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.