Creativity and innovation

Hello !    I chose the topic Creativity and innovation. The link is bellow :

http://www.open.edu/openlearn/money-management/creativity-and-innovation/content-section-0?active-tab=description-tab

In this course we learn : what is the role of the skill, the experience, the motivation, the culture..., what is radical and incremental innovation, and how the creativity and innovation can be use at work.

The creativity have a quality and an originality in same time, it's also adaptated in its context.

The Ability to be creative :
The origins of creativity can be : the intuition, an act of grace (Claxton 2005), the hazard and an ability of the gifted few people. But its associated with the skills of mental flexibility, a special experience, or by the motivation.
These individual reasons are not the only-one, because the social context is relevant.

Creative people are caracterize like independant, flexible, idea fluency, sens redefinitionale skill (the ability to view issues from different angles and reframe them)... They are motivated, have the knowledge or the sensibility of an area of work, the capacity for objectivity, the ability to take risks and problem-finding skills.

The most important is they possess problem-finding abilities. And in an other hand, they avoid premature closure in a solution research: it seems that they not setting a solution too soon before more usefull ways.

2 styles of creativity :
The "innovative" approach which allows to create with radically new approach and the adaptative approach which improve step by step the existing pratice. Kirton (1989)

Those definitions of creative people sound like you Megane.

thanks it means a lot for me !

The creativity is related to the competence : skills and experience.

The skills

Many people associate creativity with insight, and assume that this is caused by creative association – applying previously unrelated ideas or metaphors from one field to another. The studies said it is a mental flexibility, and it is a transferable skill. Everybody can practice this lateral thinking.

The experience has a relevant role for the creativity

In all the field (music, sport, science, business), Creative people can take the knowledge of their experience, because the chance favours the prepared mind. Indeed, the experimented people organise their experience in key cues and they recognize the important problem.
For example, Bob Brotchie, a paramedic improve the suggested the idea of storing an In Case of Emergency (ICE) name and number on the mobile phone, and someone could be contacted if you were hurt. As a paramedic, he had experience of trying to identify people involved accidents and thinked that if people used an ICE number, because a lot of people had mobile phones.
In this way, Bob give an other function of the telephone and improved the paramedical information service.

It's why, in a company when the manager fired an experienced staff, he can loose the know-how and a creativity source.

Creative culture

According to Amabile (1990, 2006) neither the mental flexibility nor relevant experience is sufficient for creativity.

We need motivation. When people love their work, the creativity emerges. If we really care about something, we will take risks to achieve it. The perseverance and the capacity for risk-taking seem to be necessary at the creativity.

The manager could allow at their employees to work on the projects they are most attracted and let them more freedom to determine how they do their work. Some companies do that : 3M, Google, Hewlett Packard. "Marissa Mayer, then Google Vice-President, worked out that half of Google's new launches came from employee’s one day a week working on projects of their own choosing (Mayer, 2006)."

Organisational Culture

The creativity tends to emerge naturally where people are motivated, in a company culture that encourages exploration.
The open and creative climates is not easy in multidisciplinary team, everybody have to understand the each other's priorities, and thus to confront their ideas with it.

Creative environnement

The social view of creativity said that people learning from each other and from what has gone before (Csikszentmihalyi, 2006).
The creative endeavour emerges when you are near other enthusiastic people knowledgeable about the topic you are working, it helps to advance in the creative development of your project.

Work in team allows the Creativity !!




Some advice to become a good manager
http://vennli.com/blog/5-tips-for-unleashing-creativity-within-your-team/

The last section introduces radical and incremental innovation and discusses disruptive innovation and open innovation.

Incremental innovation

The fact that we can have some little improvements in mecanics for example and one day after 10 years we can be impress by the real innovation between the first version of the object and the last one. Like the first Boeing 737 in 1978 and the one of our days. Often small incremental changes that have kept the aircraft competitive over the years, it’s the
incremental innovation.
Radical innovation is still the exception rather than the rule and cumulative gains from incremental improvement are critically significant.

Organisational implications

Once a product enter in the market, several rival designs compete to outperform each other and key features are improved.
manufacturers devote their attention to improving the manufacturing process, and manufacturing costs are usually substantially reduced.
Also, a distinction is made between product (BAC/Sud-Aviation Concorde supersonic airliner), service (e-commerce) and process innovations (line production).

Disruptive innovation

When big company are significant players in their field, good at innovation, but are often vulnerable in the face of radical changes that challenge their worldview. Large organisations  have a dilemna to get around the potentially inhibiting effect of standard reporting procédures.
So sometimes the skunkworks (groups of innovators) are charged with developing a new product outside standard systems.
The Freedom on conventional standard often makes it easier for a smaller organisation to create something radically new, it is the disruptive innovation !

Open Innovation

The ideas are not just conduced  by people but with different organisations, as the concept of supply chains. The model of open innovation claims proposed for example : Building a better business model is better than getting to the market first, or we should profit from others’ use of our IP, and we should buy others’ IP whenever it advances our own business model.

Now you know a lot of principles and business model related to creation and innovation !

Thanks Megane,

What did you personally think about the course?
What did you think about the activity of working on a pre-set English course?
What type of course will you choose next?

On my point of view, it allows to know the differents axes of creation and innovation. The vocabulary can be complicated but with the examples, it is easily to understand.

Tha fact to learn on a pre-set English course, with the possibilty to choose a the Lesson, is a chance to learn what you like and to record the vocabulary more easily.

My type of course will be "Climate Change : transitions to sustainability" next, this Lesson talks about how to achieve sustainability and to find the tasks or ideas to make it.