Organizational Creativity

“We define organizational creativity as the creation of a valuable, useful new product, service, idea or procedure, or process by individuals working together in a complex social system” (Woodman. Sawyer. Griffin: 1993:293).

Creativity aims to combine ideas, inventions, insights with imagination and the ability to innovate.

( http://www.adb.org/documents/information/knowledge-solutions/harnessing-creativity-and-innovation-in-the-workplace.pdf)

creativity is the foundations for innovation to build on, to enhance the likelihood of creativity in the workplace, the workplace needs to be diverse.

Diversity is a key element to innovation, engaging in a broad set of perspectives to develop something better than one perspective could do alone if we look into diversity.

The wisdom of diversity – the strength that numbers bring.
it can be hard for one person to efficiently propose the ‘best’ ideas, or even identify them. This is due to our own backgrounds and experiences, so a larger group of individuals with their own perspectives will heighten the chance of the ‘best’ idea developing and being collaborated.

Another factor that influences organizational creativity is problem solving.
“group problem solving techniques, such as mind mapping, were developed with the belief that rules or norms that restrain evaluation of ideas being generated would allow members to build off others’ ideas and would result in a greater number of novel ideas being generated” (Woodman, Sawyer, Griffin:1993:303).

A group problem solving technique is Inductive Reasoning.
this is a method of looking at outcomes, events, ideas and observations to draw these together and reach a unified conclusion. Employees can use this technique to apply their own experiences, thoughts and perspectives to draw conclusions about a current situation and solve problems based on these. This method can be more successful if the workforce or particular task group is more diverse; people will be able to draw more conclusions, which are subjective to their personal experiences in order to reduce the risk of deciding on the wrong approach to solve the problem at hand.

Another method of problem solving is constructive controversy. “Constructive Controversy is a powerful technique for doing this. Its objective is test a proposed solution by subjecting it to the "clash of ideas", showing it to be wrong, proving it, or improving it. As such, by using Constructive Controversy, your confidence in the solution chosen improves as you reach a better understanding of all the factors involved.” (http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_71.htm)

Constructive controversy challenges our own perspectives, by debating our own conclusions and opinions. This method involves other people who will no doubt have alternative perspectives to you, this helps you consider your conclusion from all possible sides of an argument; this helps you to feel more confident in your decision and even motivate you. As a result, confidence benefits that you are creatively competent, stimulating your creative and innovative side.

Problem solving can add to an organizations competitive advantage, if people are challenged on their opinions and perspectives it drives them to think out f the box – and out of the box leads to the development of new ideas, which could generate new and innovative ideas for products and processers.

Even though self-motivation occurs in some employees, management play an important role in the implementation of problem solving techniques, motivation and ultimately success.