Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Dr. Bettina von Stamm, a renowned expert in her field, is passionate about understanding and enabling innovation. For this purpose she has set up the Innovation Leadership Forum, part of which is a Networking group to exchange and add further knowledge around innovation. Current members contributing their innovation expertise include, BASF, Cancer Research UK, Cargill, ICI Paints, Marks & Spencer, Masterfoods, the National Health Innovation Institute, Nestle, Ordnance Survey, Smith & Nephew, Unilever and Visteon. Dr von Stamm also teaches and conducts research in design and innovation management at a number of leading universities in the US, Germany and the UK.

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There is no doubt about it, innovation is the major driving force in organisations today. With the rise of truly global markets and the intensifying competition for customers, employees and other critical resources, the ability to continuously develop successful innovative products, services, processes and strategies is essential. While creativity is the starting point for any kind of innovation, design is the process through which a creative idea or concept is translated into reality. Managing Innovation, Design and Creativity 2nd edition brings these three strands together in a discussion built around a collection of up-to-date case studies.

New features to this edition:

• Insights into how innovation and knowledge of innovation management has evolved since the beginning of the millennium
• Exploration of leading edge topics such as understanding discontinuous innovation, open innovation and user-led innovation
• The new chapter is supported with two new case studies
• Stronger emphasis on the role of design, using Procter & Gamble and BMW as examples.
• General expansion and revision of other chapters according to current research

Managing Innovation, Design and Creativity, 2nd edition has been written for students on innovation and design courses, and also for business managers with responsibility for innovation within their organizations.

Dr Bettina von Stamm, a renowned expert in her field, is passionate about understanding and enabling innovation. For this purpose she has set up the Innovation Leadership Forum, part of which is a Networking Group to exchange and add further knowledge around innovation. Current members contributing their innovation expertise include BASF, Cancer Research UK, Cargill, ICI Paints, Marks & Spencer, Masterfoods, The National Health Innovation Institute, Nestle, Ordnance Survey, Smith & Nephew, Unilever and Visteon). Dr von Stamm also teaches and conducts research in design and innovation management at a number of leading universities in the US, Germany and the UK.

Aus dem Klappentext

There is no doubt about it, innovation is the major driving force in organisations today. With the rise of truly global markets and the intensifying competition for customers, employees and other critical resources, the ability to continuously develop successful innovative products, services, processes and strategies is essential. While creativity is the starting point for any kind of innovation, design is the process through which a creative idea or concept is translated into reality. Managing Innovation, Design and Creativity 2^nd edition brings these three strands together in a discussion built around a collection of up-to-date case studies.

New features to this edition:

• Insights into how innovation and knowledge of innovation management has evolved since the beginning of the millennium
• Exploration of leading edge topics such as understanding discontinuous innovation, open innovation and user-led innovation
• The new chapter is supported with two new case studies
• Stronger emphasis on the role of design, using Procter & Gamble and BMW as examples.
• General expansion and revision of other chapters according to current research

Managing Innovation, Design and Creativity, 2^nd edition has been written for students on innovation and design courses, and also for business managers with responsibility for innovation within their organizations.

Dr Bettina von Stamm, a renowned expert in her field, is passionate about understanding and enabling innovation.  For this purpose she has set up the Innovation Leadership Forum, part of which is a Networking Group to exchange and add further knowledge around innovation. Current members contributing their innovation expertise include BASF, Cancer Research UK, Cargill, ICI Paints, Marks & Spencer, Masterfoods, The National Health Innovation Institute, Nestle, Ordnance Survey, Smith & Nephew, Unilever and Visteon). Dr von Stamm also teaches and conducts research in design and innovation management at a number of leading universities in the US, Germany and the UK.

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Managing Innovation, Design and Creativity

John Wiley & Sons

Chapter One

This chapter provides an introduction to innovation, design and creativity. It sets out the meaning of these words in the context of this book, how they fit together, and introduces some useful frameworks for the subjects.

INNOVATION

New opinions are always suspected and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common. John Locke

Innovation, just as many other things in management and life, means different things to different people. What does innovation mean in the context of this book?

Often 'creativity' and 'innovation' are used interchangeably. However, there are fundamental differences. In fact, creativity is an essential building block for innovation. This is reflected in the now widely accepted definition of innovation equalling creativity plus (successful) implementation. Creativity alone, to come up with ideas, is not enough. In order to reap the benefits one needs to do something with it. History tells many tales of great inventors who were not able to reap the benefits of their labour, think of the x-ray scanner, invented by EMI but made a commercial success by General Electric, VCRs which had been invented by Ampex/Sony but were successfully commercialised by Matsushita, or the vacuum cleaner, invented by a Mr Spengler but commercialised by Hoover. Why might that be? Let's take a closer look at the two components of innovation, creativity and implementation.

Implementation - putting ideas into practice - is made up of three aspects: idea selection, development and commercialisation, and of course creativity is needed here too. What do organisations need to achieve implementation? They need processes, procedures and structures that allow the timely and effective execution of projects; implementation is about team effort. But even companies that have all the right processes, procedures and structures in place are often unable to be innovative.

Taking a closer look at creativity might help to explain why that might be. If implementation is putting an idea into practice, creativity is coming up with the idea in the first place. Creativity is an essential part of innovation - it is the point of departure. One of the big concerns for many companies is therefore how to generate more and better ideas - how to become more creative. Consider a few things about creativity:

As opposed to commonly held opinion, creativity - the act of coming up with an idea-is an inherently individual act. It is the development of an idea and its implementation where the team is needed.

Creativity has little to do with the 'flash of inspiration out of the blue'. To quote John Hunt, Visiting Professor for Organisational Behaviour at London Business School, "Creativity is not something where someone who has never worked in that field suddenly gets this marvellous idea. Creativity is relating a concept to a particular body of knowledge. The existing body of knowledge is as vital as the novel idea and really creative people spend years and years acquiring and refining their knowledge base - be it music, mathematics, arts, sculpture or design." There is often some debate as to whether creativity is for the selected few or everyone. Fortunately more and more people realise that everyone can be creative, just the type and level of creativity vary. Let me share a comment from a large US-based company that participated in the latest round of innovation best practice research (von Stamm, 2006) on how they used an invitation for ideas from everyone in the organisation to kick-start their innovation efforts. "What we learned from the inventory [of ideas] is the following, (1) the more people you invite the better the output, and the higher the achievements; (2) when we looked at where the best, most powerful ideas had come from we could not find any link to either a particular geographical area, nor to a particular level within the organisation's hierarchy, nor to one particular function. There were no hot spots for 'good ideas'. The ideas were rather distributed across all dimensions. The 'winners' had only one thing in common: they were all quite exceptional. So we were pleased we asked everyone, otherwise we would have missed out on some fantastic opportunities."

So while certain people are more creative on their own accord than others, creativity can be stimulated and supported through training, and by creating the right work environment and atmosphere. In her research Harvard Business School Professor Theresa Amabile identified certain characteristics that support creativity in the workplace (see Figure 1.1).

Amabile identified five environmental components that affect creativity:

Encouragement of creativity (which encompasses open information flow and support for new ideas at all levels of the organisation, from top management, through immediate supervisors, to work groups).

Autonomy or freedom (autonomy in the day-to-day conduct of work ; a sense of individual ownership of and control over work).

Resources (the materials, information and general resources available for work).

Pressures (including both positive challenge and negative workload pressure).

Organisational impediments to creativity (including conservatism and internal strife).

The components fall into two categories: they are either stimulants to creativity (tapped by scales assessing organisational and supervisory encouragement, work group support, sufficient resources and challenging work), or obstacles to creativity (tapped by scales assessing organisational impediments and workload pressure).

However, creativity cannot be ordered, it relies much more on intrinsic motivation, on people being enthusiastic, inspired and knowledgeable. You cannot tell people to be more creative and innovative, you have to inspire them to be so.

Finally, companies tend to require hard facts but creativity and innovation are often based on intuition. And, by the way, as early as the mid-1980s authors such as Peters and Waterman (In Search of Excellence) suggested that the modern American manager's overdependence on analytic thought and quantitative analysis was a principal cause for the loss of its worldwide pre-eminence (as reflected in stagnating productivity, ageing and obsolete machinery, and inferior but more expensive products).

So, implementation is about being organised and about using the methodological and systematic approach of a 'hare brain' (see Box 1.1). It needs to be structured and cannot be left to chance. Time is of the essence - you need to be fast. Creativity is less straightforward than implementation, it is not about a new process or establishing a new structure. To be creative people have to think differently. To be innovative people have to behave differently. And to be successful organisations have to employ people that think and behave differently. This is why I often define innovation as 'a frame of mind'. Creativity is about being different, thinking laterally, making new connections. It is about allowing the 'tortoise mind' to work. Creativity can be encouraged, not fforced. Time is of the essence too but in as much as creativity cannot be rushed,...