Creativity and Innovation: Challenges and Benefits in Australia

This report delves into the critical concepts of creativity and innovation, emphasizing their importance for economic and societal progress, particularly within the Australian context. The executive summary highlights the significance of uniqueness in fostering creativity and innovation, contrasting it with mere imitation. It explores how innovation and creativity contribute to a country's competitiveness and sustainability. The report examines the positive impact of creativity and innovation on the economy and society. It discusses strategies for facilitating innovation, including government policies like tax rebates. The report also analyzes the Australian government's investments in fostering creativity and innovation across various sectors. Furthermore, it identifies the challenges Australia faces in promoting creativity and innovation, such as the difficulty of generating creative ideas and ensuring their practical application. The report concludes by reiterating the crucial role of creativity and innovation in driving long-term growth for both organizations and nations.

Running Head: Creativity and Innovation
Entrepreneurship and Innovation

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Executive Summary
Creativity and innovation are two crucial concepts through which an organization or a country
could attain big milestones. A major key element of creativity and innovation is uniqueness.
Those who copy could sustain for a limited period of time while those who believe in innovation
and creativity could come up with a unique application, product or service. This will be
beneficial for the individual as well as for the whole society. Apart from this, it has been
observed that creativity and innovation help the country, organization or any institute stand aside
from the competition and it also helps to grow and sustain for a longer period of time (Weber,
2016).
Under this report, impact and significance of creativity and innovation over economy and society
will be discussed along with the facilitation of innovation for the country. Next phase of the
report will focus on the investment done by the Australian government to boost up innovation
and creativity practices in the business and in other contexts. The last part will focus on the
challenges faced by Australia with regards to the investment made towards innovation and
creativity.

Creativity and Innovation 2
Table of Contents
Executive Summary.........................................................................................................................1
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
The significance of creativity and innovation for an economy and society....................................3
Facilitate creative and innovation....................................................................................................4
Benefits of creativity and innovation...............................................................................................4
Challenges with regards to creativity and innovation......................................................................5
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................5
References........................................................................................................................................6

Creativity and Innovation 3
Introduction
USA is one of the most innovative countries across the globe and major innovations of past
decade are from the USA in various fields. Some of their major innovations are Facebook,
Google, etc. and various technology based companies who are engaged in innovation and
creativity are also from there. With relation to this, the Australian government has also promoted
innovation and creativity in their country so that it could make an effective place in the most
innovative countries list along with uplifting its position in the overseas market. Australia is a
strong developed country in terms of potential men power, economic conditions, resources, etc.
In relation to this, government of Australia is encouraging its industrialists and other crucial
sectors to promote innovation and creativity so that the desired goals and objectives could easily
be attained (Henry & Mayle, 2016).
The significance of creativity and innovation for economy and society
Developed economies have moved towards innovation and creativity as critical skills attaining
success and growth. Both creativity, as well as innovation, acts as the two sides of a coin because
creativity goes hand in hand with innovation and without creativity, innovation cannot be done.
Creativity is known as the ability to produce new and unique ideas while, innovation is the
technique to implement those unique ideas through which a unique and innovative product,
solution or an idea generates (Amabile & Pratt, 2016).
Creativity and innovation are known as the sure path to success for a developed or for a
developing nation. In order to move towards further growth and development, Australian
government has planned to invest certain amount of their revenues towards creativity and
innovation so that productivity of the country could be enhanced along with making a unique
image of being an innovative and creative country. In relation to this, Australian government
should encourage its human resources to think out of the box and should provide them the
required resources to explore new and innovative ideas with the motive of boosting up the
country’s progress in international market (Perry-Smith & Mannucci, 2017). Australian
government is required to encourage society towards creativity and innovation by explaining
them the benefits, importance or any other fact. Economic investment could be made by

Creativity and Innovation 4
government but until and unless, society will not out much efforts to think out of the box, every
type of investment will be useless. Thus, it is necessary for the government to spread awareness
amongst the society. In relation with this, government could make compulsory in schools,
colleges, and educational institutes to promote creativity and innovation (Dawson &
Andriopoulos, 2014).
With the help of creativity and innovation, various societal and economic issues could be
mitigated. For example: before launching of social media platforms, people were not able to able
to communicate with each other for a longer period of time and led to generating gaps amongst
them. But after introduction of Facebook, Instagram, Skype, etc., people could get connected
with their loved ones, family members, and other people who are living far away. Video calling
feature is the biggest innovation in the telecommunication industry. With the help of this
innovation, gap amongst the people have been mitigated and they could get connected with each
other anytime and by seeing each other using internet. Thus, there are various benefits available
with creativity and innovation for economy as well as for the society; it makes people’s life easy.
It also generates various opportunities for people to progress and move towards an innovative
and better future (Reiter-Palmon, 2017).
Facilitate creative and innovation
Innovation and creativity are important for all stages and in order to facilitate innovation and
creativity in a country, it is necessary for the government to rely on its human resources along
with developing encouraging policies with regards to the innovation and creativity. Creative
ideas could come up from anywhere, thus, Australian government should develop certain
policies such as tax rebate for new start up and for innovative business ideas for certain period of
time such as for initial 5 years. Apart from this, government could also promote new and
innovative business ideas to spread awareness in relation with the innovation and creativity to
facilitate country’s growth and development (Liu, Gong, Zhou & Huang, 2017).
Creative and innovative ideas could come from anywhere, thus, initiative should be taken from
government in relation to facilitating creativity and innovation. Government could encourage and
promote its citizens in relation to the innovation by providing them required resources along with
providing any sort of help as they require. This will help the business enterprises to think out of

Creativity and Innovation 5
the box and generate innovative ideas so that the creativity and innovation could be promoted.
With the help of unique, creative and innovative ideas, government will be able to facilitate
innovation and creativity in the country through which major benefits will be attained by its
citizens and it will impact over the societal as well as economic conditions of the country
(Anderson, Potočnik & Zhou, 2014).
Benefits of creativity and innovation
Creativity and innovation are two major factors for an organization through which a country or a
business could move forward for a longer period of time. In relation with investing in creativity
and innovation, there are certain countries which have provided various facilities to its citizens to
think out of the box as well as to invent new ideas so that creative ideas could be build up in
relation with the attainment of desired goals and objectives (Carmeli & Paulus, 2015).
With the help of investing in creativity and innovation field, Australian government could
generate positive results along with facilitating economy as well as society. For example: if an
organization will provide every possible facility to its employees and have designed cool, funky
and attractive work environment so that employees could gain positive vibes which will help
them to generate creative and innovative ideas to accomplish the projects in more effective way
as expected. This will lead to reducing cost and uplift outcomes. Thus, providing resources in
every aspect is very important for Australia to promote and encourage its citizens towards
creativity and innovation with the motive of generating positive outcomes (Messmann & Mulder,
2014).
Challenges with regards to creativity and innovation
While investing in creativity and innovation, it does not provide 100% assurance that positive
outcomes will be generated. There are various factors involved in a process and amongst them,
not every factor is under control for individuals. Thus, there are dozens of challenges which
Australia will face while investing towards creativity and innovation:
 Finding a creative idea is the major challenge because finding a solution to a problem is
easy but finding a creative solution is bit hard and time consuming process (Cropley,
2015).

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 Creativity is known as a choice and the process of creativity requires various efforts and
demands patience. It is not sure that creative idea will generate positive and better
outcomes only; it could generate negative outcomes also. Apart from this, it is necessary
for Australia to determine the concept and value of creative idea before implementing for
making it an innovation. Until and unless, idea is not useful and not possible to not
manifest in practical life, there is not worth the idea.
 It is necessary to provide free environment to the creative person thus, Australian
government should take care of this because investing in promotion and providing
encouragement with regards to creativity and innovation, it is must for the government to
make all necessary resources available so that better outcomes could be originated
(Dentchev, Baumgartner, Dieleman, Jóhannsdóttir, Jonker, Nyberg & van Hoof, 2016).
Conclusion
From the aforesaid information, it can be concluded that innovation and creativity both are
essential elements for a country or for an organization to move forward in longer time period. In
relation to this report, significance of creativity and innovation has been discussed in relevance
to Australian economy and society. It has been concluded that creativity and innovation is
beneficial for every field whether it is industry, society, politics, etc. It helps every sector to grow
and invent new products and services through which Australia could make its unique image in
the overseas market.

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References
Amabile, T. M., & Pratt, M. G. (2016). The dynamic componential model of creativity and
innovation in organizations: Making progress, making meaning. Research in
Organizational Behavior, 36, 157-183.
Anderson, N., Potočnik, K., & Zhou, J. (2014). Innovation and creativity in organizations: A
state-of-the-science review, prospective commentary, and guiding framework. Journal of
Management, 40(5), 1297-1333.
Carmeli, A., & Paulus, P. B. (2015). CEO ideational facilitation leadership and team creativity:
The mediating role of knowledge sharing. The Journal of Creative Behavior, 49(1), 53-
75.
Cropley, D. H. (2015). Promoting creativity and innovation in engineering
education. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 9(2), 161.
Dawson, P., & Andriopoulos, C. (2014). Managing change, creativity and innovation. Sage.
Dentchev, N., Baumgartner, R., Dieleman, H., Jóhannsdóttir, L., Jonker, J., Nyberg, T., & van
Hoof, B. (2016). Embracing the variety of sustainable business models: social
entrepreneurship, corporate intrapreneurship, creativity, innovation, and other approaches
to sustainability challenges. Journal of Cleaner Production.
Henry, J., & Mayle, D. (2016). Creativity and Innovation.
Liu, D., Gong, Y., Zhou, J., & Huang, J. C. (2017). Human resource systems, employee
creativity, and firm innovation: The moderating role of firm ownership. Academy of
Management Journal, 60(3), 1164-1188.
Messmann, G., & Mulder, R. H. (2014). Exploring the role of target specificity in the facilitation
of vocational teachers’ innovative work behaviour. Journal of occupational and
organizational psychology, 87(1), 80-101.

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Perry-Smith, J. E., & Mannucci, P. V. (2017). From creativity to innovation: The social network
drivers of the four phases of the idea journey. Academy of Management Review, 42(1),
53-79.
Reiter-Palmon, R. (Ed.). (2017). Team Creativity and Innovation. Oxford University Press.
Weber, M. B. (2016). creativity and innovation. Library Resources & Technical Services, 60(3),
138-140.