Managing Creativity and Managing Innovation

A 116 page, 20,000 word Master of Business Administration (MBA) dissertation (136 pages including appendices) that proposes a framework for managing creativity and innovation through active research of 22% of the largest advertising agencies in London and critical evaluation of more than 120 sources of literature (including Harvard Business Review articles and Harvard Essentials).

This document is invaluable for a) the creativity and innovation consultant, leader, director or manager and b) the creative person, idea generator or innovator wishing to produce or improve tangible creative output.

As the concepts are universal, this document applies to a variety of domains and industries, including human capital management, product development, organisational culture and structure management, management consultancy, intrapraneur and entrepreneur, think tanks, creative corporate strategy, business creativity etc.

Creativity and Innovation are often taught using airy-fairy, intangible, ungrounded, unscientific, non-useable, undefined, mysterious terminology and theories. To get a handle on it you need to talk in real, tangible, useable, measurable concepts to explore the twelve major themes that are common in all fields of creativity:

What are the critical differences between creativity and innovation? Are different competencies required?

Do "creative people" have common characteristics and, if so, what are they? Are they stable across situations?

Can creativity be learned and developed or is it a special gift? Why is it that some people just are more creative?

Why is motivation more important than nature or nurture? How can it be enhanced, measured and managed?

Blocks and unlocking. Organisational culture. We can all be more creative, so what is stopping us? What properties of an organisational culture cultivate productivity?

What properties of an organisational structure foster creativity and innovation? Organisational structure results from a number of factors and modifying it is often not desireable, so how do we get around this?

What is the most effective team structure?

What is the role of knowledge? How do we effectively collaborate and use networks to frame-break and reduce path dependency? How do we tap into tacit knowledge? Does mastering all the literature foster creativity and innovation or does over-specialisation cause blinkered vision?

What are the differences between radical and incremental creativity and the consequences for structures, processes, skills and resources? Is it wiser to target radical or incremental ideas?

Is there value in structure and goals or is "do your best" more effective?

Is there a process that makes insight, eureka, the aha! experience more likely? Does this process allow us to produce a stream of consistently good ideas?

How do we value an idea, so as to decide how to invest resources? How do we risk manage the innovation process?

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