INTERESTING PERSPECTIVES ABOUT CREATIVITY & INNOVATION FROM GREAT MINDS

"‘Creativity’ is not the miraculous road to business growth and affluence that is so abundantly claimed these days… Those who extol the liberating virtues of corporate creativity… tend to confuse the getting of ideas with their implementation – that is, confuse creativity in the abstract with practical innovation."

~ Theodore Levitt, ‘Creativity Is Not Enough’ in Harvard Business Review (1963);

"Creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives... most of the things that are interesting, important, & humans are the results of creativity... when we are involved in it, we feel that we are living more fully than during the rest of life."

~ Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi;

"There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress & we would be forever repeating the same patterns."

~ Edward de Bono;

"Creativity does not automatically lead to actual innovation... Creativity without a business plan & an organisational structure to administer the plan (i.e. action-oriented follow-through) is meaningless. At best, creative ideas remain good intentions..."

~ Peter F Drucker;

"Innovation is the specific tool of entrepreneurs, the means by which they exploit change as an opportunity for a different business or a different service. It is capable of being presented as a discipline, capable of being learned, capable of being practised. Entrepreneurs need to search purposefully for the sources of innovation, the changes & their symptoms that indicate opportunities for successful innovation, & they need to know & to apply the principles of successful innovation."

~ Peter F Drucker;

So, in the final analysis, creativity is just ideation, which is the generation of new ideas by approaching problems or existing practices in innovative &/or imaginative ways.

Obviously, creativity must eventually link to innovation, which is the process of taking a new idea & turning it into a workable reality or preferably, market offering, to generate value, or usefulness in the case of the former.

Hence, ideation is not synonymous for innovation.

Very often, we tend to use 'Creativity' & 'Innovation' interchangeably. They should not be, because, while creativity involves coming up with new ideas, it is the bringing of the new ideas to life, i.e. action-oriented follow-through, that makes innovation the distinct undertaking it is.

Dilip Mukerjea likes to use his favourite expression to delineate the two: Ideas to Cash!