Creative and innovative management: business sustainability.
Suciu, Marta-Christina ; Ivanovici, Mina ; Neagu, Ana-Maria 等
1. INTRODUCTION
Motto: "Imagine, create, innovate", 2009 European Year of
Creativity and Innovation (http://www.create2009.europa.eu)
In this new business environment with lower growth and higher risk
business sustainability becomes a key word. In this new context where
newly competitive countries start performing at world level, and the
Internet has become one of the main ways businesses make money one of
the most important key factors for success is innovation. Companies that
do not innovate cannot adapt to the realities of the new creative and
innovative business age and are doomed to extinction.
Creative and innovative management comprises the following steps or
phases: idea generation, concept development, feasibility studies,
product development, market testing and launch.
2. THE STAKE OF CREATIVE AND INNOVATIVE MANAGEMENT
Innovation, however, does not refer to the creation of new and
innovative products exclusively. The concept encompasses a broader range
of actions, such as building new business processes and models, creating
new markets for new needs and new customers, innovating technologies and
strategies etc. Innovation has to be found in every single business
operation, starting from the culture and going on to daily activities.
Baumgartner distinguishes between framework innovation and detail
innovation (Baumgartner, 2007). Sloane terms them radical innovation
(also called disruptive innovation) and incremental innovation--when
companies make things better (improvements to current products, methods,
processes, services, partnerships) (Sloane, 2007). The former usually
refers to disruptive innovation, which means that an already existing
process is be replaced.
Such innovations refer to totally new products, like the World Wide
Web with its huge impact on people's lives.
The latter refers to innovations performed within a framework such
as incremental innovation, about which Getz and Robinson believe they
are the real engine of sustainable business success. Detail innovation
is the most common type of innovation and it is essential for
sustainable business models.
Framework innovation not accompanied by detail innovation is not
likely to succeed.
Innovation at structure level is not worth producing without
innovation at detail level because sustainable competitive advantage
cannot be created.
Nevertheless, some authors do not agree to these views on
innovation. Instead, innovation is seen as a continuous endless process
of facing a series of problems. Accordingly, disruptive innovation is a
myth and an oxymoron (Smith, 2005).
However, there are highly innovative companies that perform badly
and there are companies that perform well without being innovative.
The creative and innovative management issue is twofold as it may
sometimes lead to unexpected results. Getz and Robinson show that
companies that generate innovation themselves may not be better off in
the end (Getz & Robinson, 2003).
Their work clearly exemplifies that home-run innovations and
continuous efforts to carry them may sometimes turn out to be mistakes
and thus produce losses for the companies unless there are appropriate
customer-focused processes, basic continuous improvement and
employees' spontaneous ideas management in the first place.
Briefly, the authors agree that sustainable competitive advantage comes
from out-innovating the competition.
Out-innovating competition means that the company can have more
alternatives than just carrying home-run innovations. Investing in
research and development is not only aimed at generating innovations,
but also at learning from the competitors and other extra industry
knowledge sources. These are also viable ways of improving the
company's performance, sometimes without generating radical or
framework innovations.
On the contrary, there are authors who consider that competitive
advantage can only be achieved by having command of technologies in
order to develop new products in a timely.
Accordingly, it is the task of research and development management
to create and improve technological potentials and an organisational
framework will be considered in order to render the research and
development management efficient. Nonetheless, a learning organisation
for R&D management needs to encompass both the organisational
structure as well as its culture.
For an organisation to innovate, it has to be or become a learning
organisation. "Organisation-wide learning involves change in
culture and change in the most basic managerial practices, not just
within a company, but within a whole system of management. I guarantee
that when you start to create a learning environment, people will not
feel as though they are in control.
"(http://textus.diplomacy.edu/portals/isl/Default.asp?Fil terTopic=/44693/44879)
A learning organisation is an organisation that facilitates
learning for all its members and continuously transforms itself
(self-development and action learning).
In the new knowledge-based economy, developing a reliable operating
system for innovation is the cornerstone of business sustainability and
learning, which are key competences for survival and development. To
this purpose, concerns about information systems for knowledge
management or learning systems departments led by their Chief Knowledge
Officers have started to arise in many companies.
In spite of the voices saying that innovation, creativity and
knowledge management are disparate, they fit within this context.
There is a distinction between the apprehension and the utilisation
of knowledge and by consequence they are treated as a single framework
that allows the organisation to: detect errors and implement changes to
restore or improve routines; be aware of unexpected events and crises
and turn them into opportunities for innovation; anticipate and seek out
new information and emerging opportunities to develop new products,
services and routines.
In Baumgartner and Sloane's view, the first aspect would mean
incremental innovation (detail) innovation, while the second and the
third would account for the radical (framework) innovation. However, the
first action is not enough for a company to develop; it is only meant to
improve and to maintain certain routines.
Success cannot be based on past or already existing products. Just
like predictions on future sales based on past data may sometimes fail,
the same happens with companies that predict the future based on the
past and willing to maintain the status-quo and only refine the existing
products or services.
The market is likely to behave unexpectedly and sometimes this
change is very fast.
Thus, meeting demand in due time is extremely important, especially
under these circumstances, where opportunities are chased by any other
company acting on the same or different market and looking for them.
Innovation and learning go hand in hand in creating the premises
for an organisation to survive, develop and succeed. Jack Welch, ex-CEO
of General Electric, once said that "an organisation's ability
to learn, and to translate that learning into action rapidly, is the
ultimate competitive business advantage' (Smith, 2005).
Learning and innovating are inextricably linked. While work is seen
as conservative and resistant to change, learning is viewed as distinct
from working and problematic in the face of change; innovation, on the
other hand, is considered to be disruptive but necessary imposition of
change on the other two.
Establishing relations between innovation, learning and creative
and innovative management is extremely useful for empirical studies, but
a measurement of the process may prove extremely valuable both for
theoretical and practical approaches. The study "Innovation
Management Measurement: A Review", (Adams, et al., 2006) starts
from the assumption that the innovation management comprises seven
categories:
* inputs management (creativity and human resources, resource
availability, idea generation, technology acquisition, networking)
[right arrow] people, physical and financial resources, tools;
* knowledge management (resource provision, understand relevant
technological developments and competitor strategies) [right arrow] idea
generation, knowledge repository, information flows;
* innovation strategy (New Product Development Strategy, strategy
and leadership, innovation strategy, strategic management) [right arrow]
strategic orientation, strategic leadership;
* organisational culture and structure (organisational culture,
leadership, culture and climate, structural and cultural context of the
organisation) [right arrow] culture, structure;
* portfolio management (NPD process, systems and tools, planning
and selection, portfolio management) [right arrow] risk/return balance,
optimisation tool use;
* project management (communication and collaboration, project
management, development) [right arrow] project efficiency, tools,
communications, collaboration;
* commercialisation (structure and performance, commercialisation)
[right arrow] market research, market testing, marketing and sales
(Adams, Bessant et al., 2006).
Based on several empirically observed factors, which are
significant for the innovation process, and on illustrative measures to
map creative and innovative management, the authors provide a framework
for managers to evaluate their own innovation activity, describe the
extent to which a company is innovative and offer recommendations for
improvement.
Thus, practitioners can be able to conduct an evaluation of their
own innovation management activity, identify gaps, weaknesses or
deficiencies as well as improvement potential. Also, this framework is
meant to detect areas where innovation is only nominally adopted in
processes and identify areas where attention and resources should be
focused.
3. CONCLUSIONS
Sustainable competitive advantage of a business largely depends on
the interconnection between innovation, innovation management and
organisational learning, especially in a globalising business
environment where innovation decides what companies should be successful
and what companies should lose.
In order to grasp the real impact of creative and innovative
management in the new business age, one can make the distinction between
detail and framework innovation, but conceptually innovation should
always be considered continuous, a never-ending sequence of problems to
be solved (Smith, 2005).
Creative and innovative management proves to be twofold because
issues like customer focused processes, basic continuous improvement and
employees' spontaneous ideas management may prove to be more
valuable for the general performance of the company than home-run
innovation processes.
Moreover, innovation should not be nominal but practised and it
should cover both the organisational structure and the culture. Learning
practices should be deeply engrained in the company's practices
because knowledge represents a critical element in gaining sustainable
competitive advantage by dint of innovation. Eventually, measuring
innovation management is one way companies can realise where they stand
and what they have to do in this respect; this is the reason why there
have been so many attempts of creating metrics for innovation
management.
4. REFERENCES
Adams, R.; Bessant, J. & Phelps, R. (2006). Innovation
Management Measurement: A Review. International Journal of Management
Reviews, 8 (1), 253-253, ISSN 1468-2370
Baumgartner, J. (2007). Framework Innovation and Detail Innovation,
Available from: www.innovationtools.com Accessed: 2009-01-10
Getz, I. & Robinson, A. G.(2003). Innovate or Die: Is that a
Fact?. Creativity and Innovation Management, 12(2), 130-136, ISSN
1467-8691
Sloane, P. (2007). Radical Innovation Challenge: How to Get Your
Organization Going, Available from: www.innovateforum.com, Accessed:
2009-04-15
Smith, H. (2005). What Innovation Is. How Companies Develop
Operating Systems for Innovation, Available from:
http://www.csc.com/features/2004/57.shtml, Accessed: 2009-04-15
