CREATIVE MANAGEMENT

Creative Management

Creative Management

Introduction

Creativity has been described as a “core leadership competence”, an “essential component of effective organizational leadership”, and a “crucial qualification” for political leaders. What does it mean for leadership to be creative? In what ways are leadership expected to be creative? This chapter explores those questions and others.

The necessity for organizations to manage creative capability, transform new concepts into value in competitive markets and, subsequently, into profits for the firm introducing the innovation, has been a driving force for business leaders to better understand the dynamics of creativity and innovation, and to develop and execute strategies to leverage the workforce, intellectual capital, and the physical workplace to increase innovative output for the organization. Stegmeier, 2008, p. 73

Is everyone creative in some way or another? Everyday creativity allows each of us to flexibly adapt, improvise, and try new things suggesting each individual has the potential to enrich personal experiences through creativity. The call for creativity has moved from individual to organizational levels encompassing work environments in which organisations, competing for customers and clients, reach a global imperative to innovate as the pace of change escalates to unseen heights in the world of business. Organisations must meet demands for talent shortages at a time when clients are demanding more for less. Creativity, as a means to produce innovative outcomes, allows organisations to embrace new ideas; organisational creativity integrates the creativity of individuals with the needs of the organisation inviting an environment of change, in turn, promoting learning. Creative organisations demonstrate flexibility, adaptability, autonomy, leadership, and peer support in creating positive change in the workplace influencing performance in terms of products, service outcomes, and recognition (Borins 2002, 467).

Architectural practice encompassing the disciplines of architecture, interior design, and planning, represents a creative domain, and an appropriate context to explore organisational creativity. Focusing the disciplinary lens of human resource development (HRD) on creativity appropriately contextualizes the foundations of HRD-- learning, performance, and change--necessary for organisational creativity.

Overview

Although human creativity has been a source of fascination and speculation for centuries, it did not become a focus of rigorous academic study until the 1950s. Since then, a multiplicity of approaches to creativity have arisen, most of which are rooted in specific academic disciplines.

Aim of Assignment

The aim of this assignment is to allow students to critically analyse the management style of a manager in a chosen field. Students are expected to identify, and critically appraise the manager's attitude to creativity and innovation in relation current texts, journals and other literary reference material.

Literature Review

Creativity

Creativity refers to the phenomenon whereby a person creates something new that has some kind of value. What counts as "new" may be in reference to the sole creator, or to the society or domain within which the novelty occurs.

Innovation

Innovation generally refers to the creation of better or more effective products, processes, technologies, or ideas that are accepted by markets, governments, and society. Innovation differs from invention or renovation in that innovation generally signifies a substantial, positive change compared to incremental ...