Creativity, Innovation, and Design Thinking: Individual Efforts or Team Association?

This essay explores whether successful creativity, innovation, and design thinking are based on individual efforts or require team association. It discusses the definitions of creativity, innovation, and design thinking, and provides theories and examples to support the argument. The essay emphasizes the importance of employee involvement in the innovation process and highlights the role of teamwork in achieving success.

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CREATIVITY INNOVATION AND DESIGN

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The aim of this essay is to clarify the readers whether successful creativity, innovation and
design thinking are based on efforts of individual employee or it requires team association.
Innovation, creativity and design thinking all based in various enterprises vary on the basis of
manpower and organizational needs. Various relevant theories and practical examples are
also being used in justification of this statement. The research is started with defining all the
three terms i.e. creativity, innovation and design thinking and later on various arguments are
being made in extent with theories and examples.
Today’s business environment is highly competitive and requires organization to undertake
innovation and creativity in every root of its structure. It not only helps the organization to
attain competitive edge in the respective sector but also benefits them to ensure its
sustainability with building of new value and knowledge. The innovation in a business firm
also revolves around interactive process in respect with various applications and information
generation (Hacklin and Wallnofer, 2012). To make innovation to arise, it is significant for
business firm to build generate knowledge, facilitates sharing control and its associated use.
For developed organisations, creativity is vital to pull their competitive edge and to leave the
competitors behind but it can only be possible for them by valuing the ideas and knowledge
of its employees.
The creativity in organisation terms can be defined as the tendency to create knowledge or
identify concepts, substitutes or opportunities that may be useful for solving complex
problems, designing products and facilitate communication with others. It is considered as a
significant part of the innovation process that allows enterprise to stay distinct position in the
marketplace (Kuratko and Audretsch, 2009). It is also an immeasurable effort that benefits
the corporate to use some original ideas for build something different in the market while
achieving a unique position. Yet, some organisations fully depend on research divisions for
facilitating innovation and this outlook various creative ideas of the employees and
management. This shows the importance to include employee in innovation process so as to
gains new directions and outlooks. However, it is also a fact that technology and innovation
itself contributes in employee motivation and satisfaction.
The next big thing in design thinking which helps the organisation for creative problem
solving and it acts as a human-centred process that encourages firm to embrace upon people

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so as to improve internal process and develop better products and services. It is also known as
innovation strategy benefit the business to innovate things while solving multifaceted
situations into simpler ones (Du, Jing and Liu, 2012). Considering social and enterprise
context, this approach is associated with the product and services innovation. A firm is
required to use innovation, creativity and design thinking in collaboration to attain
competitive edge in the respective sector and the success of these three components depends
upon the business efforts as whole. In addition, all these three functions require the support of
employee to complete effectively and benefit the enterprise from various perspectives.
One of the most comprehensive theories of creativity encompassing organisational innovation
and creativity and carrying implications for the work environment build by managers is
componential theory in relation with various key components. These components include
creative thinking, proficiency and inherent motivation (Runco, 2014). In addition, other
elements such as management practice also have significant impact over innovation and
creativity. For case, higher performance and results can be encouraged with management
practices such as workplace cooperation and association. With regards to this, Interactionist
Perspective of Organizational Creativity theory also explores various multifaceted
adjustments considering work condition and individual amid several levels in a company.
According to this theory, team member cooperation is significant for the realization of
innovation process and creativity is develops from team member association (Klijn and
Tomic, 2010).
One of the best examples can be taken of Google, who gained big success over time as of its
constant creativity and innovation. The company has beat many big companies in the
technology industry such as AOL, Microsoft and Apple. One of the major element in their
innovation process includes sharing of ideas that are used by the company as a major tool in
relation with their corporate innovation process (Lee et al, 2012). Susan, the CEO of
YouTube also said that their division always welcome new ideas and thoughts of the
employees in the course of decision making and this helps them to use full potential of their
workforce. It also involves sharing the board letter in the whole organisation that shows
employee necessary direction where the company is going. Susan also stated that sharing of
information and ideas also helps in pushing exchange of information with relation to ideas re-
examination bringing innovative results. With regards to this, Google also arranges its
workforces in more effective way to simplify the process of innovation. For instance, the
employees of Google are divided in crowded and small groups operating in open cube

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arrangements. It benefitted the company to gain new ideas with various individuals seated
near to one another. Considering one successful example, when employee of Google translate
and Google talk are working together, they get to develop notion of Google Talk which
proved to be one of the successful product/service of the organisation (exsin.co, 2018).
Through this example, it can be effectively said that employee group efforts are more
beneficial for the organisation to boost innovation process. The next example can be taken in
extent with creativity in relation to the company 3M as the company achieved creativity in
their internal process from a long period of time. The company success highly depends on its
creativity with stabilizing other aspects such as innovation and design thinking. Other than
this, 3M corporate culture is also pushing cooperative and collaborative creativity with
succeeding the business in dynamic business environment allocating new insights and skills
enabling the workforce to bring more team spirit among themselves. This shows that
creativity in business comes from teams rather than individual. Employees of 3M are
constantly motivated by management to boost their creative offerings and this can more be
comprehended by their recent expansion through opening innovation centre in Washington
that encourage many individuals clearly stating greater sharing of information and
collaboration (businesswire.com, 2019). Considering all, it can be effectively said that each
and every individual collaboration in the workforce is required rather than attempt if
individual employee.
The design thinking is also utilized by Google to achieve its success in the dynamic business
situation as Google develop new products and services by embracing high interest of the
needs of people to whom their product is intended. This helps the company to understand
various aspects in advances such as quality of issue, effects and concords. However, this
process also needs to be jointly achieved by all team members as effort of an individual, in
this case, leads to product failure. The approach to design thinking also includes building
poor defined issues and challenges in more human core behaviours and giving several
thinking in brainstorming session (Ambrose and Harris, 2009). This practice requires a
cooperative way that is showed by developers and designers. Modifying and pooling of data
considering many employees help the enterprise to come up with best products in the
industry. Therefore, it can be said that this way also needs cooperative efforts of many
employees.
This competitive environment also forces organisations to initiate employee satisfaction and
motivation programs in respect with various activities of the firm. One of the thing that

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makes employee satisfied is the breakthrough innovative ideas of business as it indirectly
satisfy the employee make them work towards achievement of organisational strategic goals
(Sadikoglu and Zehir, 2010). Other than this, excelling services and excellent belief of the
organisation also practice as a foundation for the workforce to drive innovation for the
company.
To conclude, it is proved that successful creativity, innovation and design thinking practices
within corporation depend upon team members association and efforts and for the innovation
process to success, it also required individual to work collectively as per the Interactionist
Perspective of Organizational Creativity theory. The best example of application of this
theory can be seen in Google where the employees are arranged in such a way that possibly
brings controlling and transferring of new ideas and knowledge. Adding creativity to core
culture of a 3M organisation also helps the company to bring team spirit in the employee to
work towards achievement of corporate goals. Teamwork between employees also boosts the
value of design thinking. Considering all, a company can gain distinct position in the industry
through its constant innovation, creativity and design thinking.

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References
Ambrose, G. and Harris, P., (2009) Basics design 08: design thinking. UK: Bloomsbury
Publishing.
businesswire.com. (2019) 3M Strengthens Design and Creativity with New 3M Design
Center [ONLINE] Available from:
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160721005756/en/3M-Strengthens-Design-
Creativity-New-3M-Design [Accessed 26/08/2019].
Du, J., Jing, S. and Liu, J., (2012) Creating shared design thinking process for collaborative
design. Journal of network and Computer Applications, 35(1), pp.111-120.
exsin.co. (2018) To Build an Innovative Culture [ONLINE] Available from:
https://www.exsin.co/bl-35-leveraging-googles-8-pillars-to-build-an-innovative-culture/
[Accessed 26/08/2019].
Hacklin, F. and Wallnofer, M., (2012) The business model in the practice of strategic
decision making: insights from a case study. Management Decision, 50(2), pp.166-188.
Klijn, M. and Tomic, W., (2010) A review of creativity within organizations from a
psychological perspective. Journal of Management Development, 29(4), pp.322-343.
Kuratko, D.F. and Audretsch, D.B., (2009) Strategic entrepreneurship: exploring different
perspectives of an emerging concept. Entrepreneurship theory and practice, 33(1), pp.1-17.
Lee, S.M., Olson, D.L. and Trimi, S., (2012) Co-innovation: convergenomics, collaboration,
and co-creation for organizational values. Management decision, 50(5), pp.817-831.
Runco, M.A., (2014) Creativity: Theories and themes: Research, development, and practice.
USA: Elsevier.
Sadikoglu, E. and Zehir, C., (2010) Investigating the effects of innovation and employee
performance on the relationship between total quality management practices and firm
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