Creativity, Teamwork, And Organizational Innovation – Importance And Ways To Foster

Blocks to Creativity

Discuss about the Creativity Teamwork and Organizational Innovation.

Organizational creativity is helpful in capturing the principles and the concepts that relates to organizational transformation, organizational designs as well as organizational dynamics. This results in the exploration of creativity in the workplace. It also helps in subsequent exploration of the individual inherent creativity. Having creative spirit and thinking with  ‘out of the box’ approach is helpful in ensuring organizational success (Serrat 2017). This assignment will mainly look over the blocks experienced in implementing creativity in workplace and will also discuss the importance of organizational creativity in present day generation. It will also help to provide a plan for individuals to develop creative skills.

Many individuals in the workplace are seen to be firm believer of themselves of not-being creative. This feeling of not being creative makes him stop from trying out new initiatives and innovative approaches. This belief of the individuals is often spread around the workplace environment which also makes other demotivated about their creativity. This continuous negative belief makes the environment an automatic blocks for innovative approaches. This makes every individual stop thinking himself to be creative by the time and this becomes one of the most common block in innovative and creative thinking. Development of a positive attitude is very important where individuals should not be rigid and give themselves more scope of venturing different sides of hid working style (Sarooghi et al. 2015). For making such individual’s positive about their thinking on the topic of creativity, proper leadership and mentoring is important who would be able to divert their thinking procedures and undertake proper counseling.

Another important block occurs when the individuals are seen to follow rules by the book. Often organizations strictly maintain decorum and rules which every worker needs to follow to maintain a disciplined environment. Often employees work accordingly with the rules which have been described to follow when conducting their tasks (Auernhammer and Hall 2014). There are many individuals who take the rules more seriously and adhere to them in a way where they fear to think out of the box and perform newer creative strategies to complete the task. This strictness in complying with rules becomes a block for many workers in being creative. In such cases, the employers and managers should encourage workers to be more creative and give them enough spaces to apply their creativity in place where adhering by the rules will not result in beneficial outcomes. A transparency needs to be established between the managers and workers, where going over the rules do not bring punishments to workers. This will hamper the willpower of the workers to go and think beyond rules.

Importance of Organizational Creativity

Another common block which is experienced by the organization to promote a culture of creativity is the fear of the employees to fail in their ideas. Often many individuals provide many new ideas, innovations and creativity which are quite dissimilar to the regular method of traditional working styles. Although it may bring out highest appreciation for the individuals who proposed the idea, the idea may also fail which may hamper the work process and the productivity of the company (Somench and drach-Zervy 2013). The fear to fail after applying new ideas and the fear of criticism prevents many individuals to even take chances with creative thinking. The outlook of such individuals needs to change. They must remind themselves that being wrong is not bad but gives them opportunities to learn from mistakes and allow them to think more cautiously while planning creative ideas for a task. Proper mentoring and guiding them will help them to change their outlook and be more participative.

Another important block arises when individuals cannot come out of their comfort zones and adhere to their regular routines and habits. There are many individuals who develop a comfort zone with their regular activities and habits and stop thinking out of the box as performing the regular routine makes them comfortable (Litchfield, Ford and Gentry 2013). This lack of enthusiasms acts as a block to creative innovations to provide creative thinking in their jobs. Therefore, workers should be continuously provided scope where they can use their creativity. Newer challenges should be thrown to them so that they are compelled to come out form their comfort zone and think positively. Every leader should continuously flip the working styles of the employees so that they do not get the scope to be adhered to particular habits. These would make them come out of comfort zone and use innovative ideas to overcome the hurdles.

Other blocks involve executive stress faced by the workers where they remain jam-packed with work and do not get time to think innovatively and develop creative strategies to apply them. Unwanted stress not only reduces the quality of the mental processes but also makes it difficult for him to think objectively. Proper management of time with proper scheduling helps to manage work efficiently. It also provides them scope to think innovatively. Not only that the organization should also make sure to give time to workers and encourage them to think out of the box (Serrat 2017).

Fostering Creativity in the Workplace

Creativity and innovation within organizations are important for ensuring a path of success. Researchers have stated that stimulating creativity as well as exploring new and completely unknown territories is one of the best ways of increasing productivity of the organizations. Many researchers are also of the opinion that encouraging employees to think beyond their regular habits and rule books and providing them with proper resources and time to explore new and innovative ideas. Creativity also helps in improvement of process of solving problems. This may involve development of a new strategy as well as a creative method to remain ahead of the competition. Innovative problem solving methods gives competitive edge to any organization which it is striving to achieve. Organizational creativity can come from any sources within the organization (Cerne et al. 2013). This may come from any stakeholders in the organization. This may include partners, target groups, customers, employees and many others.  All of them have the capability of bringing out fresh perspectives and innovative ideas. All of these should be made possible by proper communication structures which would include active listening as well as both feedback and feedback receiving. A proper environment should be present in the organization which would enhance an open exchange of ideas and the need to support and encourage by the company members (Naranjo et al. 2016). Often many issues arise during regular business hours which are harder to resolve or can take a longer time to resolve if taken by the regular rule book. It is possible to overcome such issues with the help of creative ideas. Many creative ideas not only help in solving the issues easily but also provides many strategic ideas which if undertaken will not create such issues in the near future. Not only regular hardships, every business organization may face sudden circumstantial crisis or events which were not anticipated earlier or preventive measurements were not taken (Liu et al. 2017). In these sudden situations, researchers are of the opinion that creative and innovative ideas bring out more successful results for proper management systems than applying traditional method which may not bring successful results. In such black swan events, it becomes very much important to be willing and competent in adapting to the situations with a different thinking.

Knowing to think analytically as well as laterally is important. Moreover learning to think critical, creative and associate levels are very important. In moments of black swan events, seeing and solving problems and to respond to crisis in different ways by transforming them to creative ideas and innovative solutions help in overcoming such events. Creativity and innovation mainly helps in leading to improvements in the process of solving problems. Creativity also helps in propelling innovation forward. It also helps in increasing the productivity. It also gives competitive edge so that every business survives the cut throat completion in the present world (Valaei et al. 2017).

Benefits of Creativity and Innovation

Proper planning is to be conducted by every individual so that they can influence competitive advantage to the work floor. Every individual should develop their ability to observe and use all their senses which becomes dull over time. They should take charges in rekindling the senses with proper motivation and implement creativity in their activities. Innovation is based on knowledge and therefore an individual should continually expand the knowledge base by reading things, discussing with mentors and others (Caniels and Rietzschel 2015). Perceptions often limit reasoning and creative thinking and therefore care should be taken so that one perceives everything in an organization with positive aspects. Researchers often suggest individuals to take break from their regular long working hours or while working extensively on projects. Making the mind free and giving oneself the time to think innovatively is important (Fay et al. 2015). Proper encouragement should also be done by leaders. Individuals should also open up themselves to different experiences. More the exposure of individual to different situations, it will help in inputting more ideas in the subconscious minds. Moreover researchers also stated that treating patterns as a part of the work is important. Recognizing the new pattern is useful but care should be taken that the employees do not become a part of it. Moreover, looking in the areas where no one is looking would help the individuals to come up with innovative suggestions which may bring out successful results (Perry-Smith et al. 2017).

Conclusion:

Hence, form the entire assignments, it is seen that fearing to fail, time constraints, adhering to old habits, negative attitudes, and any others often create blocks. Organizational creativity should be maintained by overcoming the blocks to ensure getting a competitive edge, handling in black swan events, betterment often productivities and many others. Therefore every individual should plan accordingly so that they can implement proper methods to modify their working attributes and be more creative and innovative in their approach.

References:

Auernhammer, J. and Hall, H., 2014. Organizational culture in knowledge creation, creativity and innovation: Towards the Freiraum model. Journal of Information Science, 40(2), pp.154-166.

Caniëls, M.C. and Rietzschel, E.F., 2015. Organizing creativity: Creativity and innovation under constraints. Creativity and Innovation Management, 24(2), pp.184-196.

?erne, M., Jakli?, M. and Škerlavaj, M., 2013. Authentic leadership, creativity, and innovation: A multilevel perspective. Leadership, 9(1), pp.63-85.

Fay, D., Shipton, H., West, M.A. and Patterson, M., 2015. Teamwork and organizational innovation: The moderating role of the HRM context. Creativity and Innovation Management, 24(2), pp.261-277.

Litchfield, R.C., Ford, C.M. and Gentry, R.J., 2015. Linking individual creativity to organizational innovation. The Journal of Creative Behavior, 49(4), pp.279-294.

Liu, D., Gong, Y., Zhou, J. and Huang, J.C., 2017. Human resource systems, employee creativity, and firm innovation: The moderating role of firm ownership. Academy of Management Journal, 60(3), pp.1164-1188.

Naranjo-Valencia, J.C., Jiménez-Jiménez, D. and Sanz-Valle, R., 2016. Studying the links between organizational culture, innovation, and performance in Spanish companies. Revista Latinoamericana de Psicología, 48(1), pp.30-41.

Perry-Smith, J.E. and Mannucci, P.V., 2017. From creativity to innovation: The social network drivers of the four phases of the idea journey. Academy of Management Review, 42(1), pp.53-79.

Sarooghi, H., Libaers, D. and Burkemper, A., 2015. Examining the relationship between creativity and innovation: A meta-analysis of organizational, cultural, and environmental factors. Journal of business venturing, 30(5), pp.714-731.

Serrat, O., 2017. Harnessing creativity and innovation in the workplace. In Knowledge Solutions (pp. 903-910). Springer Singapore.

Somech, A. and Drach-Zahavy, A., 2013. Translating team creativity to innovation implementation: The role of team composition and climate for innovation. Journal of Management, 39(3), pp.684-708.

Valaei, N., Rezaei, S. and Ismail, W.K.W., 2017. Examining learning strategies, creativity, and innovation at SMEs using fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis and PLS path modeling. Journal of Business Research, 70, pp.224-233.