Creative thinking development is crucial in increasing effectiveness and efficiency in organizations. Creativity is the basis for innovation and determining ways to promote is significant in the management of organizations. Managers in organizations call for effective practices to enhance effective corporate creativity. Organisations can encourage employees and managers to not only be better at what they practice but become innovative (Nodoushani, Stewart & Wall 2017, p.155).
According to Lombardo & Roddy (2010), exercising creativity can be termed as the innovation which leads to entrepreneurship. Creativity refers to the ability to come up with something new or original appropriate to the context of the application. Corporate creativity, therefore, is the ability of employees to come up with the unexpected and original ideas.
Promotion of corporate creative thinking is crucial to organizations due to the competitive environment organizations operate in, and innovation leads to the much-needed success. Management is aware of the potential creativity in the organization, but the challenge is finding ways to motivate/ inspire this creativity to develop in innovation in the corporate culture (Belloc 2012, p. 837).
Creativity does not lead to actual innovation as the process of implementation can fail. Hence the need to address the key issues impacting corporate innovation and entrepreneurship. It is also important to understand the individual critical thinking skill in an organization and how it leads to innovation and entrepreneurship.
The diagram below shows how the individual creative influences critical thinking leading to innovations and creating the desired changes in the organisation.
Source: Creativity, Innovation and Change?—?J.C. Scull?—?2013
Globalization and rapid technological development have led companies to embrace, encourage and support creativity and innovation across all functions and levels. Matchbox Architects are no exceptions, and in order to achieve corporate innovation and entrepreneurship, the company needs to come up with techniques to become better in the industry. Encouraging innovations of their business models, an introduction of new or unique products and services or modifying their processes to establish an advanced adept organization. Creativity and innovation can be introduced in an organization when the management and employees focus on becoming different and unique. For the Matchbox Architects Company to have a competitive advantage in the market, it has to strive to fully incorporate innovations and entrepreneurship in all its company operations across all levels (Nodoushani, Stewart & Wall 2017, p. 146).
According to Birou, Christensen and Wall (2011), corporative innovations and entrepreneurship can be achieved through creating a conducive organizational environment through enhancing and promotion of individual capabilities and skills, good management and leadership, availability of resources, and organizational structure. Therefore it is important to establish an organizational structure that supports and encourages creativity. Management should encourage employees at all levels to share their ideas and proposals for implementation.
Leadership is critical in encouraging and supporting creativity and innovations in the organizations.
According to Lombardo & Roddy (2010), how a company views problems and determining ways of solving the problems and generating ideas and solutions that are unique enables companies to outperform others and remain competitive in the market. It refers to creative leadership. Creative leaders involve all employees in the organization in the process of innovation. Even though many sectors of organizational success are driven by creativity and innovation, leadership is the catalyst and source of creativity and innovation (Abbasi, Whaley, & Belhadjali 2013, p. 76). In the fast changing work environment characterized by globalization, uncertainty and rapid technological change, creative leaders are unsatisfied with their current arrangements and commence on looking for creative ideas to have a different tomorrow which is thought not to be possible. Creativity is important as it helps prevent obsolescence and enhances productivity. Leaders encourage continual proposals of new ideas and evaluate the ideas in order to prevent obsoleteness or underperformance of the organization. The generated ideas can lead to better techniques and processes than what is initially used in the company.
Leaders provide a supportive environment that is suitable for creativity to flourish leads to organizational success (Guanxiong 2017, p. 372). They do this by promoting friendly and inclusive working conditions for the employees to feel secure and feel accepted. It is important for the employees to have confidence in the organization at all levels. It is also important for leaders to respect and acknowledge the individual creativity skills and allow them to explore their uniqueness when working for the organization (Birou et al. 2011, p. 12).
According to Tyssen, Wald, and Heidenreich (2014), transformational leadership theory that focuses on rewards and punishments is instrumental to innovations and entrepreneurship in the organization. Creative leadership does not only involve achievement of success but also empowering employees to work hard towards the set goals. Transformational leaders tend to inspire the subordinates into achieving the impossible. It helps employees respond to their own needs and work towards achieving their objectives and goals in the organization. The leadership style focuses more on the values and believes of the employees. Through this, employees develop better ways of solving problems and handling situations, leading to an innovative corporate environment. They became more motivated and committed to their work. Leaders do share with the employees there vision and employees can stay optimistic and work towards its achievements (Tyssen et al. 2014, p. 385).
The diagram below illustrates how transformational leadership style enhances creativity and innovation.
Source: Science direct
Organisations that use transformational leadership are also able to inspire its workers to solve problems on their own and determine new ways of handling challenges. Involvement of leadership at all levels and in all functions is critical as the leaders play the role of advisors. The direct interaction between the leader and increases the commitment level of employees in their works. It also creates a learning environment for both the employee and the leader. The collaboration leads to brainstorming of different challenges which transforms to finding ways of dealing with challenges and coming up with innovation in the organization. Matchbox Architects can implement transformational leadership in their company’s operations in order to achieve their organizational mission, objectives, and goals.
According to Sutherland (2016), there is a great link between human resource/capital in the development of innovations in the organization. The attempt of people to solve problems and tackle different challenges they experience at a workplace is what referred to as corporate innovation is. The human resource is the main catalyst for innovation and its exploitation of full capacity, leads to the success of innovation and entrepreneurship in the organization. For organizations to be innovative, investment on the human capital should be key. The human resource in the organization is only motivated to achieve their organizational goals and objectives when the company has confidence in them and show an interest in there development (Bocquet, Mothe, & Pinget 2015, p. 143). They only become inspired to come up with new ideas and different ways of dealing with challenges when the company invests in their goals and wellbeing (Euchner 2016, p. 57). The company can come up with different ways of motivating and inspiring its employees for the benefit of both the parties involved. The human resources of an organization only become more productive and efficient in their work when their needs are met. The efficiency and effectiveness lead to innovation. Hence the company through its leadership should develop ways of motivating employees in order to achieve organizational innovation (Delmas & Pekovic 2018, p.1076)
Outside resources such as customers and users can also lead to innovation. Investing in human resource will ensure that ideas and suggestions from the company users and customers are evaluated and implemented leading to the development of new ideas and better ways of conducting operations (Sutherland 2016, p. 213).
The ability to absorb human resource from outside the organization can also lead to creativity and innovations. Outside sources can provide information to the organization that the insiders are not able to identify as they have the general outlook on how the organization handles situations. They can provide information on how the company can introduce new products and services leading to innovations. The matchbox architects company can strive to invest in the internal human resources or seek for outsiders in order to be more innovative and gain a competitive advantage over its competitors.
The concept of learning can also be used by companies to exploit the potential of its human resources. According to Gronning & Fostenlokken (2014) innovation theories frequently refers to and emphasizes the significance of learning in creativity and innovations. It is noted that the innovation process involves the improvement and development of old ideas and ways of dealing with challenges and coming up with new ideas and suggestions that is achieved through learning.
Investing in human resource learning through techniques such as corporate training leads to exploitation of their full capabilities to be innovative. The human resource determines the degree of competitiveness of the organization based on its competencies, creativity, problem-solving capabilities and leadership. These factors are met based on the investment the organization has provided for its employees. The environment the company provides to its members determines how well they become competent, competitive, creative and innovative when representing the goals of the organization. Thus the organization that provides constant learning environment enables them to think critically when dealing with different situations.
According to a research conducted by Lorenz and Lundvall (2011), organizations considered to be more innovative are those organizations that are dominated by the highly-educated human resource which poses a considerable amount of autonomy. They decide how they conduct their duties, work organization and how to solve challenges affecting them. They also tend to have work security in the organization. The security and freedom build their confidence in the organization and enables them to be willing to experiment with different new ideas and brainstorms challenges. They also tend to engage on solving complex challenges and take decisions more often hence coming up with new, different ideas of dealing with challenges in the organizations (Nisula, A, & Kianto, A 2016, p. 170).
The Matchbox architects company should embrace the idea of providing autonomy and security to its employees in order to promote individual creative innovations in the organization. The inclusion of highly-educated human resource is also important for the company as they tend to experiment new ideas leading to innovation and betterment of the organization. Involving the highly-educated employees in areas that deals with a lot of problem-solving are also important to the organization innovation success.
Providing a workplace environment that provides avenues for effective discussions and questions that broadens employees ways of reasoning and brainstorm ways of improving and achieving their organizational objectives and goals. It enables the generation of new ideas (Irina 2017, p. 138). Companies should invest its resources in offering opportunities for the human resource of the organization to plan its learning activities also inspires and motivates employees into achieving their objectives and goals. It leads to intentional learning by the human resource of the organization (Olsen 2015, p. 4).
Matchbox Architects Company should provide a workplace environment suitable for discussions by workers that enable them to come up with innovative ways of solving problems and handling different challenges facing the organization and ensures its success.
Conclusion
In summary, creativity and innovation are significant to the success of companies in the today’s world. Fostering creativity in the workplace among the employees is the key to for the organization to achieve its set objectives, goals and gain a competitive edge in the market. Globalization, uncertainty, unpredictability and constant development of new technology across the world has led to the need for companies to be creative and innovative in their operations in order to remain relevant and competitive in the market.
Matchbox Architects company can encourage and support creativity and innovation across all its functions and levels in the organization through transformational leadership, promoting on individual creativity thinking, providing better working environment and evaluation of new ideas generated from the employees.
Investing in human organizational capital through learning and building confidence of the employees enables the company to exploit the capabilities of its human capital potentially. Providing work security and allowing autonomy in the workplace is also critical to the innovations in the workplace. Employees can experiment with new ideas and make decisions on their own. They also engage in learning activities through work discussions of challenges affecting them in the workplace enabling them to come up with better ways of solving problems (Hofmans, Gieter, & Pepermans 2013, p.6) From the literature above, it is very important for companies to promote individual creativity and innovations in an organisation in order to accomplish its goals.
Research shows that companies find it difficult to fully exploit the potentiality of its resources in assessing ideas and their implementations (Euchner 2016, p. 57). Given that the employees might not pose all the skills necessary for the validation of the generated ideas, it is advisable for the companies to use corporate incubation programs to identify and provide support to the human capital who come up with the ideas. The incubation programs would be able to support the existing leadership in the organization in identifying and evaluating new ideas and foresee the implementations. The incubation programs can also develop ways of involving employees who are interested in creativity and innovations. Providing them with the learning materials, the motivation they require and conducive working environment. The company’s leaders are also trained in favorable leadership traits that would encourage innovations and creativity in the organization (Weiblen, T, & Chesbrough, H 2015, p. 72)
It would also be recommendable for the company to assess the level of creativity in the organization. Development of employee-focus groups within the company with the intention of identifying barriers to creativity and entrepreneurial behavior that affects the ability of employees to be more innovative (Sternberg 2012, p. 8) by involving the entire organisation employees at all levels, the company is able to identify and solve the challenges affecting the employees’ innovation capabilities.
Investing in research projects for the organization would also improve the innovation in the organization. The organization can conduct internal and external research on ways of improving the products or services of the organization (De Marchi 2012, p. 619). Through evaluation and analysis of the results, the company can pick up recommendations from outsiders and internal resources and develop new products and services that would meet the needs of the customers. The customers as outsiders are key to the success of innovations of the organization. Listening to their complaints and compliments can also lead to innovative ideas. Therefore, it can be noted that the key to organizational success depends on its ability to promote individual creativity and innovation in the company.
References
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