Fostering Creativity and Innovation

Creating a Sustainable Innovation Environment in the United Arab Emirates

Flevy Lasrado

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9783319991207
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319991214
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Strategy
• Index: Business

Compiling best practices and original research, this book examines the factors that influence the sustainability of creativity and innovation in organisations and proposes a toolkit to assess gaps within existing strategy. Focusing particularly on the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the author offers practical suggestions for improving and enhancing innovation, and ultimately achieving results. Both creativity and innovation have become pillars for leveraging competitive advantage in recent years, and therefore this book is a vital read for anyone engaged in ensuring sustainable development in organisations, particularly those within the Middle East.

© The Author(s) 2019

Flevy LasradoFostering Creativity and Innovationhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99121-4_1

Begin Abstract

1. Building a Strong Foundation for a High-Functioning Culture of Creativity and Innovation

Flevy Lasrado¹

(1)

University of Wollongong in Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Flevy Lasrado

Email: [email protected]

Keywords

UAEInnovationCreativityCompetivenessInnovation legacyDesign thinkingIdeation

End Abstract

1.1 Introduction to Organizational Creativity and Innovation

Innovation is a potent way to tackle some of the biggest problems in the world around us. In the business world, individual examples such as our opportunities for social interaction during product retail appear to have significant impact, enabling us to receive highly sophisticated services. Further, mobile phones and computers have transformed the speed, social code, and mediums used to communicate. Truly, the second decade of the twenty-first century has witnessed the rise of global competitiveness based on innovation advantage (National Research Council [NRC] 2012). In response, advanced and emerging nations are developing and pursuing innovation policies. Despite this recent interest, innovation started evolving as a key discipline of research during the twentieth century. In the knowledge economy, innovation is the most important source of change (Dajić 2017).

Innovation is crucial for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries as it is for many regions, and innovation is no stranger to Middle East Northern Africa (MENA) as the CEO of Shell noted recently in relation to the importance of energy innovation for the region (PR Newswire 2017).

Today, innovations are widely recognized not only as an engine of economic development and social progress (Randhawa and Scerri 2009) but also as an avenue for organizations to create value and competitive advantage (Pitelis 2009). High-performing organizations have their innovation belts under control and are able to successfully sustain the volatile momentum of market expansion, globalization, and technological advancement. As such, innovation offers organizations the highest potential for competitive advantage in the twenty-first century. Previously, quality, productivity, and access to low-cost resources were significant factors offering competitive advantage, but these factors are becoming less important in recent times.

Although innovation can influence organizational transformations, the field of innovation assessment is still insufficiently understood. Frameworks exist for its effective implementation in professional and public contexts, but assessment frameworks in organizational contexts are few. Innovation assessments can help managers and senior management lead a successful deployment of innovation across the organization. Effective implementation of innovation frameworks can significantly benefit organizations. For example, innovations have enhanced services and products and positively affect design processes for improved outputs. However, the success of innovation is concerned with how innovation design can shape or influence innovation levers for sustainable innovation. To understand this success fully, it is important to start our journey by understanding what innovation is.

The scope of innovation is vast with researchers offering various definitions of the term and their own visions of innovation-driving factors such as leadership and organizational capabilities. Moreover, innovation is complex, making it difficult to answer the question: “What is innovation?” Despite the dozens of possible definitions, it is crucial for an organization to understand innovation to drive this focus forward. So, we begin by asking: What does innovation mean to organizations?

Beginning with one of the oldest definitions, innovation is the generation, acceptance, and implementation of new ideas , processes , products, or services (Thompson 1965). Innovation occurs when value is created for the customer (Baunsgaard and Clegg 2009), and value creation is the process through which users become better off in some respect (Grönroos 2008). In other words, innovation must result in solving customers’ problems, leading to a better customer experience.

While value creation is one aspect of innovation, other definitions have held that profit is central to innovation. In this sense, we acknowledge that ideas have to be prototyped and should result in new products and services that yield profit for the organization. Echoing the message of “newness” in innovation, Baunsgaard and Clegg (2009) defined innovation as the creation of novelty that provides economic value through the creation of new products and services. This “newness,” as Keupp et al. (2012) noted, can relate to a “new product or service, a new production process technology , a new structure or administrative system, a new plan or program pertaining to organization members.” We find such newness embedded in the products or services produced by the organization. We see newness in the mobile phones or banking services that we use today or the way we collaborate with others in an organization. The newness of these products results from the way innovation has transformed them. In this sense, we are not experiencing fundamentally new products or discoveries as they were in existence before. Still, we still see an enhanced or new product due to innovation. The whole idea of being able to transform to meet the needs and wants of global customers underpins innovation as opposed to discovery. Therefore, this newness can be achieved by changing the production process , making new plans, or forming administrative structures in an innovative way.

Over the past forty years, there have been numerous definitions created to capture the notion of innovation (Estelyiová and Žižlavský 2012). Despite nuanced differences, most definitions have highlighted new and profit-earning initiatives while others have hinted at social impacts as well. Entrepreneurial functions may occur not only within private businesses, but also in the community sector and public agencies. Further, as cited in Ţîţu et al. (2015), the notion of “innovation” from the economic point of view was analyzed for the first time by the Austrian scientist J. Schumpeter in the first decade of the twentieth century. In his work Theory of Economic Development, Schumpeter defined innovation as “the totality of changes having as a purpose the implementation and usage of the new types of products, means of production and transport, outlet markets and forms of organization of the production process .” In Schumpeter’s framework, an innovation is recognized as being one of five types of activities, namely: (1) creating a new product , (2) introducing a new method of manufacture, (3) entering (or creating) a new outlet market, (4) using a new raw material, or (5) developing a new company structure. Along similar lines, the European Commission defined innovation as “the conversion of the new knowledge into economic and social benefits, as a result of the interaction between various subjects of a system that includes companies, research institutions and financiers in a local, national or international frame” (Ţîţu et al. 2015). Moreover, innovation can be understood as a process of learning and knowledge creation through which new problems are defined and new knowledge is developed to solve them (Lam 2010). It is defined as “the intentional generation, adoption and application of new processes, products or procedures that aim to benefit the individual, group or organization in question” (Lipponen et al. 2008). Summing this all up reveals that innovation is about the creation and implementation of a new idea in a social context with the purpose of delivering commercial benefits (Khairuzzaman et al. 2007).

When innovation is nurtured effectively, it can help an organization to outperform its competitors and can ensure sustainable growth. Specially, innovation is recognized as one of the five key drivers of firm-level productivity along with investment, skills, enterprise, and competition (Camus 2007).

In turn, innovation is driven by employees’ resources : creativity, competence, and problem-solving abilities (Hoyrup 2010). So, the question arises: Which comes first, creativity or innovation? Before we explore this question, let us also define creativity. In an organization, creativity is a continuous search for, and solving of, problems and the creation and implementation of new solutions for the betterment of the organization, its customers, and its members (Baccarani 2009). Creativity is usually defined as the production of novel ideas that are useful and appropriate to the situation. Entrepreneurs clearly have an obligation in steering creative ideas into useful solutions. It is of vital importance to understand that creative ideas provide a firm the basis for innovation. An idea requires nurturing to spur innovation. Creativity has many synonyms, such as productive thinking, divergent thinking, originality, imagination, brainstorming, and so on (Chen and Kaufmann 2008). Oldham and Cummings (1996) defined creative performance as products or procedures that satisfy two conditions:

• they are novel or original, and
• they are potentially relevant or useful to an organization.

Creativity has been long...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Building a Strong Foundation for a High-Functioning Culture of Creativity and Innovation
• 2. TQM, AMO, and Factors Impacting Organizational Creativity and Innovation
• 3. A Framework for Assessing Innovation
• 4. “How Are We Doing?” Using a Maturity Model Assessment
• 5. Innovation in Action
• 6. Sustaining Innovation and Future Research Implications
• Back Matter