The Creative Component of Innovation

The role of creativity in innovation.

Innovation is considered to be a creative activity and rightly so. It takes a considerable amount of creativty to come up with a novel and useful solution to a problem. However, creativty only gets the most exercise in the Ideation Phase, the first step in innovation.

There are plenty of smart creative people who can come up with interesting ideas. But an idea is just an idea. It is not a meaningful product or service that adds value to our world. Creativity is capable of delivering far more value by being embedded throughout the entire effort to bring an idea to market. In fact, it has the potential for greater impact in the very next phase, where the unknowns often kill off many a nascent opportunity.

The premature cause of death for an innovative idea will usually be claimed as the lack of funds. Well.... why *did* they run out of money? Bad planning? It may seem like that, but what is often tagged as "bad planning" is the inevitable appearance of an unknown to wipe out some assumption made at the beginning of the project. And with that assumption goes confidence and the need for a quick recovery often triggers an effort to "buy" a solution. But cash is only one of many resources to address the unknown. Yes, spend enough money and eventually (hopefully) some kind of answer will emerge. But who can afford that? Better yet, why afford it?

There is a better approach by building in a creative component as a key element of a team. And I mean more than a technical creative. Innovative solutions can come from anywhere, and *diversity* is the key. Ultimately this will prove to be a far more capital efficient approach to bringing an innovative idea to market.

...

Additional thoughts in queue. Original content being converted for this site. Please check back soon.