How creative are you – and how do you turn it into innovation?

We often hear about the need for being creative. We even have a so-called creative class. It is usually people ( all dressed in black ) working in the advertising industry. They claim they have unique skills when it comes to creativity and they are excellent at luring lots of money out of their client’s pockets. But creativity in itself doesn’t bring progress to the table. There are lots of people who are extremely creative, who barely can make enough money to support themselves. So does that mean that creativity is not important? No not at all, but creativity only becomes useful if you add an ingredient.

The sliced bread – are you creative?

You can see the solution to the test in the image below. Did you figure it out or did you find another solution?

Innovation and creativity – What is the difference?

There is often confusion between the terms innovation and creativity. In short, creativity is just coming up with ideas while innovation is developing ideas for a particular purpose e.g. developing a new product, improving customer service or developing a new sales channel. So, in short, we can define innovation as:

In most situations, the purpose will be embedded in the company’s strategy or mission. In this article, the purpose is how we can improve competitive advantage. And the direction is utterly important. Only if you stay focused on your objective you can prioritise your ideas and work on those who serve the purpose best. When we work with our client developing cross-cultural competencies we often hear, “I/we are not creative or innovative”. But that is not true. Unlike what most people believe creativity is not a special gift you are born with. Being creative or innovative is in fact a very structured process that everybody can – and should – learn. If you are interested you can learn more about our innovation workshop here.