Creativity, Innovation and Design Thinking

This essay critically discusses the role of individual employees in successful creativity, innovation, and design thinking within organizations. It argues that while individual employees play a crucial role, teamwork and collaboration are also essential for organizational success. Real-world examples from companies like Google and Tesla are provided to support the argument.

Running head: CREATIVITY, INNOVATION AND DESIGN THINKING
Creativity, Innovation and Design Thinking
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1CREATIVITY, INNOVATION AND DESIGN THINKING
The growth and survival of the companies all over the world today depends on their potential
of innovating. The companies that innovate for improving their business processes, differentiate their
products and at the same time, transform their structure have been proved to be performing better than
their rival competitors in the market (Dereli 2015). Individual employees and their creative ideas lies
at the heart of every organisational innovation who alone, or in teams, can promote, generate, modify,
discuss and realise these ideas for the betterment of the firms. The main purpose of this essay is to
critically discuss and evaluate the arguments that are out forth on whether successful creativity,
innovation and design thinking activities within organisations are dependent on the work of
individual employees only. I do not agree with this given statement due to several reasons that would
be mentioned below. This paper shall elaborate the stance by providing some real world examples of
companies like Google and Tesla.
Individual employees in the process of successful creativity within the organisations-
Creative, innovation and design thinking in every organisations are important to their
successful performance and long lasting survival in the market. According to McRobbie (2018),
creativity refers to the process of creating something new and unique. It plays a very important role in
the organisations at all the levels. As stated by Hon and Lui (2016), an organisation will become
creative and innovative on successful hiring of creative thinking employees. They have the potential
of bringing forth the ideas and the innovations that are good for the organisations and help them in
finding out new ways for tackling the organisational issues in effective ways. This supports the stance
the successful creativity and innovation do depends entirely on the employees. On the other hand,
Amabile and Pratt (2016) in this context have opined that creativity takes place with the help of
combined efforts of employees and managers as both the employees and managers adopt creative
finished objects and finally sell them through the marketing strategies by means of imposing them on
the passive consumer. However, Hon and Lui (2016) again have stated without effective effort of
individual employees, creativity within organisation is next to impossible. Creative employees are a
great asset for the companies as they can address the potential challenges and can explore on the
potential areas of growth and development. However, it should be noted that it is very likely to

2CREATIVITY, INNOVATION AND DESIGN THINKING
happen that individual employee making the whole process fail. Organisations are likely to foster and
grow in integrative, friendly and cooperative working environments that have different team of
individuals working together in making a project a success.
Individual employees in the process of successful innovation within the organisations
Design thinking has always been at the core of efficient and effective strategy development
and organisational change. People are the most important resource in the process of innovation. As
stated by Giebels et al. (2016), the success of any organisational innovation depends on the level of
creativity, support and the acceptance of individual employees. On the other hand, as claimed by
Fogarty, Creanza and Feldman (2015), the success of the processes of designing depends on the tools
and collaboration in between the developers, designers, organisations and users as a whole. As per
them, both the manager and the employees play important roles in the whole process and at the same
time, the external stakeholders like the suppliers, customers and the partners also have some important
roles to play. These claims are against the notion that the process of successful innovation within the
organisations depends on the individual employees only.
If any innovation is introduced within a firm, one needs to think regarding the different roles
such as- the functions that are important for the successful innovation, the duties, tasks and
responsibilities that can arise and should be distributed as well as the key roles that influence the
success. All these are not possible for the part of the employees alone to do. As per Heidenreich,
Landsperger and Spieth (2016), innovation manager is an architect in this regard. When individual
employee is given the responsibility to foster the process of innovation, it is likely that the project will
fail. On the other hand, great teams and groups could lead to successful innovation project and that
too, to a higher performance. According to Caputo, Marzi and Pellegrini (2016), the innovation
projects are very interdisciplinary and therefore it involves about every area and many of the
employees need to be involved. Individual employees can never get the work done successfully and
therefore, project team plays a very significant role in this context.
Individual employees in the process of successful design thinking within the organisations

3CREATIVITY, INNOVATION AND DESIGN THINKING
According to Henriksen, Richardson and Mehta (2017), design thinking is a iterative and a
non-linear process that seeks for understanding the users, challenge their assumptions and redefine the
problems while creating some innovative solutions for prototyping and testing. The process of design
thinking comprise of five different phases and they are- empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test.
It provides a strong means of focus on the personal experience of the employee and create some
processes that are focused upon them. However, as claimed by Mintrom and Luetjens (2016), design
is for ever body. It is not only for the designers but is also for the freelancers, leaders and the creative
employees working within an organisations. Successful design thinking always helps the
organisations to grow, improve and innovate in the field of their financial performance. It helps the
organisations to identify various different opportunities, unlock the innovation and improve their
businesses.
The market leaders such as Nike, Apple and IBM have used the process of design thinking for
gaining a competitive edge over their rivals and applied it for creating some innovative services and
products in the market that are different from their competitors. For example, Nike have introduced
the Hyperdunk basketball shoe that keeps the foot sung and secure with a dynamic lacing system.
Similarly, the two most innovative products introduced by Apple that have crowned the company to
be the most innovative one are the LTE-enabled Apple Watch Series 3 and the introduction of ARKit.
The company came fourth in the fast growing company in 2018 but have managed to move to the top
spot. Some of the contributing factors in the process was the release of the iPhone X that have a
cutting edge design. However, it must be noted that all these success was not dependent on individual
employees only. It is the collective design thinking that have helped in gaining such success for the
companies like Apple and Nike.
According to Marzi and Pellegrini (2016), successful design thinking is a matter of
personality and motivation structures of the individual employees. There are some employees who dig
in and work hard when they come to know that they alone have the entire responsibility for a
particular project. They then become well-aware that they are likely to get all the credits for their
achievements and at the same time, also all the blames for their failures. Therefore, when they are

4CREATIVITY, INNOVATION AND DESIGN THINKING
given the responsibility of a particular task, the task is likely to foster and succeed. On the other hand,
Tice and Baumeister (2018) in this regard have claimed that the different engaging personalities gain
more energy when they interact with one another and consult with each other before doing a particular
task. Such people enjoy working in teams and the flow of communication is better with the
involvement of other people that helps in thriving highly energetic and active workplace. Feldman,
Armitage and Wang (2016), too have supported this claim opining that organisations are likely to
thrive in integrative, friendly and cooperative working environments. Design thinking process is a
process where a single idea or one or two can never bring in a drastic change or drastic innovation. In
order to bring in something innovative and new, it is very important to identify and analyse hundreds
of good ideas and a single person or an individual employee can never think everything innovative.
Every individual has some limited set of skills and at the same time, a finite knowledge base. People
need other for helping in solving the difficult problems and see things beyond their blind spots.
Hence from the above analysis it can be stated that creativity, innovation and design thinking
do not depends on the hands of individual employees present in an organisation. Organisations can get
success from the benefits that are shared by a group or people or team who share challenges and ideas.
Every individual in an organisation have some special and unique talents and also, they share special
and unique ideas. Although it is true that without active efforts of individual employees in
organisations ensuring successful creativity, innovation and design thinking is next to impossible, still
it must be kept into mind that it is very likely to happen that individual employee making the whole
process fail. On the other hand, organisations are likely to thrive in integrative, friendly and
cooperative working environments.

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References:
Amabile, T.M. and Pratt, M.G., 2016. The dynamic componential model of creativity and innovation
in organizations: Making progress, making meaning. Research in Organizational Behavior, 36,
pp.157-183.
Caputo, A., Marzi, G. and Pellegrini, M.M., 2016. The internet of things in manufacturing innovation
processes: development and application of a conceptual framework. Business Process Management
Journal, 22(2), pp.383-402.
Dereli, D.D., 2015. Innovation management in global competition and competitive
advantage. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 195, pp.1365-1370.
Feldman, R., Armitage, A. and Wang, C., 2016. The Gender Gap in Startup Catalyst Organizations:
Bridging the Divide between Narrative and Reality. Or. L. Rev., 95, p.313.
Fogarty, L., Creanza, N. and Feldman, M.W., 2015. Cultural evolutionary perspectives on creativity
and human innovation. Trends in ecology & evolution, 30(12), pp.736-754.
Giebels, E., de Reuver, R.S., Rispens, S. and Ufkes, E.G., 2016. The critical roles of task conflict and
job autonomy in the relationship between proactive personalities and innovative employee
behavior. The Journal of applied behavioral science, 52(3), pp.320-341.
Heidenreich, S., Landsperger, J. and Spieth, P., 2016. Are innovation networks in need of a
conductor? Examining the contribution of network managers in low and high complexity
settings. Long Range Planning, 49(1), pp.55-71.
Henriksen, D., Richardson, C. and Mehta, R., 2017. Design thinking: A creative approach to
educational problems of practice. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 26, pp.140-153.
Hon, A.H. and Lui, S.S., 2016. Employee creativity and innovation in organizations: Review,
integration, and future directions for hospitality research. International Journal of Contemporary
Hospitality Management, 28(5), pp.862-885.

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McRobbie, A., 2018. Be creative: Making a living in the new culture industries. John Wiley & Sons.
Mintrom, M. and Luetjens, J., 2016. Design thinking in policymaking processes: Opportunities and
challenges. Australian Journal of Public Administration, 75(3), pp.391-402.
Tice, D.M. and Baumeister, R.F., 2018. Longitudinal study of procrastination, performance, stress,
and health: The costs and benefits of dawdling. In Self-Regulation and Self-Control(pp. 299-309).
Routledge.