Creativity and Leadership in Science, Technology, and Innovation

Sven Hemlin, Carl Martin Allwood, Ben Martin, Michael D. Mumford

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138203044
• eBook ISBN: 9781135048822
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Leadership is vital to creativity and successful innovation in groups and organizations; leadership is however seldom studied in the academic literature as a creativity driver. One reason for the lack of attention paid to leadership's effect on creativity may be the common belief that creativity cannot and should not be managed. Creative individuals and groups are regarded as, and indeed often are, autonomous and self-driving. From this belief the erroneous conclusion is drawn that there is no need for leadership in creative environments and situations. The better conclusion, proposed by this book, is that leadership not only stimulates creativity, but that such a leadership in the science, technology, and innovation fields should specifically possess at least two features: a) expertise in the field(s), and b) an ability to create, support, and encourage individuals, groups, and creative knowledge environments.

A number of specialist authors in this volume offer original theoretical, empirical, and applied chapters that elucidate how to better organize and lead creative efforts in science, technology, and innovation. A number of important research questions are raised and answered, including: What kinds of leaderships are needed at different levels of S&T organizations for a creative output? What social and cognitive abilities and skills are needed for leadership in creative environments? How does leadership vary with different phases of the creative process? This book offers concrete analysis of how leaders and managers can facilitate, promote, and organize for creative performance in science, technology, and in innovating organizations, making it required reading for academic and industrial research leaders, scientists, and engineers.

1
Introduction

Why Is Leadership Important for Creativity in Science, Technology, and Innovation?

Sven Hemlin, Carl Martin Allwood, Ben R. Martin, and Michael D. Mumford

This book is concerned with the relationship between creativity and leadership in science, technology and innovation. Why have we chosen to focus on this topic? There are several reasons. First, it is clear that science, technology, and innovation are crucial driving forces in the development of economies and societies. This is not just confined to the present and the emergence of what has become known as ‘the knowledge economy’. Throughout history, science, technology, and innovation have been central to societal and economic development, with human curiosity and creative endeavors often being crucial to finding scientific, technological, and innovative solutions to the problems confronting humankind. Consider a few significant examples: We have seen detailed astronomical observations of stars and planets already in the earliest cultures of mankind in Mesopotamia over 5,000 years ago, Roman aqueducts for the transport of water made possible by new technologies 2,000 years ago, the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg in 1440, the adoption of electricity by Edison to light houses and streets in the 1880s, a number of effective cures for previously lethal diseases such as pneumonia through the introduction of antibiotics at the end of the 19th century, and so on. All of these accomplishments were driven by a combination of human curiosity, creative problem solving, and skills in an effort to promote societies and make life better. This drive to increase our knowledge in order to bring about the improvement of the world manifests itself in science, technology, and innovation.

But why study leadership in connection with creative efforts in science, technology, and innovation? Are not scientific discoveries the work of singular persons—of gifted scientists and inventors? As we shall see in the chapters that follow, there is strong evidence that creativity in these domains is much more dependent on good leadership today than previously. Scientific and technological process requires more coordinated actions than a hundred or even fifty years ago (Ziman, 2000). In science, team work is ever more prevalent, for example, as reflected not only in the increasing number of coauthored articles (e.g., Hicks & Katz, 1996) but also in the way that scientific research is organized in larger units, research groups and projects (Ziman, 2000). Likewise, innovation is often a result of the collective efforts of numerous individuals, teams or even organizations working in collaboration (e.g., Chesbrough, 2003). Consequently, the coordination of those engaged in creative activities in science, technology, and innovation requires more and better leadership, including the provision of cognitive and motivational support for creative individuals, teams, and organizations (Mumford, Peterson, & Robledo, this book). This requirement has increased as economies and societies have become ever more dependent on new knowledge—that is, with the emergence of the knowledge society (Stehr, 1994).

The purpose of this book is to collect, analyze and draw conclusions from recent studies of how leaders may stimulate creativity in science, technology, and innovation. This has involved bringing together a number of leading scholars in the field to present their latest results and views on this topic. Many of the chapters were first presented at a conference held at Gothenburg in July 9–10, 2010, where they were discussed, and criticisms and suggested improvements were put forward. When a number of gaps were identified in the coverage of the subject, other leading researchers were approached to prepare additional contributions. The selection of authors was guided by one of the editors (Mumford) who has a good overview of the field because he served for several years as the Editor of Leadership Quarterly. We do not claim to cover all dimensions of creativity and leadership in science, technology, and innovation, but the chapters in this book span a range of the more important topics and provide a number of original contributions, some being in the form of conceptual or theoretical overviews, others being primarily empirical papers, while a third set comprise contributions that are more applied in nature. Reviews from referees and from the editors of this book helped in the process of further developing and strengthening the contributions set out in the chapters that follow.

Some Definitions

Creativity and Innovation

This book is about creativity and leadership in three domains of human enterprise, namely science, technology and innovation. We have so far attempted to argue why this is an important topic. Next, we want to offer some definitions of the central concepts we use. First, creativity is commonly seen as a novel and useful result or product of some process (Mumford & Gustafson, 1988). However, a more elaborate definition of creativity is offered by Amabile (1996, p. 35):

A product or response will be judged as creative to the extent that (a) it is both a novel and appropriate, useful, correct or valuable response to the task at hand, and (b) the task is heuristic rather than algorithmic.

The second definition includes the proviso that tasks solved by following established rules are not creative in nature. Hence, not only is the end result important but also the process used for solving the problem. Indeed, some theorists also included the person and the ‘press’ (the relationship between human beings and their environment) in the definition of creativity in addition to the product and process (e.g., Rhodes, 1961). Rhodes’s ‘four Ps’ (person, process, product, and press) of creativity subsequently became a standard view of how to approach creativity. In the early days of creativity research, most emphasis was given to the personal characteristics of creative people, but later on the problem-solving process leading to creative results received more attention, and more recently the environment promoting creativity has been the focus of attention (see Feist, 2006, for a recent review; also see Hemlin, Allwood, & Martin, 2004, 2008).

Creativity is often seen in terms of artistic accomplishment, for example, in music or art. However, it is also a characteristic of much scientific and technological endeavor. The related concept of ‘innovation’ is frequently the outcome of individual, team, and organizational efforts to create a new or significantly improved product, process, or service that is potentially attractive to some market or other (Denti & Hemlin, 2012).¹ Moreover, and very important, innovations are often based on creative accomplishments in science and technology. Hence, there is a strong link between creativity in science and technology, on one hand, and innovations, on the other. The latter, however, are not only dependent on creative efforts in science and technology. An innovation is the implementation of new ideas, whether scientific, technological, or otherwise, that is applied in a certain context in order to be useful. According to economists, there also needs to be some form of market demand for the innovation so that it can be sold or otherwise diffused to customers or clients and thus make the transition from an ‘invention’ to an ‘innovation’. Therefore, innovation requires efforts and activities by individuals and organizations to implement, diffuse, organize, and market it. To return to the concept of creativity, one should view creativity rather as often being a forerunner to innovation. If no creativity were apparent, there would probably be little by way of innovation.

Innovations may be further differentiated, coming in a variety of forms. One distinction is that between incremental innovations and radical ones (e.g., Tidd, Bessant, & Pavitt, 2005). The former involve step-by-step improvements to products, processes, or services, for instance, better performance by car window-wipers in new automobile models. Radical innovations, by contrast, often involve new products, processes, or services not available previously, such as the electrical lightbulb developed by Thomas Edison.² Another innovation category is that of ‘open innovation’ denoting new products, processes, or services developed in collaboration between two or more firms or other organizations rather than in one alone (the latter corresponding to ‘closed innovation’). A third distinction is that between ‘exploratory innovation’—the production of new products, processes, or services based on new knowledge—and ‘exploitative innovation’ based on already existing knowledge within a business firm. Finally, a more recent concept is that of ‘social innovation’, which is distinguished from product innovation in the sense that the new phenomenon mainly concerns the social world such as Twitter. In summary, the innovations we see around us today may take many forms, and some may be based on science and technology.

Innovations are today playing a central role in driving economies but also in enabling societal development more widely. It may be helpful to the reader at this point to get a sense of where innovation is currently flourishing in the world, because this may also provide some indication of where creativity—and the leadership of creative and innovative efforts—is apparently working most effectively. The Global Innovation Index (GII) annually ranks nations in terms of their innovative capacity. In 2011, the GII rankings were dominated by Europe with six countries, whereas Asia had two as did North America. The top 10 nations 2011 are (in rank order) Switzerland, Sweden, Singapore, Hong Kong, Finland, Denmark, the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. The GII also identified the leading nations in each of the main regions of the world, these being Switzerland, Singapore, the US, Israel (ranked 14th in the world), Chile (ranked 38th), and Mauritius (53rd) and India (62nd) (Dutta, 2011).

Leadership

The next concepts we need to scrutinize are those of ‘leader’ and ‘leadership’. What is a leader? A common view is that a leader is someone who influences other persons for some specific purpose (Mumford, Peterson, & Robledo, this book). The leadership role may be of an informal or a formal nature. The former, for example, might mean a person influencing others to pursue some action in a work group because he or she is simply the oldest or most experienced member of that group (i.e., an informal leader), while a manager may influence others in a work group because it is his or her job (i.e., acting as a formal leader). For our purpose, it will be useful to distinguish between leaders and managers because they have different characteristics that are not always apparent or easily perceived. The seminal work on this was carried out by Zalesnik (1977/2004), who distinguishes between the characteristics of leaders and managers in terms of managerial cultures, attitudes to goals, work conceptions and relationship to others. First, Zalesnik observes that a managerial culture is one that is characterized by rationality and control, whereas he describes a leadership culture rather in terms of dramatic events. Second, whereas managers tend to have impersonal and rather passive attitudes to goals, the leader is a more personal, active, and inspiring actor. Third, managers are generally more concerned with coordinating and balancing views to limit choices in work. Leaders, on the other hand, deliberately take new approaches and open up the search for other options. Fourth, managers relate to people according to their roles in work and decision-making processes, whereas leaders are more concerned with people’s ideas and relate to these in intuitive and empathetic ways. In conclusion, Zalesnik argues that managers are part of the organization that they work for, whereas leaders never truly belong to the organization, even though he or she works within it. These observations have at least two implications for leadership that we believe are particularly salient here. First, leaders are engaged in what they are doing because of their expertise in a given field (i.e., cognitive leadership). Second, leaders care and support their followers because they need the team that they lead to pursue the goals they aspire to by working effectively together (i.e., motivational leadership). However, this is not to imply that leading and coordinating research and development (R&D) or innovation does not require management skills—these are certainly needed as well.

Leadership Styles in Different Cultures

This book contain chapters dealing with leaders from a number of different countries including the US, the Netherlands, and Sweden, so it is perhaps relevant to consider whether there might be important differences among leaders and leadership styles in different countries. One reason for such differences among leaders may be that they act in social environments with different expectations as to their behavior. For example, the little research that exists suggests that leaders in Scandinavia and the Netherlands differ from those in China and the US, for example, but that those in Japan show some similarities to their counterparts in Scandinavia and the Netherlands. For example, leaders in China and to some extent the United States appear to take a more directive and hierarchical approach than leaders in the other countries mentioned previously do, at least in terms of Hofstede’s power dimension.³ On this particular dimension, China scores highest with 80, followed by Japan on 54, whereas the Scandinavian countries of Finland, Norway, and Sweden range from 31 to 33 and Denmark is only 18, compared with the United Kingdom with 35 and the US with 40.⁴ In line with this is Koopman and Pool’s (1991) characterization of organizational decision making in the Netherlands as typifying a ‘participation model’, which stresses participation by staff at levels below the top management. The same description is also applicable to, for example, Sweden and Norway. A further indication of the differences between leaders in the aforementioned countries comes from a study by Martinsons (2001) of senior business leaders in China, Japan, and the United States. The Chinese leaders scored much higher on the ‘directive’ decision style than did the Japanese and US leaders, whereas the Japanese leaders scored somewhat higher than did those from the US. However, the Japanese leaders also scored higher on the socially oriented ‘behavioral’ decision style; for example, they tended to involve more people at different levels in their decisions. Interviews with a subset of the participating leaders showed that organizational decision making tended to take longer in Japan, and this was reported as being due to attempts to achieve consensus around the suggested decision option. The interviews also showed that the implementation phase was generally shorter in Japan than in the other two countries, perhaps due to a mor...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• 1 Introduction: Why Is Leadership Important for Creativity in Science, Technology, and Innovation?
• Part I Theoretical Section
• Part II Empirical Section
• Part III Implications Section
• Contributors
• Index