Ways for a Company to Think Creatively

What are creativity, innovation, and design, and how are these concepts important to meeting the objectives of an organization? To understand these concepts they must first be defined. Webster’s dictionary (http://www.merriam-webster.com) defines creativity as the “Ability to produce something new through imaginative skill, whether a new solution to a problem, a new method or device, or a new artistic objects or form. The term generally refers to a richness of ideas and originality of thinking. Psychological studies of highly creative people have shown that many have a strong interest in apparent disorder, contradiction, and imbalance, which seem to be perceived as challenges. Such individuals may possess an

2. Jeng, YC, Hsu, SL, Xie, J, Lin, R & Huang, CC 2010, 'The Influence of creative-thinking teaching on learning effectiveness', Advanced Management Science (ICAMS), vol.3, no.1, pp.33,38.

Creative thinking is described as being intuitive, being creative and visual; and discovering new ideas. Creative thinking asks questions such as why? What if? What else? In creative thinking, a person can envision potential ideas and alternatives as an approach to problem solving. According to Simpson and Courtney (2002), creative thinking is of its greatest value when known solutions have failed and change has not occurred.

In today’s rapidly changing business environment, the ability to transform obstacles into opportunities can be a firm’s biggest advantage (Samašonok & Leškienė, 2015). As organizations recognize the need to be adaptable, creativity in the workplace has become one of the most important determinants of performance and success (Anderson, Potočnik & Zhou, 2014). To date, even though creativity has been linked to firm performance and survival (Nystrom, 1990), many managers admit that employees have “room to improve” in terms of creativity (Shalley, 2004).

Creativity is more about the process rather than the end product and this creative process is useful for many reasons, developing confidence, developing good relationships, finding out what talents and strengths we have and teaches us about

During the course of her two-year journey as a fellow student part of the Management and Leadership (Healthcare Concentration) Bachelor of Arts program, the power of thinking outside of the box has greatly contributed to how Ms. Sams thinks creatively to solve problems and making sound logical decision that positively affects the well-being of an organizational environment. First, thinking creatively to solve problems begins with having an open mind to find solutions to challenging issues facing the organization. In addition, by thinking creatively when solving problems also involves a collaboration effort from both management and employees.

Creativity, the party believes, is the one factor that drives innovation in this exponentially growing economy. They recognise that creativity and creative thinkers are needed in all areas of business, whether it be scientists and medical researchers needing to find new ways to cure illnesses or teachers and educators thinking of new and interesting ways in educating students to learn. They believe that creativity is and the ability to think out of the status quo is what will make amazing things happen.

• Amabile: How to Kill Creativity? Harvard Business Review 1998 (course packet; writeup 1. For Feb 5)

This group exercise is based on Michael Michalko, an author and best seller of numerous books on creativity like, Thinkertoys (A Handbook of Business Creativity), ThinkPak (A Brainstorming Card Deck), Cracking Creativity (The Secrets of Creative Genius), and Creative Thinkering (Putting Your Imagination to Work). These books show how to combine and create completely different subjects into new and exciting original ideas. Michalko, has been awarded a gold medal for Thinkertoys by Success Magazine for creating a good business books. He stated “We see no more than we’ve been conditioned to see and stereotyped notion block clear vision and crowd out imagination (Michalko, 2010).” It may be believed that once some people have established a viewpoint they close off the one line of thought. Our perception attempts to make life easier by solving the first impression of the problem that it encounters such as, meeting people, going places, or seeing things and giving our opinion instead of facts (what’s real). Michalko believes our first perspective on complications and situations are apt to be restrained and superficial. This exercise exams his concepts on different perspective and the capacity to view things in their true relations or virtual reputation or character, in other words real perception.

The term creativity is used for the purpose of describing the ability that is concerned with the process of creating something new or valuable. This ability allows a person to surpass the rules, practices, methods, forms or similar kind of activities that the traditional society may be performing at that time. Creativity is one of the most important things that have allowed the people of the society to move forward and urge for development. All the development that has been made in various aspects of human life can be directly connected with the creativity. All the industry leaders of the world have secured this place because of the level of creativity and innovation that they showed. They used this creativity for creating something new that has allowed them to develop completely new methods for this purpose.

Creativity is one of the most important when it comes to innovation as it is a process. Creativity is about creating new ideas and the process of innovation is making these ideas come to reality. Creativity cannot be a waste of time, if there is no process in place to make these ideas and turn them into something that has market potentials.

Creative thinking The free flow of ideas and positive work environment is the perfect catalyst for creative thinking.

To make a business grow and achieve productive and efficient results you need to invoke creativity which has always been an essential business skill. Since long time creativity has been applied to a business world as companies seek to use it in all parts of the organization to make it gain more profits and to be exceptional from others. A business person has to find unique solutions every day and he has to know how to react to situation creatively. Richard Florida (2002) stated human creativity is the ultimate economic resource. The ability to come up with new ideas and better ways of doing things is ultimately what raises productivity and thus living

Effective leaders need to be creative and innovative. Effective leaders need to understand that the blood of the organization which they are leading lays innovation and creativity (Swid, 2015). Creation of new ideas can result in programs which are superior to the already planned or established plans. The responsibility of the leadership is to engage appropriate people in the right times, to the appropriate degree but in creative manner. Employee creativity is also enhanced by leaders who are inspirational. Any business

In today’s knowledge-based economy, innovation has become the principal source of competitive advantages in global business; the success of firms now depends more on their intelligence capability – such as employee creativity – than traditional material assets (Amabile et al., as cited in Zhou, Zhang & Montoro-Sa ́nchez, 2011). The creative capability of individual and collective knowledge workers is the fuel that powers innovation in firms. While creativity leads to the production of new and useful ideas in any domain, innovation is the successful implementation of those creative ideas within an organisation (McLean, as cited in Zhou, Zhang & Montoro-Sa ́nchez 2011). In highly dynamic business environments innovation and creativity have become crucial for creating competitive advantages for the