The importance of
creativity and
innovation
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‘As the births of all living creatures are, at first, misshapen, so are all innovations.’
Francis Bacon (1625)
The arts are all about creativity. We expect artists, sculptors, musicians, writers and performers to see things in new ways, to present new sounds, images and ideas. We look to businesses at the leading edge of their industry, in communications and information technology-based sectors particularly, to develop innovative products and services.
But what about the rest of us, people who aren't creative artists, who work in more everyday organizations, what has creativity and innovation to do with us? This workbook is all about the nature and role of creativity and innovation and what you can do to encourage it in your organization. We will start, in this first session, by looking at just exactly what creativity and innovation are and why they are important for every organization. We'll also look at the implications if organizations don't encourage creativity and innovation in their products and services and in the processes by which these are produced or supplied.
Let's start by thinking about both ideas and decide what they are and how they differ.
Activity 1
What do you think these two words mean. Think about them and write your thoughts down here.
Creativity is:
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Innovation is:
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There are plenty of different definitions, but here are two that are probably helpful in thinking about the difference between the two ideas. They were used by Dr William Coyne, who was Senior Vice-President for Research and Development of the 3M Corporation, when he gave the sixth UK Innovation Lecture at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre on the 5th March 1996. He distinguished between creativity and innovation by saying that creativity is ‘the thinking of novel and appropriate ideas’ whereas innovation is ‘the successful implementation of those ideas within an organization’. Another way of thinking about this is that creativity is the new or original idea, but innovation is the process by which that idea is turned into practice.
Activity 2
Thinking about these definitions, what do you think is more important for an organization, to be able to develop creative ideas or to be innovative and turn creative ideas into practice?
You may have said that they need to be both, and ideally they should be. You may have said that, since creativity comes first, that must be more important. Whilst it's true that, without creative ideas, organizations can't be innovative, it is also true that they don't have to develop creative ideas themselves to put them into practice. Innovative organizations can buy in creative ideas, or copy other people's ideas. However, if they aren't innovative, then all the creative ideas in the world will be useless, because they will lack the ability to turn them into real products or services, or change their processes.
The Centre for Exploitation of Science and Technology (CEST) in a 1995 report called Bridging the Innovation Gap define the ‘innovation gap’ as the gap between vision and reality, between generating the creative idea in the first place and the subsequent analysis to identify the potential of the new idea or process and its implementation, what we have called innovation. In other words, the biggest problem facing organizations is not coming up with creative ideas (although that still needs working on) but the innovation that puts them into practice.
The same report went on to distinguish between two types of technical innovation, between:
evolutionary innovation, taking the design of existing practices, products or services a step further away from conventional ways of doing things, which is undertaken on a planned basis, or
revolutionary innovation, based on ‘serendipity’ (an opportunity for innovative practices, products or services occurring) which could which cannot be predicted but which the organization must be alert to and supportive of when the occasion arises.
As we shall see, in Session C, neither will occur if the organization isn't prepared to embrace innovation, however it occurs. However, the organization that isn't prepared to accept evolutionary innovation is far less likely to accept something revolutionary.
Alexander Graham Bell patented the first telephone in 1876 and two years later the first telephone companies started up in the UK. By 1972 only 42% of households had a telephone, rising to around 93% some 20 years later, and has never gone much above this figure. By comparison, the mobile ‘phone was introduced in the late 1970s and today, after only 30 years or so, approaching 90% of households have at least one.
Activity 3
Why do you think products like mobile phones have been taken up so rapidly, compared with the much slower growth of landlines?
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Obviously mobile phones have many advantages over landlines. They can be used wherever the person is, they offer a much wider range of services (text, video, music, as well as ordinary voice communication) and they are small and easy to carry around. However, it's important not to let the convenience and versatility specific to mobile phones to hide some broader factors that apply to many other areas as well.
3.1 Greater wealth
Firstly, here in the wealthy western world, most people live lives of luxury compared to their grandparents and have much higher disposable incomes (income after all fixed expenditure) to spend on goods and services. This makes them more responsive to new ideas and new ways of behaving, because their basic needs have been satisfied and they still have plenty of money left over. Of course, some items (like housing) have become relatively more expensive, but many others have become relatively cheap, as people's incomes have risen. The ordinary telephone was still regarded as a luxury item in the fifties or sixties, but is now seen by many as a basic necessity, and its cost is relatively low
The availability of a much larger disposable income has also been accompanied by much busier lifestyles. People haven't used the opportunity offered by greater wealth to reduce their hours of work significantly but have simply fitted more into their lives. The proliferation of new products and services has created new opportunities to be busy, whether it's eating out, going to the gym, having a short break abroad, playing computer games or chatting to people around the world via the Internet.
There is also a political and social aspect to these economic changes. Greater wealth is primarily an economic phenomenon, but it is also a social phenomenon - economic growth leads to social changes, as people can afford to change their lifestyles. Several hundred thousand Britons now own houses abroad as well as in the UK. More and more people live alone. Family sizes in Western Europe are falling below replacement size, so that populations would be shrinking if it weren't for net inward migration (more people immigrating than emigrating).
Politically these changes are also important A few years ago there was great consternation in the UK when it was announced that Italy had (temporarily) overtaken the UK in the size of its economy. Being the fifth largest economy in the world (after the USA, Japan, Germany and China, based on World Bank ratings of Gross National Income) makes this relatively small island with its medium-sized population (21st largest in 2005) far more significant internationally than it would otherwise be. In negotiations with international partners, in the EU, in the World Trade Organization and at the United Nations, the UK's economic power gives us political clout. However, that economic power depends on the creativity and innovation of UK organizations and the people they employ.
3.2 Greater expectations
Secondly, people expect much more from the goods and services on offer. This higher level of expectation is probably related to the first factor -greater relative wealth makes people more demanding of the goods and services they receive, and far less accepting of inferior products or experiences. They are also more adventurous, more ready to try out new things that their parents or grandparents would be more careful about, and also more ready to throw out older items that still work, to buy something new.
This is illustrated by the diffusion of innovation curve, which shows the willingness of people to accept innovative new products and services. The first diagram shows the six different categories as being more or less equal in size, from Innovators (who are always keen to try something new) to Laggards (who will hold out from trying something to the last).
The six different categories shown in the diagram are:
1 Innovators, who seek out new products and experiences, and always want to be the first to own new products or try out new services. They will download the Beta versions of new software that still has bugs in it.
2 Early Adopters, who respond quickly to new trends but like to wait briefly before trying them out, to iron out the worst problems. These are the people who will buy the first release software.
3 Early Majorities, who respond less quickly to trends, waiting for evidence that this is the right purchase decision to make. They will buy the revised first edition (software v1.1), which has been changed to take account of the problems Innovators and Early Adopters experienced.
4 Late Majorities, who are more resistant to trends but will take them up when they have become widely adopted. They want to buy mainstream products and services that have proved themselves (software v2.0).
5 Late Adopters, who tend to take up Innovations only when they have become the norm, often after Innovators and even Early Adopters have moved on to something else (software v3.0).
6 Laggards, who stick with the old ways until they are forced to change, the kind of people who will delight in the ‘old ways', who still use typewriters when everyone else is using a computer.
It is quite possible that the curve has got steeper in recent years, that more people are ready to adopt new ideas (Innovators and Early Adopters) and fewer are Late Adopters or Laggards (perhaps because the old products or services get withdrawn more quickly). This is shown in the figure below:
Activity 4
Think about your own attitude to innovative products and services, and the behaviour of some other people you know. How would you class yourself and them, in terms of their willingness to try out new products and services?
| Yourself | Person 1 | Person 2 | Person 3 | |
| Innovators | ||||
| Early Adopters | ||||
| Early Majorities | ||||
| Late Majorities | ||||
| Late Adopters | ||||
| Laggards |
3.3 New products and services
There is a ‘chicken and egg’ question about the willingness of people to welcome innovative new products and services, and the developments in technology and systems that produce them. If so many new products and services weren't there, would people be so receptive of them? On the other hand, if people weren't so receptive, would there be the incentive to develop them? In reality, there has probably been a parallel development, with the technologies and systems being developed more rapidly as society becomes more willing to try out (and even more demanding of) new products and services, as novelty becomes an end in itself.
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R&D – research and development – lie at the heart of innovative products and services, and depend on the creativity of our scientists, technologists, engineers and product designers, and on the managers who employ and encourage them.
R&D is a very loose term to describe everything from the basic research that goes on in University laboratories to the market testing of new products and services that is organized by market research companies to perfect the shape of a bottle to hold a new drink or the texture of a new biscuit. Often, the link between the one and the other is very long and tenuous. When a research scientist uncovers the curious properties of certain fluoro-carbons (compounds of fluoride and carbon), it is a long route (via the coatings on rockets to reduce friction during launch) to easy-to-clean kitchen utensils.
Case study
A few years ago a PhD student was discussing his research activity. He was investigating the properties of certain artificial (i.e. not naturally occurring) materials for their potential to be used to replace natural muscle in people suffering from certain muscle-wasting diseases. These materials are categorized by their responsiveness to weak electrical signals. These cause the material to stretch or shrink, in the same way that muscles stretch or shrink when they receive weak electrical signals from the brain.
After two years’ research, with another year left to complete his research and write his thesis, he had found that the materials he was investigating had very limited potential. They were unlikely to be able to be developed further to be of practical use. Other researchers, looking at other classes of materials, had more success. It was unlikely that his research would lead to any useful products.
Activity 5
What can you conclude about the usefulness of his research? Was it worthwhile? Why do you think that?
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This research didn't lead to any worthwhile products, but what it did do was to narrow down the options for future research, by excluding the class of materials that he had been studying. Much of the research undertaken by pharmaceutical companies falls into this category. There are far more deadends than miracle breakthroughs, but the miracle breakthroughs result from many years of painstaking research, much of which produces nothing other than the knowledge that this isn't the way to solve the problem.
The Dyson vacuum cleaner was the result of some 2,000 prototypes, until the right product was developed. In the speech referred to earlier, Bill Coyne reckoned that it took 1,000 new product ideas to produce one successful product in the market. If all this sounds wasteful, it shows how hard it is to be truly creative in developing novel ideas and converting them into innovative products.
Of course, not every organization has the resources to invest in basic R&D. As we've seen, a lot of this is done in universities, and is designed to explore fundamental issues about the nature of the world we live in and the way society works. Uncovering the secret of DNA wasn't done to enable the police to identify criminals, but the work that was done in identifying the double helix was essential for the eventual development of procedures for comparing the DNA found in tissue samples at a crime scene and comparing these to the DNA profiles of known criminals.
Activity 6
What kind of fundamental research underpins the products or services your organization supplies? Think hard about it. You may not be able to pinpoint the specific research, but you may be able to identify what needed to be known for your organization to function as it does.
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You may be surprised about some of the conclusions you reach. For example, most fast food and other catering outlets depend on frozen or chilled foods to be able to meet customer needs. How many people working in catering recognize that Francis Bacon (whose comments about innovation start this session) pioneered the technique? Bacon, an early 17th century natural philosopher, identified the preservative properties of the cold and died for his pains. (He contracted pneumonia when burying a chicken in snow to freeze it.)
In the same way, the binary system that is the basis of all modern computing is about three centuries old, and anthropologists have been investigating the belief systems, rituals and practices of other societies for well over 100 years and, in the process, can now help us to understand how people respond to advertising and marketing strategies in our own society.
The development of innovative products from fundamental research takes time, involves combining knowledge from different sources and disciplines and is often quite unpredictable. Looking back from the finished product it is clear how the basic ideas informed its development, but it wasn't obvious when those ideas were first being discussed.
However, there is far more effort these days to help convert fundamental research into products and services, or to improve their production and supply. This process is called knowledge transfer, and most universities and research institutes have systems and procedures to facilitate this process.
If knowledge transfer is the way that universities try to ‘push’ their research into marketable products and services, organizations’ own R&D is the way that they try to pull those ideas from the other end. The best organizations, as we will see in Session C, encourage people to be alert to new ideas that could lead to them being able to offer new, better, more original products and services. This is what Bill Coyne, of 3M, calls empowerment, ensuring that people have the opportunity and the support to seek out new ideas and develop them successfully.
Case study
3M has set itself the goal of being at the leading edge of all the markets in which it operates, based on its substantial commitment to R&D. Two examples, about 50 years apart illustrate this.
In 1923, the US car industry had encouraged demand for two-tone cars (the top and bottom halves of the car body painted different colours). Existing car owners wanted garages to repaint half their car a different colour, done by masking off the half not being painted. The line between the two halves was marked sticky tape. When this was peeled off it took some paint with it, and this area had to be touched up to its original colour. Dick Drew, of 3M, was investigating how to improve the abrasives used to clean up the area before this was done. He recognized that if the paint wasn't removed in the first place the problem would be solved. After working for many months with experimental adhesives (for which there was no obvious use) he developed the product called masking tape that lacks the strong adhesive quality of other tapes, to meet the market need.
In the same way, and half a century later, Art Fry also worked at 3M and found a use for another weak adhesive to create what became Post-it− notes. Both products relied on materials that had been rejected for their original purpose, to stick things together, because they didn't do so well enough. Yet it was the non-permanent features of both adhesives that made them ideal for their purpose.
Activity 7
What kind of R&D does your organization engage in? Does it have a formal R&D department or staff, does it buy in R&D from outside, or does it rely on new products or services emerging from managers and other employees?
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If you work for a larger production organization then it will almost certainly have specialist R&D employees. Medium-sized production businesses often rely on outside resources with one or two internal specialists, who may have to combine R&D with other responsibilities. Smaller businesses, and many service-based organizations, lack a formal R&D process or personnel, although they may undertake or commission developmental activities that serve a similar purpose.
However, it's important that some form of R&D is undertaken if organizations are to survive in an increasingly competitive environment – and this applies as much in the public and voluntary sectors as it does in the private sector. It also needs to ensure that it encourages creativity and innovation in its R&D, and doesn't treat it as part of its continuous quality improvement process. Whilst continuous improvement is critical to long-term success, it's not sufficient on its own. Continuous improvement isn't necessarily innovative; innovation is not simply an improvement on what is currently being done but can be a complete and fundamental change in what the organization does.
Continuous improvement is mainly about ensuring that the organization meets current, identified customer requirements more effectively. Innovation often involves anticipating customer requirements, identifying products and services they haven't considered and meeting those. This means being prepared to take risks, and some industries and some organizations are far more risk averse than others. This means that they avoid taking risks.
This is particularly true for many public services, because they get no thanks for trying out risky ideas and getting them wrong. In the worst cases, innovation may cause harm to people. Taking risks with health care or education is likely to lead to condemnation if it goes wrong, so organizations tend to play safe.
Dominic Swords of the Innovation Research Centre at Henley Management Centre suggests that there is an important need for innovation, but it has to be in an appropriate context. He quotes an airline that publishes ‘its commitment to getting it right first time, to continuous improvement and to innovation’. These three commitments can be thought of as sitting along a line from ‘tight’ to ‘loose’, reflecting the degree of organizational control needed to fulfil those values:
The significant question is:
‘Which of these strategies would you want the pilot to use when landing the plane?’
Landing a plane full of people must be done right first time, every time. However, a test flight into the same airport might try an improved manoeuvre, and a test flight into an isolated and deserted airport may be the place for innovations in landing.
Getting it right first time means adhering to clear procedures and standards; continuous improvement can lead to improved procedures and higher standards over time, whilst innovation provides the breakthroughs which fundamentally re-shape procedures and set radically new standards. Each has its role, but at different times. Innovation isn't the only strategy for developing the organization, but an important one alongside the others.
Self-assessment I
1 Define:
Creativity: ______________________________________________________
Innovation: ______________________________________________________
2 What is the name for the problem organizations face in putting creative ideas into practice? ____________________________________________________
3 What are the six types of person identified by the diffusion of innovation curve?
(a) ______________________________________________________________
(b) ______________________________________________________________
(c) ______________________________________________________________
(d) ______________________________________________________________
(e) ______________________________________________________________
(f) ______________________________________________________________
Answers on page 73.
5 Summary
Creativity is ‘the thinking of novel and appropriate ideas’ whereas innovation is ‘the successful implementation of those ideas within an organization’.
The problem many organizations face is the ‘innovation gap’, the gap between generating the creative idea in the first place and its implementation.
The need for more innovation in organizations derives from greater wealth (so people are demanding more products and services) and greater expectations (as people demand better products and services), as more people are willing to try new things and they enter the mainstream more quickly (a steepening ‘diffusion of innovation’ curve).
R&D become more important as organizations have to seek out new ideas and look for ways for converting them into marketable products and services.
Innovation sits alongside continuous improvement in enabling organizations to meet customer needs, but involves far more fundamental changes than the incremental approach of continuous improvement.