BMP5005 Enterprise, Innovation and Creativity

Introduction 

In any business, creativity and innovation go hand in hand. In an extremely competitive business dynamics, creativity and innovation are two major factors that determine the course of business success. The higher the creativity, greater is the innovation and greater is the chance of organizational success (Taylor, Santiago and Hynes 2019). Hence, it is essential to develop an enterprise culture that can stimulate and promote creativity and innovation to gain competitive advantage for the businesses. In other words, enterprise culture is considered to be the driving force behind innovation and creativity. Enterprise culture, creativity and innovation are interconnected factors, which are necessary for business efficiency and success in the long run (Goller and Bessant 2017).  

In this essay, a comprehensive discussion will be made on enterprise culture, creativity and innovation. The terms will be defined and explained, the relationship among these aspects will be described and explained and the significance of this relationship in the context of organizational performance will be elaborated. Lastly, concluding remarks will be given on these factors and their inter-relationship.

Discussion

Although creativity and innovation are often considered to be synonymous, in reality they are not. These two factors have a clear and significant distinction between them. As stated by Kwan, Leung and Liou (2018), creativity is the mental ability of individuals, which is not limited to only artists. This potential exists among all individuals. Thus, creativity is expressed as the mental ability of people to imagine or conceptualize new, unique or unusual idea and to recognize new connections between apparently random things.

On the contrary, innovation is the process, which transforms the forward-looking ideas and concepts into real world, that is, commercial goods and services and processes that give enhanced value. The outcome of such type of transformation can be evolutionary, radical or incremental in its effect on the status quo. Therefore, innovation can represents various type of actions, such as, a leap to the next generation of products and services, a natural course of action towards the development of a concept, or changing the existing process of working or production to a completely new and different way (Serrat 2017). Therefore, it can be said that creativity can help in conceptualizing a new idea or direction for a product or service, while innovation is the process of turning the idea into reality in the most efficient way. Creativity cannot lead to development of a product or service if it is not backed up by innovation.

Organizational culture can be defined as the collection of practices, expectations and values that influences the employees to work in a certain manner to achieve the business goals and objectives. This culture is one of the determinants of employee behavior and performance. It is the most important factor for innovation and creativity to thrive in an organization. The leaders must ensure proper attitude, right structure and the support mechanism to be in place to promote creativity and innovation. For business success, the enterprises must harness the collective ideas, knowledge and experience from all the functions and all the levels within the organization and make appropriate decisions to implement innovation process, which will push the creativity of the employees. Hence, creativity and innovation are essential for business survival and the organizational culture is the most significant factor to drive these aspects (Forgeard and Kaufman 2016).

The relationship between innovation and creativity, that is, their interdependence and working process with each other is considered to be critical for business success. Enterprise culture works as a bridge between the creativity and innovation, as well as foster those to bring out the most efficient outcome (Naranjo-Valencia, Jiménez-Jiménez and Sanz-Valle 2016). For example, Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, was considered to be creative for his forward-looking ideas for the products and his ability to see the scopes of new connections between unrelated things, which he utilized to combine the iPod, an Internet browser, a GPS, the iTunes store, a camera, and a cell phone and create the iPhone. The process of developing the iPhone by combining the above-mentioned factors is called innovation. Apple is an innovative enterprise for the way it interprets and executes the forward looking concepts for creating new, unique and desirable products with high value for the customers. The innovation driven organizational culture in Apple continuously encourages the employees to be creative and innovative, and elevating the functionality, aesthetics and simplicity of the products to the highest level (Hammershøj 2018). Thus, it is evident that unless the organizational support is provided, creativity and innovation process cannot foster.

According to Amabile and Pratt (2016), organizational culture can foster the creativity of an individual through a knowledge transfer, leadership, strong support system and the management style. The creative ability of an individual can be stimulated through personal need for the structure, and proactive personality. Hence, in the enterprise, the cultural structure encourage the individuals’ creativity, which comprise of individualistic and collectivist cultural values, multicultural interactions and the cultural looseness. The more the individuals are supported by the organizational culture, the higher is the creativity. Supportive and inspirational leadership is necessary to have a supportive organizational culture, which in turn can encourage creativity and innovation. Lindsey (2016) described that workplace atmosphere stems from leadership styles and it largely influences the level of innovative productivity of the individuals. Individuals receiving greater leadership support in the organization for their creativity show better performance in creative climate. Similarly, if the leader in the enterprise conveys perceived interest at a personal level for the employees, that could lead to higher creative ratings. Therefore, it can be said that leadership plays a very significant role in shaping the organizational culture and that has an important role to play in fostering creativity and innovation among the employees.

The relationship between creativity, innovation and enterprise culture is highly important for business success. All these factors are interdependent and one without the other cannot bring optimum and effective output. A truly innovative organization is not possible if there is lack of creativity. At the same time, if there is lack of effective systems or development process, the transformation of creative ideas into the real-world, value added product or service cannot be achieved. Thus, organizational culture is responsible for creativity and innovation to work together and excel (Lee, Hallak and Sardeshmukh 2019). For any type of enterprise activity, such as, market research, planning, product development, sales and marketing, innovative culture is important to identify the scopes for delivering higher value through unique products and to grab those opportunity, creativity is important, which in turn must be supported by workplace culture (Amabile and Pratt 2016).

The significance of the relationship between enterprise culture, creativity and innovation is quite impactful for business growth and success. The interrelationship between these variables is often considered as a part of the process or organizational system, which contributes in achieving business success and growth. According to a study by Rastgoo (2017), a supportive and positive organizational culture plays a positive influence on the creativity of the individuals, through organizational culture regarding the knowledge management and knowledge management and it has effect on the creativity of the employees.

Khalili (58) pointed out that the relationship between transformational leadership and employees’ creativity and innovation is positive and highly significant for the organizational success. At the same time, employees’ perception about a supportive organizational culture encouraging creativity and innovation had a moderating effect on the relationship between transformational leadership and their creativity and innovation. Hence, transformational leadership is a part of the enterprise culture that has a positive effect on employees’ motivation for creativity and innovation, and this is a highly important factor for success of the business.

Taylor, Santiago and Hynes (2019) also highlighted the role of leadership in promoting an organizational culture that supports creativity and innovation, since for gaining a competitive edge in the market, having a vision and creating a unique product or service or process are highly important. Creative leadership leads to the establishment of innovative enterprise culture, which pushes the individuals to explore their creativity and innovation ability. Hence, it can be said that for having an effective outcome from creativity and innovation, a creative leadership and an innovative enterprise culture is required, and thus, this relationship between these factors is significant for organizational growth.

Zeraatkar, Roudneshin and Sobhanallahi (2020) examined the impact of organizational culture on the creativity and innovation procedures in the context of automotive industry. This industry is highly competitive and has been greatly dependent on creativity and innovation not only to improve the efficiency and competency of the products but also to reduce the costs. Through a quantitative study, the authors found that culture in the workplace played a very significant role in motivating the employees of the automotive industry to pursue creativity and innovation, which is a major driving factor in this industry.

According to Nguyen and Le (2019), while enterprise cultural climate is important for promoting creativity and innovation, it also leads to various expected as well as unexpected outcomes, such as, unethical behavior, by identifying the relationships among the task characteristics such as, clarity, difficulty and pressure for performing, the psychological aspects of individual, like, self-justification, and mindfulness, and the workplace environment aspects like the peer behavior and the culture for creativity and innovation. Thus, both the bright and dark sides of the culture emphasizing creativity and innovation were examined by the authors, and it was found that the organizational climate supporting creativity and innovation had a very significant role in firming the positive relationship between unethical behavior and self-justification. However, the unethical behavior of the employees positively influenced the performances. Furthermore, mindfulness explained the unconscious unethical behavior among the employees. Therefore, it can be said that while organizational culture is important for promoting creativity and innovation, it also leads to some unexpected consequences like unethical behavior or self-justification. Hence, moderation from the management or leadership is required to prevent the unexpected consequences. For a successful business performance, the enterprises must therefore evaluate the consequences and take appropriate measures to reduce those events.

Ouakouak and Ouedraogo (2017) conducted a study on the factors fostering individual creativity and innovation process in the organizations. They observed that person-organization fit and knowledge sharing among the peers had a positive influence on the employee creativity. Moreover, personal trust plays a moderating role in the relationship between individual creativity and business ethics. Thus, these above mentioned aspects had a positive influence on organization’s innovative culture.

Kamel et al. (2017) examined the role of creativity and innovation in having a corporate happiness management system, which is considered to be a part of the organizational culture. Creativity and innovation process can lead to job and personal satisfaction for the employees and that can lead to happiness, which in turn gets reflected in motivation and higher productivity of the employees. The authors also found that the present happiness of the employees must be combined with long term projects with scope for creativity and innovation to keep up the happiness, motivation and job satisfaction. Hence, while these two aspects have a crucial role in ensuring corporate happiness culture, the positive culture and structure of the organization also encourage the employees’ to utilize their creativity and innovation capability to improve their as well as organization’s performance and competitive advantage.

Conclusion

From the critical discussion above on enterprise culture creativity and innovation, it can be said that for organizational growth and to achieve edge in the competitive market, creativity and innovation is extremely significant. To promote creativity and innovation among the employees, organizational culture is one of the major factors since, it inspires the employees to pursue their creative skills and ability to excel in their workplace and also contribute in the innovation process. Organization success greatly depends on how much value is provided to the customers. To deliver new and unique products, either to meet the existing demand gap in the market or to develop a demand and a new market, innovation is the most crucial factor. At the same time, the employees must also be motivated to practice creativity. As seen from the above discussion, leadership plays a major role in motivating the employees, and transformational and creative leadership was found to have significant positive impact on the employees to be creative and on the enterprise to be innovative. Hence, leadership effectively influences organizational culture, which in turn influences the employees. Moreover, knowledge sharing among the peers and personal trust are two factors that influence the individual creativity and innovative culture in organization. Unless there is creativity and innovation, organizations cannot develop a niche market and therefore the relationship between enterprise culture, creativity and innovation is extremely important for success of the businesses.

References

Ali Taha, V., Sirkova, M. and Ferencova, M., 2016. The impact of organizational culture on creativity and innovation. Polish Journal of Management Studies, 14.

Amabile, T.M. and Pratt, M.G., 2016. The dynamic componential model of creativity and innovation in organizations: Making progress, making meaning. Research in organizational behavior, 36, pp.157-183.

Forgeard, M.J. and Kaufman, J.C., 2016. Who cares about imagination, creativity, and innovation, and why? A review. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 10(3), p.250.

Goller, I. and Bessant, J., 2017. Creativity for innovation management. Taylor & Francis.

Hammershøj, L.G., 2018. Conceptualizing creativity and innovation as affective processes: Steve Jobs, Lars von Trier, and responsible innovation. Philosophy of Management, 17(1), pp.115-131.

Kamel, J.A.N., Martins, C.V., Pessanha, M.B. and de Andrade, M.W., 2017. Creativity and innovation for corporate happiness management. Brazilian Journal of Science and Technology, 4(1), pp.1-20.

Khalili, A., 2016. Linking transformational leadership, creativity, innovation, and innovation-supportive climate. Management Decision. 

Kwan, L., Leung, A. and Liou, S., 2018. Culture, Creativity, and Innovation. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 49(2), pp.165-170.

Lee, C., Hallak, R. and Sardeshmukh, S.R., 2019. Creativity and innovation in the restaurant sector: Supply-side processes and barriers to implementation. Tourism Management Perspectives, 31, pp.54-62.

Lindsey, J.L., 2016. How Can Leaders Cultivate an Organizational Culture of Creativity and Innovation, Particularly in the Academy?. Journal of Leadership Studies, 10(1), pp.76-77.

Naranjo-Valencia, J.C., Jiménez-Jiménez, D. and Sanz-Valle, R., 2016. Studying the links between organizational culture, innovation, and performance in Spanish companies. Revista Latinoamericana de Psicología, 48(1), pp.30-41.

Nguyen, T.H. and Le, A.N.H., 2019. Promoting creativity and innovation: expected and unexpected consequences. Asia Pacific Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

Ouakouak, M.L. and Ouedraogo, N., 2017. Antecedents of employee creativity and organisational innovation: An empirical study. International Journal of Innovation Management, 21(07), p.1750060.

Rastgoo, P., 2017. The impact of organizational culture on creativity: the mediating role of knowledge management (case study: medical sciences and health services university in Bushehr). International Review of Management and Marketing, 7(4), pp.83-90.

Serrat, O., 2017. Harnessing creativity and innovation in the workplace. In Knowledge solutions (pp. 903-910). Springer, Singapore.

Taylor, A., Santiago, F. and Hynes, R., 2019. Relationships among leadership, organizational culture, and support for innovation. In Effective and creative leadership in diverse workforces (pp. 11-42). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Zeraatkar, M., Roudneshin, M. and Sobhanallahi, M.A., 2020. The effect of organisational culture on creativity and innovation processes (case study: Tondar Department of IKCO). International Journal of Business Information Systems, 33(1), pp.80-102.

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