Understanding Creativity and Innovation

Creativity can be considered as the function of curiosity, evaluation, imagination and knowledge. The greater an individual’s knowledge base as well as the curiosity level is, the more patterns, combinations and ideas, he can achieve (Peng et al. 2014). In addition to this, this correlates with creating innovative and new products as well as services. Entrepreneurship is developing new ideas and turning them into successful business by taking risks (Sahut and Peris-Ortiz 2014). The new ideas can be related to the products and services, as well as the way the organization is structured and conducts its operations. Therefore, an entrepreneurship is established based on the innovative and creative thinking of the entrepreneurs.

The purpose of this report is to understand the importance of creativity and innovation. The report aims to throw light on the theoretical perspectives underpinning the promotion of individual creative thinking in the established work organizations. In addition to this, some relevant models, frameworks and critical viewpoints are also given in order to establish the report. Moreover, recommendations are being made in order to improve the report, clearly stating how innovation and creativity can add value to the organization. The organizations, which have achieved the best are the most innovative and creative ones. According to Anderson, Poto?nik and Zhou (2014), these organizations should not just copy what others do, instead come up with innovative ideas. In simpler terms, the organizations should be able to leverage their creativity and innovative capabilities in order to attain the long-term success.

On critically analyzing the fact, it can be said that the creative power behind an organization, is its people (Peng et al. 2014). Moreover, several businesses seek for creative individuals and not all organizations know how to motivate their employees. A workplace should have an encouraging ambience, with free flowing ideas as well as concepts. Starting from the office space design, to the down time the employees are provided with, different facets of the organizational culture leaves a mark over creativity. At times, organizations do not really want the employees to be creative as creativity takes time. In addition to this, individuals might come up with innovative ideas, which challenge the status quo.

The report emphasizes upon MatchBox Architects and what kind of working environment it has. They believe that the working environments are an extension to their brand. It gives an opportunity to let the employees and customers know that they care for them. MatchBox Architects have greater experience in working with the commercial offices, industrial and retail sectors and at the same time, healthcare, education and leisure. They appraise sites and buildings strategically in order to compliment aesthetics. In addition to this, they create work environments, which enhance the image of the organization and improve their daily experiences with the visitors and staff members. Moreover, their aim is to build long-term relationship with their commercial clients, which makes them more confident while altering the existing building stocks or developing and acquiring new property. However, the architecture firm needs to ensure that their employees fit into the creative environment.

Challenges to Creative Thinking

In order to promote creative thinking among the employees of all level and roles, the challenges that might create an obstacle in this process, need to be discussed before. Individual blocks of creative thinking are the primary challenges of creative thinking. Therefore, the blocks regarding individual creative thinking must be overcome with the help of different creative thinking frameworks and creative problem solving models. There are multiple reasons as to why mental blocks arise, such as – a person may think that he cannot think creatively, an individual’s assumptions and beliefs also can prevent him from considering other important facts, and even a person can judge a situation and make decisions too quickly  to give it enough time to analyse properly (Hicks 2013). In a few cases, people even become too serious to think out of the box and just follow the rules. This happens as these people would rather follow the common pattern or routine than take risks and implement new ideas. Habit is another concern in this regard, as it makes people believe that the previous solution of the similar problem is the only way to solve it and they are comfortable in it.

According to Proctor (2014), mindset of an individual is his viewpoint towards the concepts and knowledge he obtained and learned through experiences. Therefore, mindset is crucial in this context as it leads a person in fixating on a particular solution and restrains them from taking new paths. Jones analysed these various reasons for creative blocks in individuals, and derived them into four types (Proctor 2014) –

Strategic Blocks: This type refers to blocks regarding the belief that there can be only one solution to a problem. It restricts the person to think creatively by considering other possibilities. This block makes people rely on their past encounters with problems and the solutions, preventing the person from understanding the plausibility of the past solution in the current context.

Value Blocks: The personal values, ideologies and beliefs restrict a person from exploring possibilities that could have been more effective. This leads to personal and organizational quandary.

Perceptual Blocks: When the focus of an individual is stern and narrow on a problem, it creates obstacle to find novel solutions for that problem. Too much narrow focus does not allow the individual to see all the dynamics of the situation and consider the broader perspective.

Self-image Blocks: In order to implement an idea successfully, one needs to be self-confident. Therefore, fear of failure, self-doubt, and timidity make an individual doubt his own ability and, hence barrier the successful implementation of a novel idea.

It is possible to solve these individual blocks of creative thinking with the help of multiple models and frameworks of problem solving, and theories of developing creative thinking. According to Graham Wallas model, there are five stages to creative thinking (Sadler-Smith 2015). Firstly, preparation focuses upon the problem as well as explores the dimensions of the problems. Secondly, incubation stresses upon the subconscious mulling of the problems. The third step is intimation that is the solution is on its way. Fourthly, illumination means discovery and the last step, focuses on appropriateness, effectiveness and practicality, which in simpler terms means verification (Grossberg 2013). The theory of Wallas provides more structured approach to the creative problem solving. Moreover, understanding this is more important especially at the time of considering the development of innovation and creativity process or structure in a firm. Therefore, it can be said that the structure needs to give time as well as involve a wide variety of the employees.

Overcoming Blocks to Creative Thinking

The model of Sid Parnes and Alex Osborn discusses about the six step creative problem solving model – mess-finding, fact-finding, problem-finding, idea-finding, solution-finding, and acceptance-finding (Baer 2014). This model also includes both convergent and divergent procedures. According to Parnes and Osborn, one problem always creates another problem and the process leads on to creating a mess of problems (Ravenell 2018). Firstly, it involves identification of the measures of effectiveness, and the second stage is about finding the facts related to the problems. The third stage prefers to find out the source of the mess of problems and the fourth stage is to generation multiple possible solutions. In the fifth stage, the best plausible solution is selected, and the sixth stage is about making plans for the implementation of that solution. This particular model also provides with a different look to the creative problem solving procedures. In addition to this, the solid understanding of the differences between the convergent and divergent processes is highly important.

Howard Gardner, who mentioned that the individuals have huge strength of creativity and those are mostly, domain specific, developed the theory of ‘multiple intelligence’ (Strauss 2013). Initially, he proposed eight specific intelligences, which are linguistic, musical, logic mathematical, spatial, kinesthetic, naturalistic, intrapersonal and interpersonall (Gardner 2018). Finally, a self-actualization level that, mainly involves the peak experiences of realizing the inner potential. In order to ensure, that the employees fit to the creative environment of MatchBox Architects, the senior management team should interview each employee on a personal level. It will help them to understand the mindset and creativity level of the candidates. Moreover, it will give the company an idea on how the candidates are thinking differently.

It is immensely important to foster a working environment, in which creativity is highly valued. In addition to this, the organizations should provide its employees with the techniques and tools to come up with innovative ideas as well as concepts. Furthermore, as per the multi level theory of creativity, the organizations need to ensure that the employees understand the goals, services and products of the organization (Gong et al. 2013). It will help them in coming up with contextual as well as relevant ideas.

The componential theory of organizational creativity and innovation states that the work environment of the organizations has a severe impact over the creativity of the employees (Amabile and Pratt 2016). Moreover, it affects the components, which contribute to the overall creativity representing the basic source for innovation. In addition to this, there are three major elements, which contribute to the small team or individual creativity. Those are expertise, intrinsic motivation and lastly, creativity thinking skill (Wang, Kim and Lee 2016). On the other hand, the major components for a wider working environment, which influence the creativity of the employees, are resources, organizational motivation or encouragement to innovate, managerial practices like supervisory encouragement and enabling works that are more challenging. The resources, in this context, are availability of time, personnel resources and finances.

In addition to this, creativity and innovation in MatchBox Architects should also mean creating a collaborative environment, which spawns problem solving, great ideas or concepts and conversations. It will also ensure rewards and recognition of the employees and help the organization in celebrating greater ideas. Moreover, the four factor theory also comes into play for the team climate innovation. According to Somech and Drach-Zahavy (2013), the four factors of team climate facilitates vision, task orientation, support for the innovation and participative safety. Furthermore, innovation can be enhanced if the organizational vision is valued, easily understandable as well as accepted by the members of the team (Zhu, Gardner and Chen 2018). This theory is being applied in the innovation and creativity as it helped in establishing the study.

MatchBox Architects Case Study

Another theory, namely ambidexterity theory has helped in explaining the procedure of managing the conflicts at several organizational levels, in order to innovate in a successful manner (Papachroni, Heracleous and Paroutis 2015). The term ambidexterity means the ability of the adaptive and complex system to meet and manage the conflicting demands of the employees, by engaging them into fundamentally differing activities. Generally, it represents the successful management of exploitation as well as exploration (O’Reilly and Tushman 2013).

Managing extremely complex situations requires the design thinking framework as, it helps in the simplification of the complex problems in order to make the process of problem solving easy (Mootee 2013). The process of design thinking includes user focus, problem framing, visualization, experimentation and diversity in understanding, exploring and materializing the problem. The fundamental idea of design thinking framework is to empathize and prototype. It also includes defining the problem, ideating solutions, testing and implementing the solution (Liedtka 2015). As this framework has a distinct approach, it is a useful tool initiate creativity among employees.

Conclusion:

The analysis of the frameworks, models, and theories addresses the aim of this report that is to throw light on the theoretical perspectives underpinning the promotion of individual creative thinking in the established work organizations. The report, at first, discussed the different individual blocks of creative thinking and how they form. Doing that, it focused on the various models of creative problem solving models and frameworks, along with theories that can help in promoting creative thinking.

Thus, it can be said that the reviewed backgrounds of the theories are the major frameworks in creativity and innovation that helps initiating the promotion of creativity and innovation on personal and group level in the organizations. Majority of them stresses upon accurate comprehension of the problems, and on the role of various determinants of idea generation and idea implementation as well. In addition to this, the different analytical levels help in putting more importance upon the team climate and the intelligence level of individual employees. Moreover, this review of literatures helps putting emphasis on the significance of creativity and innovation in the established organizations. Therefore, it can be said that this analysis can show a way to recommend strategies of promoting creativity and innovation in the organizations.

The discussion clearly points towards the important facts in creative thinking and thus, helps building strategies to promote creative thinking. The following recommendations are derived from the above conclusion to help the MatchBox Architects promoting creative thinking and innovation in all levels of employees.

• The Graham Wallas model helps in structuring the process of creative thinking. The company can initiate the application of this model among the employees.
• When there is a cluster of problems, the company should encourage the employees to follow the Parnes and Osborn model so that they can understand how the problems can be solved systematically.
• Interviewing each employee to recognise their different intelligence abilities would make it easier for the company to utilize the abilities in the correct way and field. Further, it would motivate and encourage the employees to overcome their mental blocks.
• The leadership should be skilled enough to utilize the resources and handle conflicts among the employees by exploitation and exploration.
• They should also be competent to conduct the process of creative thinking and brainstorming, and guide them towards thinking beyond their previous perceptions.
• Creating a climate of collaboration would help the employees to discuss and observe more to learn new approaches of creative thinking.

The MatchBox Architects can promote the creativity and innovation among its employees by following the recommendations mentioned above.

References:

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