Shared Practice: Case Study: IDEO and Creativity - Assignment Example

School: SHARED PRACTICE: CASE STUDY: IDEO AND CREATIVITY Lecturer: SHARED PRACTICE: CASE STUDY: IDEO AND CREATIVITYFrom the IDEO case, it would be noted that creativity does not come about as a result of only factor but that creativity within the organization is actually due to the combination of several factors including leadership, environment and process. At the individual level, leadership can contribute to a creative climate when leaders act as mentors for their subordinates. Leaders can also act as effective facilitators of teams within the organization to bring creative climates (Puccio, Mance and Murdock, 2011).

The environment must be as accommodating to individuals and teams as possible. For instance both individuals and teams must have adequate provision of resources they need within the working environment to allow for creativity to take place. The work process on the other hand must be one that allows for free input of innovative ideas by individuals and teams and avoiding long bureaucracies. Within the organization I work with, the leadership, work environment and organization processes have really been structured in a way that promotes employee and team creativity in a more semi-formal than a formal way.

However, this has proven to be a very effective means for growing and nurturing creativity within the organization. These factors are said to be semi-formal because there are actually no written standards as exists in an organization such as Google where engineers have 20% of their time to create on their own (Kim, Kim and Wilde, 2008). However, leaders have always expressed their readiness to support creativity of employees and teams by adequately rewarding people who come up with new ideas and innovative creations for the organization.

What is more, the work environment has been positioned in such as way that employee cohesion is well promoted. Because of this, individuals and teams that require support of other people to overtake growth agenda have never had any problem doing this. When it comes to organizational processes for securing funds to support creative ideas however, there remains a lot that needs to be done.As noted earlier, the current creative environment in the organization is not a formalized one. As an initiative towards the growth of the creative climate of the organization, it is recommended that a more formalized approach to creative culture be introduced within the organization.

This could be done utilizing the idea adopted by IDEO where there was a redesigning of the employee work space. Clearly, I identify my organization to be one that has different employees who are very creative in different areas of their professional practice. Through the redesigning of the employee work space, there will be much collaboration among workers because workers will be grouped according to the most compatible when it comes to creative thinking. Meanwhile, Hoever et al (2012) supported the idea of redesigning employee work space to much competency.

This is because he notes that when people of the same creative characteristic work together, they are put in a better position to be more effective since they understand their weaknesses and strengths better. As far as the strength of the organization is concerned, redesigning the work space would ensure that there is much room created in terms of creative categorization. This means that instead of having everyone doing something different in a non-rehearsed manner, there can be fewer identified groups whose work output can be trusted as well rehearsed and productive.

In the long run, productivity that is based on creative innovation will be promoted. The weakness that has to do with funding of creative ideas will also be catered for because the management will have only a few well identified and categorized groups to deal with instead of trying to satisfy the disjointed interest of every other employee who comes up with a creative idea.ReferencesHoever, I., van Knippenberg, D., van Ginkel, W., & Barkema, H. (2012). Fostering team creativity: Perspective taking as key to unlocking diversitys potential.

The Journal of Applied Psychology, 97(5), 982–996.Kim, Y. S., Kim, M. S., & Wilde, D. (2008). Toward the management of design creativity: Personal creativity modes, design activity, and team interaction. Design Management Journal, 3(2), 45–52.Puccio, G. J., Mance, M., & Murdock, M. C. (2011) Creative climate: Work environment allows IDEO to deliver promise of innovation. In Puccio, Mance & Murdock, Creative leadership: Skills that drive change (pp. 314–320). Los Angeles, CA: Sage.