Creativity and Innovation: Canva's Impact on Business Growth

This report delves into the crucial role of creativity and innovation in business organizations, highlighting their impact on growth and success. It explores key concepts, including leadership, vision, enhanced focus, invention, and diversity, and their contributions to fostering a creative and innovative environment. The report uses Canva, a rapidly growing Australian graphic design tool, as a case study to demonstrate the practical implications and significance of these factors. It examines how Canva's leadership, focus on innovation, and diverse workforce have driven its success and global recognition. The analysis provides insights into organizational styles, strategies for creative thinking, and the benefits of integrating creativity and innovation into business operations. The report concludes that creativity and innovation are essential pillars for achieving competitive advantages and sustainable growth in the dynamic global market.

Running head: Creativity & Innovation 1
Creativity & Innovation

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Executive Summary
The purpose of this paper is to develop an understanding of ‘creativity and innovation’ and its
significant role in the business organisations. There are numerous organisations that have crossed
the ladders of growth and success because of its creative imagination and continuous innovation.
The paper will present an understanding of the concepts of creativity and innovation, role of
leadership, strong vision, enhanced focus, invention and diversity for achieving upsurge level of
creativity and innovation in the organizations. For analysing the practical implication and
significance of creativity and innovation, there will be taken use of an organisation named
‘Canva’ which will help in demonstrating the way in which it has attained huge growth.

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Introduction
In the present century and the globalised business world, the markets as well as the needs of the
customers are extremely demanding as well as dynamic in nature due to the fact that there is
increased level of expectations from the consumers side to have improve, more pioneering and
creative services and products. The business globalisation and huge advancement of technology
has resulted in enhanced opportunities for the customers to switch to those organisations that can
offer more advanced and innovative services and products (Serrat, 2017). Because of the upsurge
expectation of the consumers, the organisations are required to make considered level of
innovations in the business operations so that the needs of the customers can be met in an
effective manner. Innovation and creativity are highly associated with each and are very crucial
for the contemporary business and globalised market so that the customers can get something
unique and innovative and so the organisations can attain competitive advantages through
differentiation. Creativity and innovation have a vital significance with other aspects of the
organisation too such as leadership, enhanced focus, invention, and vision contribution, diversity
and other few factors (Dawson and Andriopoulos, 2014). The analysis of the creative and
innovative thinking of the organisation will help in understanding of the benefits associated with
it as well as individual guidance for upcoming future and organisation career growth.
Analysis of personal and organizational styles and assessment of strategies for creative
thinking and innovation
Creativity and Innovation has a vital significance and importance in the business organisations
for achieving increased number of competitive advantages and global recognition. Creativity can
be understood as a function of curiosity, knowledge, evaluation and imaginations. The increased
the knowledge is, the greater is the level of curiosity, the increased numbers of ideas are
achieved, and the better is the opportunity to link them with innovative services and products.
Creativity helps in improving the approach of solving organisational problems by which the
business organisations attain a benefit of differentiation and uniqueness in their products and
services (Legrenzi, 2010). Innovation can be explained as having change or modifications in the
existing systems and operations or developing a new idea to perform operations. It is a
pioneering idea which helps the organisations in attracting customers with some kind of
uniqueness in the services and products offered. With a combined approach of creativity and

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innovation, the businesses attain global recognition. Not only the large multinational
corporations but even small ventures and medium enterprises have gained international brand
visibility because of their continuous efforts of creativity and organisation. There are several
factors that assist the approach of creativity and innovation and helps in getting increased
benefits from practicing creativity and innovation. The paper will provide insights from one of
the budding and rapidly growing organisations in Australia named Canva. It is basically a free
graphic designing tool website which was established in the year 2012 (Canva, 2017).
Leadership Encouraging Innovation and Creativity
There is a vital role of leadership in the organisations as it is the leaders only that emphasizes in
developing a positive environment in the organisation for achieving the organisational goals. It is
the leadership which is practices in the business organisations that facilitates the approach of
creativity and innovation by having increased employee engagement.

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(Source: Horth and Vehar, 2015)
There are various aspects by which there has been analysed that how leadership is the key factor
behind attaining increased level of creativity and organisations in the business organisations. the
first leadership factor is ideating and creating which means that there is analysing and generating
of new and innovative approaches and having increased participation on the approach of
creativity and innovation in teams (Černe, Jaklič and Škerlavaj, 2013). The leaders are the one
that push the employees across the set boundaries. Innovation is an aspect of leadership. Another
key aspect of leadership which supports innovation is practicing creativity and innovation on
grass root levels too. This helps in having creativity and innovation practices at all the levels of
the organisations. It is the leadership that develops innovation strategies and manage structural
changes and manage pipeline of new products. All such aspects of leadership play a significant
role in the success of the organisation through the implementation of creativity and innovation
(Yoshida, et al., 2014).
It can be analysed from the case of Canva. The key person of the organisation is Melanie Perkins
who is considered as one of inspiration behind the success of Canva as at the time of studying
only, Melaine realized the issues and challenges that occur while taking use of programs such as
photoshop, indesign, website development, etc. with her interest and desire to provide easy
solution to the people, she with the combined efforts of Cliff Obrecht gathered assistance from
thousands of non-designers as well as professionals who help them in developing the business
and achieving the business goals. As the organisational leaders, Melanie Perkins always tries to
take use of the innovative ideas and ways to more and increased development. For this, there is
encouragement of its employees across the world to give their suggestions in improving the
development, graphic designing and have such innovations which customers not even think of.
And because of the strong determination and leadership of Melanie the organisation is presently
among the top 10 ventures of Australia which are rapidly growing and are well recognized for
their innovative practices (Tait, 2015).
Enhanced focus and Invention
Having high focus and continuous invention are other primary and vital tools for supporting the
creativity and innovation approach in the organisations. It is essential that there must be

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increased focus on achieving creativity and innovation as it is essential that there must be an
appropriate understanding of the innovative approaches which will be best suitable for the
business operations and also which will help the organisation in fascinating the customers’
attention. When an organisation take use of creativity and innovation in building its brand image
then it is essential that it must continue with the same by having inventions and innovative
practices on a continue basis. This leads to continuous development of the organisation in terms
of having pioneering and new ways of business operations (Sawyer, 2011).
To achieve fruitful and successful results from the innovation and creativity approach it is
essential that there much be continuous supply of innovative ideas and there must restructuring
and modification of the business process is that invention could take place. And when there is
enhanced focus, generation of new ideas and intervention of inventions then it combines results
in upsurge creativity and innovation (Roco and Bainbridge, 2013). It can also be explained by
the means of the above mentioned organisation famous for its innovativeness i.e. Canva. Being a
web developer, content specialist and graphic designing, it is essential for the organisation to
have new and improved ways of software development so that the customers can take use of the
most innovative and pioneering technologies in a most accessible and easy way without any
complications. The company since the day of its establishment always try to have something or
the other in its software, web developing practices and graphic designing so that they can remain
in the market and can grasp the increasing market share with its pioneering technologies and
services offered to the customers (Chung, 2016).With its continuing inventions, Canva has been
recognized one of the coolest tech companies of Australia which is developing with a rapid rate

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of growth and success. It states that the approach of creativity and innovation supports the
increased development and sustainability of the organisation.
Vision contribution
Vision also has a key role in the innovation and creativity of the organisation. By developing
more innovative ways of business and involving creativity in the organisational practices, the
increased number of customer segments are attained but for this it is essential that the
organisational vision must has its key emphasis of innovation and creativity approach rather than
just increasing market share or making profits (Auernhammer and Hall, 2014).
It is essential that the organisational vision must focus on the innovation efforts and the reason
behind having innovation in the business process. By having huge emphasis on creativity and
innovation in the organisation vision then there will be increased level of creativity and
innovative practices in the business operations. Once the vision is linked with the approach of
creativity and innovation, the goals and strategies of the organisation automatically possess the
insights of the approach and frame and direct all the strategise in that manner (Rohrbeck and
Gemünden, 2011). The organisation which has achieved huge success and brand visibility by its
creativity and innovative business practices Canva is the example which has proved that by
having strong vision and associating the vision with these approaches then the success comes in
a direct way (Naughton,2016). The organisation was established with a vision to offer innovative

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solutions to the customers regarding the easy access to various technological functions of
website development, software development, graphic designating and other services. The
organisation continues to practices its vision of having an innovative approach in its all services
and products that are offered to the consumers.
Diversity
Diversity poses a significant and recognized role in the organisational innovation and creativity
business practices. Diversity can be explained as having a diverse group of individuals in an
organisation that are diverse on the basis of gender, religion and beliefs, age, sexual orientation,
ethnicity and race (Erbe, 2014). In the globalized world, there is a strong need for the
organisations to remain diverse and recruit highly diverse employees to have increased level of
growth and innovation. When there is increase level of workplace diversity, it is analysed that
there is generation of innovation and more creative ideas in compare with the workplaces where
there is low level of workplace diversity (Parrotta, Pozzoli and Pytlikova, 2014).
For achieving organisation growth and success, one of the key strategies adopted by hundreds of
organisations is diversity and inclusion. The organisations which practice diversity and inclusion
are at improved level of creativity as the diverse workforce when are involved and works in
group offers highly innovative ideas and there is a diverse view-point which helps in faster
resolution of conflicts, issues, framing plans and working over pioneering business models
(Gompers and Wang, 2017). It can also be explained by the means of the above mentioned
organisation famous for its innovativeness i.e. Canva. The company takes use of people who are
from different nations and are of diverse culture. Canva seeks huge growth and creativity in its
services by having such a diverse force. Because of global reach and employing people from
various countries, it helps the organisation in understanding the various difficulties faced by the
people in accessing application and performing their activity (Chung, 2016). And such diversity
helps in effective understanding of the issue and creating and developing software which can
resolve such challenges through offering. In a very short span of time only, the organisation has

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received recognition for its creativity and innovative practices which can also be considered as
one of the reason behind having huge diversity in the workforce.
Conclusion
From this paper, it can be concluded that creativity and innovation is the pillar of success for the
large scale as well as small and medium organisations. The more creative an organisation is, the
better and innovative are its services which re delivered to the customers. It can also be
concluded that there are several other factors also that play a significant role in developing
increased level of innovation and creativity in the organisations such as leadership, focus,
invention, vision and diversity. The paper has taken use of an organisation, Canva as its example
of creativity and innovation. It has been analysed and stated that in just few years of
establishment, the key reason for the huge success of Canva was its creativity and innovation
practices that made the organisation as Australia’s one of the most fastest developing tech
organisation. Thus, it can be stated that in every sector, organisation or activity there is a need of
innovation and creativity for achieving better and rapid outcomes.

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Appendix
1. Mind map for creativity and innovation