Creativity, Innovation and Design Thinking

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