Creativity in Organizations: Importance and Approaches

doi:10.1016/B978-0-12-374714-3.00001-X

Handbook of Organizational Creativity

2012, Pages 3-16

https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-374714-3.00001-X Get rights and content

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It is granted that creativity and innovation are critical to the growth and performance of organizations. The intuitive conception of creativity holds that it involves the production of new ideas. Creativity is not simply a matter of idea production—although this may be an important influence on creativity. Rather, creativity is defined as the production of high quality, original, and elegant solutions to problems. To capitalize on creativity and innovation organizations, one must bear in mind three key considerations. First, creativity and innovation are highly complex phenomena at any given level of analysis. Second, multiple phenomena exist at the individual, group, and organizational levels. Third, the phenomena that operate at one level are not necessarily well integrated, or consistent with, those operating at other levels. Complexity, multiple levels, and inconsistencies in effects across levels present all organizations with a challenge in their attempts to encourage creativity and innovation.

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