Theories about Creativity - Essay Example

CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION The of the The and location The Creativity and Innovation Creativity and innovation all starts with ideas. Ideas often have to be new and fresh and progresses to maturity. Creativity hence is the process of generating new ideas while innovation can be defined as implementing creativity. Innovation involves putting new ideas into practice or action. Both creativity and innovation is a dual thing that is correlated. It is said that innovation does not exist without creativity (Smith and Blakenship, 1991, p.12). Creativity is characterized by the capability of perception of the world in new ways. It involves thinking followed by action. New ideas without action are simply referred to as imaginations rather than creativity. Creativity involves bringing into awareness what was previously undisclosed or hidden. A product is regarded as creative when it has the aspects of originality and unpredictable (Siltala, 2010, p.34). Innovation may occur as a result of a focused effort by different agents either by chance or by a major system failure. Sources that drive innovation occurrence may include such changes in industry, in market structures, local and global human perception as well as mood and meaning (Von Franz, 1992, p.56). In its simplest form, innovation can be termed as a manufacturer innovation wherein an individual or a company does an innovation and then sells it (Torrance, 1994, p.8). Another type of innovation is end user innovation. In this case, innovation by an individual or a company is done for self-benefit usually driven by dissatisfaction in the existing products (Schumpeter, 1993, p.7). Theories about creativity speculate on the four ‘Ps’. These are; process, person, product and place (Heyne, Boettke and Prychitko, 2010, p.23). In lightof process, appears in the mind as the ability to think progressively and the chronology of thoughts that leads to a creative idea. Product entails the nature of the creativity, mainly the outcome of creativity. Often it measures the magnitude of the creative process, its aftermath whether it is successful or relevant. When it comes to a person, one may consider if an individual is an intellect or not. It has been said that more knowledgeable people are more creative (Von Hippel, 1998, p.45). A person’s creativity power may scale up in regards to habits such as openness of the mind, level of ideation, curiosity, expertise and so on. On the fourth P, some places are better known to provide an environment that is conducive that favors creativity. Under circumstances like accessible resources and degrees of autonomy, creativity may as well flourish (Muljadi, 2012). Stages of Creativity and Types of Innovations Exemplary work by Graham Wallace depicts creativity into a four stages process (Art of thought). Preparation: involves preparation works on problems, which draws the attention of an individual’s mind on the problem and explores possible problem’s dimension (Tuomi, 2002, p.90). Incubation: mainly the problem is internalized by the unconscious mind, often appears as a quiescent stage with no much external activity happening. Intimation is considered as a sub stage after incubation. This appears to an individual that a solution is probably on the way.Illumination: in other words known as insight. Here creative ideas progress to the state of consciousness from a preconscious state.Verification: idea is consciously analyzed, verified, evaluated, elaborated, and later applied (Kline, 1985, p.23). Types of Innovation Technical: this involves the creation of new goods and services. Many occur by research and development efforts aiming at fulfilling customers’ demands that are always on the run for new, better and cheaper products (Taylor, 1998, p.23). Process innovation: this involves introduction of a new way of production, sell or distribution of an existing product (Graham, 199, p.12). Administrative innovation: often entails the creation of a new organization design that better supports the creation, production, and delivery of goods and services. The main difference between creativity and innovation is the point of focus. Creativity entails opening the mind for more conception of new ideas. Creativity mainly involves mindful thoughts. It may be regarded as subjective since it is difficult to measure. Innovation on the other hand can be measurable. It is all about introducing a change in working systems. In addition it can be referred to as the work done in order to make an idea concrete. An organization may use an innovation in order to practice its creative resources to solve problems (Faunce, Bai and Nguyen, 2010, p.25). Importance of Creation and Innovation Solving problems: Employees on creativity training are able to come up with new ideas. This includes improving a process to make it more efficient and also cost effective, solving a problem that hinders utmost performance by employees or innovating ways of leading in a completion based setup and also developing a new strategy for money making. Increasing productivity: Creativity and innovation involves thinking out of the norms, exploring untouched territories while aiming at unleashing something new and better. All employees creatively thinking and being innovative can increase productivity of an organization by being unique and selling their new ideas to customers on demand. New, original and efficient services fetch more, thus productivity is increased (Engelberger, 1992, p.87). Durability of any business: Creativity and innovation is important for durability of any business. An example is in small businesses that need to expand. More frequently innovation starts with a need. By seizing the opportunity of the needs of a community and solving them with new ideas, small entrepreneurs are able sustain their business and make them durable overtime (Robinson, 2010, p.76). Fueling the economy: Entrepreneurs continues to introduce new ideas that create competitive products in the market. This is achieved by embracing creativity and innovation to counter the dynamic world of business. This garners them more profit and translates to the growth of the economy. They pay taxes, import and export goods becoming a source of revenue for a nation (Forster and Dunbar, 2009, p.4). Creativity and innovation is equally important in schools in scientific projects for students. Students must show creativity when designing projects as future scientists. This helps them to become better in the tomorrow world (Albert and Runco, 1999, p.5). Conclusion All in all creativity and innovation is a dual thing that should be fostered during learning process in the classroom. The use of talent among students should be promoted from an early age as early as kindergarten. It should also be noted that creativity and talent pays more as compared to any other career that may not be interesting. Education ought to be revolutionized in such a way that it helps one to identify his/her strengths. Once a mind is creative, there is no doubt that innovation is on the way. References Albert, R. S. and Runco, M. A., 1999. “A History of Research on Creativity": Handbook of Creativity. Cambridge: University Press. Engelberger, J. F., 1992. “Robotics in practice: Future capabilities.” Electronic Servicing & Technology Journal, 107(5), 2-3. Faunce, T.A., Bai, J. and Nguyen, D., 2010. Impact of the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement on Australian medicines regulation and prices. Journal of Generic Medicines 7(1), pp.18-29. Forster, E. A. and Dunbar, K. N., 2009. Creativity Evaluation through Latent Semantic Analysis. In Proceedings of the 31st Annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. [Online] Available at:< http://141.14.165.6/CogSci09/papers/107/paper107.pdf> [Accessed 08 December 2014] Graham, W., 1996. Art of Thought. New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company. Heyne, P., Boettke, P.J. and Prychitko, D. L., 2010. The Economic Way of Thinking. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Kline, S.J., 1985. Research, Invention, Innovation and Production: Models and Reality. Stanford: Stanford University. Muljadi, P., 2012. Innovation. [Online] Available at: http://books.google.co.ke/books?id=qvd_eAgiRZkC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false [Accessed 08 December] Robinson, A., 2010. Sudden Genius? The Gradual Path to Creative Breakthroughs. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schumpeter, J. A., 1993. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (6 ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. Siltala, R., 2010. 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