Although creativity and innovation are two different abilities, both are extremely important for the development of an organization. However, managers and leaders often need to reinforce them into the company culture because otherwise, the business will only go the other way around. But why does that happen?
Creativity and innovation are overlooked because their results take time to show. Pursuing people to be creative and look for innovative ways of doing their work will not increase sales at the moment or place the company among the top competitors. But fostering creativity and innovation can generate enormous transformation in the long run.
Let’s see why these two factors are essential and how you can introduce them into your
company.
The importance of creativity
Despite the fact people think creativity and business have no common ground, creativity applies to more than just arts and music. It is instead a way of thinking and inspiring people to find innovative solutions to any challenges they face. Creativity adds value to a company by cultivating amazing ideas to surprise customers and engage them, this way the business can reach its final goals.
According to research, creativity is the highest skill in demand. Therefore, employers realize how important it is to have creative workers in almost any field because it allows them to find better solutions and implement new strategies that could help the business face all the trend changes.
There are four types of creativity that you should look out for in your future employees:
● Deliberate and emotional (comes from an emotion that drives the ingenious idea)
● Deliberate and cognitive (comes from sustained work in an area)
● Spontaneous and emotional (comes from a strong emotional, creative moment)
● Spontaneous and cognitive (requires to stop working on the problem, and the solution will come by default)
Creativity can:
● Nurture competitiveness. Since companies have to keep up with the short interest span of customers, they are constantly looking for unique ideas to maintain engagement.
● Boost productivity. Creative employees tend to be more productive because they have all the flexibility to create a matchless product.
● Help solve problems. Through creativity, a team is able to find the best solution to a problem since the openness of the creation process allows them to come up with exclusive ideas.
As an employee, being creative will take you further in your career, since it’s the leading soft skill companies are looking for. As an employer or manager, building a team that strives for creativity will lead to innovation. Here’s how.
The importance of innovation
Every entrepreneur and leader talks about innovation, but none can say they’ve successfully adopted it in the company. Although innovation comes from a process of creativity, it also implies that the company is ready to embrace new techniques and strategies. For example, Kodak, a technology company leading the market during the beginning of the 20th century, failed to accept innovation and couldn’t adapt to the market’s fast changes. And many other pivotal companies have declined due to their unused potential.
Innovation involves speeding the process of penetrating the market by choosing smart strategies to get closer to customers, like video tutorials, blogging, and even using a voice generator to appeal to customers. Innovation means using different approaches until finding the best one that generates accurate results.
There are three types of innovation you should try fostering:
● Radical (changes the circumstances of a brand and occurs in a complete change in a company’s positioning)
● Incremental (evolves from an already implemented idea and offers improvements without drastic changes)
● Disruptive (involves a scalable change that reaches more people simultaneously to make the company popular)
Innovation can:
● Help organisations differentiate themselves. Companies will get on top of the competition by implementing various marketing strategies.
● Maintain relevancy. As long as businesses are open to trends and new approaches, they will remain relevant in the market.
● Sustain growth. During uncertain times, companies can overcome hardships if they embrace innovative strategies and ideas.
Hence, regardless of the strategy you wish to approach, be it a reel on Instagram, a blog post or a British voice over hire, what matters is the desire for change. You can even take your original innovation concepts with which you started the business and recreate them as you go. Innovation is closely related to rebranding, but you need to learn how to create it through creativity.
How to blend creation and innovation
As a leader, it would be best to start making this change from within because you want to be an example. That means leaving all your convictions aside and being open to change. Accepting other ways to perform a specific task and still reach the goal is the first step toward innovation.
Another thing you have to accept is that creativity can foster great ideas, which may come from any of your team members. Therefore, providing them with enough freedom and space can help create the most inventive concepts to help you cut corners and reach your target faster and more efficiently.
Finally, if you embrace acceptance and your team can adopt the same mindset, it’s time to show some courage and act. Creative ideas have no place in a forgotten document. They need to be modified and remade until you get what you want. It’s true that creativity only shows you the path, but innovation is the one building it, which is why you need to blend these two concepts.
Summing up
Creativity and innovation go hand in hand, but they are different, despite their similarities. Creativity is what drives innovation. Therefore, both concepts need to be implemented and adopted in a company for a change to be made. But that requires both the leader and their team to embrace the idea that anything can be seen from a different perspective. At the same time, accepting that a strategy can be improved and an approach can be changed is crucial for the business to thrive.
What do you think about the relationship between creativity and innovation? Are they interdependent?