Creativity can be viewed as the first stage of the overall innovation process, an important dimension of the entrepreneurship and new venture creation processes, and as such, it is considered to be a cornerstone of organizational competitiveness in this global, knowledge-based economy. Research on creativity has increasingly become multilevel, with most work conducted at the individual or team level of analysis. At the same time, there is a large body of research being conducted at the organizational level of analysis on innovation, and there has been a significant amount of entrepreneurship research at the individual level, with an increasing focus on organizational entrepreneurship. However, these three research streams have developed independently, and there has been very little knowledge transfer between the three areas. Because entrepreneurship is often said to be a process that is required to convert innovation into business ventures that will deliver benefits to stakeholders, it is typically driven by an individual or small group of individuals. Creativity research, innovation research, and entrepreneurship research have the potential to inform each other, enriching our knowledge of each area, particularly with regard to the cognitive processes and behaviors that are most effective. This Handbook includes contributions from the leading scholars in these three research areas, who integrate contemporary research findings on organizational creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship and provide fruitful new research directions."

Handbook of the Management of Creativity and Innovation: Theory and Practice is a collection of theories and practices for the effective management of creativity and innovation, contributed by a group of European experts from the fields of psychology, education, business, engineering, and law. Adopting an interdisciplinary and intercultural approach, this book offers rich perspectives — both theoretical and practical — on how to manage creativity and innovation effectively in different domains and across cultures.This book appeals to students, teachers, researchers, and managers who are interested in creative and innovative behavior, and its management. Although the authors are from the fields of psychology education, business, engineering, and law, readers from all disciplines will find the coverage of this book beneficial in deepening their understanding of creativity and innovation, and helping them to identify the right approaches for managing creativity and innovation in an intercultural context.

This cutting-edge Handbook takes stock of a diverse set of theoretical and methodological perspectives that address creativity, innovation, and the ways in which they intersect. Considering the development of the field, the Handbook examines current trends to chart a path forward for promising future research.

Flying in the face of current thinking, this book suggests that we do not need to ‘think outside the box’ in our quest for creativity, rather we should rethink the way we look ‘inside the box’. This idea will resonate only too well with those who have endeavoured to be creative by thinking outside that box, only to have their attempts scuppered by the constraints of bureaucracy and organizational politics. Instead of fighting a losing battle, the author suggests that creativity should be worked at within the constraints of the organizational box, but that space needs to be grown and allowed to be shaken up. Only by experimenting, mutating and finding new directions can you uncover business paths that lead to success. The reader is encouraged not to free themselves from all their knowledge and experiences (the thinking outside the box method) but to use their knowledge and experience in new ways. The book is structured around three key steps: Expanding the box: so that the pieces of the puzzle in it can move around more freely Filling the box: with even more knowledge, and how to get these new pieces of the puzzle to connect with the existing ones Shaking the box: so that the pieces fall into new places and form new patterns. The book shows that anybody can be creative. The creative methods suggested in the book will be linked to real business examples from which techniques have been developed to help their implementation. Numerous exercises and ‘eye-openers’ form part of the practical implementation of Micael Dahlén’s ideas. The book is framed by models and concepts of how creativity works (the creative process, the creative person and the creative result) and what its effects are.

Although creativity is often considered an individual ability or activity, innovation in teams and organizations involves collaboration of people with diverse perspectives, knowledge, and skills. The effective development of collaborative innovations and solutions to problems is critical to the success of teams and organizations, but research has also demonstrated many factors which tend to limit the effectiveness of collaborative innovation of groups and teams. This volume highlights recent theoretical, empirical, and practical developments that provide a solid basis for the practice of collaborative innovation and future research. It draws from a broad range of research perspectives including cognition, social influence, groups, teams, creativity, communication, networks, information systems, organizational psychology, engineering, computer science, and the arts. This volume is an important source of information for students, scholars, practitioners, and others interested in understanding the complexity of the group creative process and tapping the creative potential of groups and teams.

People with ideas are dreamers. People who get things done are doers. One doer is worth eight dreamers. There are three kinds of people who make up an innovator. There are inventors (people who have new and unique ideas), problem solvers (people who have ideas about how to correct a previous error) and entrepreneurs (people who transform ideas into realities). Put them altogether they spell "innovator." Most innovative books today focus on ways to create new and unique ideas; some of them also address problem-solving, but this is less than 10% of the methodologies that the innovator needs to master. The approaches used in this book transform an idea into reality, or to put it another way, deliver innovative products to make a profit for the organization and instill pride in its employees. This means that every step in the process needs to have innovation applied to it in order to meet the expectations and demands of today's sophisticated customer. This book is designed to help the reader and their organization complete the complex process of bringing a new product to market by presenting what is expected at each step in the cycle and providing step-by-step instructions on what to do at each specific step. In large to mid-sized organizations this book is designed to help each individual understand how they fit into the innovative cycle and explains why they should be more creative related to the work they do and more conscious of the contributions they can make. It emphasizes the importance of every individual contributing to the organization's innovative process. The book is designed to help the organization understand its Innovation Systems Cycle. In the early part of the cycle it focuses on weeding out projects that do not have the potential to produce value-added results to the stakeholders. By using the guidelines outlined in this book, an organization can reduce its new project failure rate by as much as 50% which should result in almost doubling the organization’s new product output thereby increasing profits by as much as 15%.

Business Creativity and Innovation: Perspectives and Best Practices provides a foundation in the principles of innovation and introduces some cutting-edge concepts. The core of the book demonstrates how to generate, evaluate, and design ideas to solve business problems. Over the course of eight chapters, the anthology delivers insightful articles carefully selected from leading authors such as Clayton Christensen, Robert Cooper, Ram Charan, and Vijay Govindarajan, as well as award-winning case studies on how prominent businesses, including Apple and Google, have leveraged innovation. Readers explore insightful articles about driving business growth through innovation, creating a culture of innovation, identifying customer needs, and using innovation to solve customer problems. Additional readings examine idea evaluation, how to design new products and services to meet customer's needs, and the implementation of innovation processes and practices. Business Creativity and Innovation is ideal for undergraduate and graduate courses in business innovation, product development, strategic management, business leadership, entrepreneurship, design thinking, marketing strategy, and decision making. The book can also serve as an enlightening manual for businesses and corporations, as it provides a framework for managing the innovation process from which organizations of any size can benefit. A former business innovation executive for Fortune 100 companies like AT&T and Bank of America, Len Ferman earned his M.B.A. from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, M.A. in economics from Duke University, and B.S. in economics from Lehigh University. He is an adjunct professor of management at the University of North Florida, where he teaches courses he developed on business innovation, and is a faculty member of the American Management Association. He is the founder and managing director of Ferman Innovation and a frequent speaker on business innovation.