizations, creativity without innovation is of significantly diminished value.
http://mcleanglobal.com/public/MGC/publications/Org%20Culture%20and%20Innovation.pdf

Comment:

The importance of creativity and innovation in organizations, there has been relatively little empirical work done in the area of organizational culture and creativity and innovation. Creativity and innovation cannot operate separately as creativity is an essential part on innovation process. Particularly in the context of an organization, is on taking a creative idea and bringing it to fruition. Such as technology challenges, competitive pressures, and a variety of other obstacles. The process by which this happens is referred to as innovation and it is an important process when talking about creativity in the context of organizations. Innovation refers to identify important problems and solving while creativity is defined as generating new ideas. Amabile et al (2004) says that innovation as the successful implementation of creative ideas within an organization”. The converse is also true: without creative ideas to feed the innovation pipeline so they may be promoted and developed, innovation is an engine without any fuel.