Creative Thinking: Maintaining Innovation Culture Report

This report addresses the challenge of maintaining a creative and innovative culture within a department, particularly when faced with a new, conservative Head of Department (HOD) and a CEO skeptical of 'wild ideas.' It emphasizes the importance of colleagues maintaining the creative climate through various strategies such as 'thinking like the enemy,' soliciting ideas from individuals rather than groups, utilizing suggestion boxes, and making brainstorming a regular occurrence. The report highlights the key elements of creativity – expertise, creative thinking skills, and motivation – and suggests focusing on intrinsic motivation by subtly changing the organizational environment. It also outlines how to convince the new HOD by explaining the benefits of creative and innovative thinking, such as maintaining originality, simplifying problem-solving, and fostering employee engagement, ultimately improving the department's performance and image within the organization. The report concludes that effective leadership involves embracing risk-taking and encouraging brainstorming to foster optimism and confidence within the team.

Running Head: CREATIVE AND INNOVATIVE THINKING
Creative and Innovative Thinking

CREATIVE AND INNOVATIVE THINKING 1
Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Maintenance of the Climate and Culture of Creativity and Innovative Thinking in the
Department......................................................................................................................................2
Convincing the new Head of Department (HOD)...........................................................................4
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................6
References........................................................................................................................................7

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Introduction
Creativity can be defined as the ability of conceiving something unpredictable, unique and
original. It must be exciting, expressive and imaginative (Zhou, 2015). It is a min- blogging and
brainstorming activity in which an individual thinks beyond the imagination for the purpose of
bringing something worthwhile. On the other hand, innovation is closely tied to creativity. In
other words, it puts those creative ideas into action whose outcomes are expected to be positive.
Innovation is the act of applying new ideas for the purpose of creating value for government,
business organizations and society. The dependence of the innovative thinking is on the kind of
innovation in question (Perry- Smith & Mannucci, 2017).
According to the given scenario, the Head of Department (HOD) has decided to leave due to
some personal reasons. Now the department has been taken over by the HOD of different
division who is not easily open to great ideas, is conservative and scared of disappointing the
CEO. Moreover, the CEO is not in favor of the ‘wild ideas’ coming from this department.
However, these wild ideas have always achieved success. This report provides the manner in
which our department can get the new HOD on our side along with maintaining the climate and
culture of creativity and innovative thinking in the department.
Maintenance of the Climate and Culture of Creativity and Innovative Thinking in the
Department
Since the HOD will not be cooperative in the initial stages, there is a strong need that all the
colleagues themselves maintain the climate and culture of creativity and innovative thinking in
the department. After taking certain steps, the new HOD will also be on our side and he will also
contribute towards the creating and innovating thinking skills. For this purpose, the new HOD is
required to be convinced regarding the advantages of adopting creative and innovative thinking
skills in the division. The development of creative culture in the workplace is a time consuming
process and therefore requires the support and open- mindedness of the management, in addition
to this, they are required to be less judgmental to the suggestions offered by the team.
Thinking like the Enemy- In order to stand out of the competition, the organization needs to
think differently by way of generating a number of ideas along with putting them on offense. Our

CREATIVE AND INNOVATIVE THINKING 3
department is known for the wild ideas offered by us which proves that we think differently. All
the employees of the department are energetic which allows us to explore a number of
opportunities (Grant, 2016).
Soliciting Ideas from Individuals and not from Groups- Better ideas are generated when people
work alone as compared to when they are brainstorming in groups. While sharing ideas in the
groups, the best ideas often get ignored or never get an opportunity of getting shared. This is due
to the fact that some members of the group dominate other members and therefore do not give
others the opportunity to express their ideas. When each and every employee in the department
will be given equal opportunity for expressing their creativity then everyone will be capable of
freely offering their creative ideas (Grant, 2016).
Suggestion Box- Suggestion boxes can prove to be quite useful because a number of ideas are
offered by it (Grant, 2016). The employees are hit by inspiration at random moments so they
should be provided an outlet through which their great ideas can be provided to the organization
at any point of time.
Making Brainstorming a Regular Occurrence- there should be no restriction on brainstorming
only in respect of specific projects only and should also be used for the purpose of discussing
general ways in which the business and the department can improve its performance. Therefore,
we will make the use of brainstorming for the purpose of encouraging our colleagues for together
for this process and ensuring that each and every employee gets an equal chance and opportunity
for presenting their ideas and sharing their thoughts. In this way, we will find new ways in which
the productivity of our department can improve (Rawlinson, 2017).
There are three important elements of creativity namely- expertise, creative thinking skills and
motivation. Creative thinking is the term that expresses the manner in which the problems and
solutions are approached by different people. Motivation is the factor which can easily be
influenced in the organization as compared to other factors namely expertise and creative
thinking skills (Caniels & Rietzschel, 2015). This is due to the fact that these processes are
considered to be time consuming and requires appropriate training as well for the expansion of
creative thinking skills. However, it is very easy to increase the intrinsic motivation of the
employees by way of making subtle changes in the environment of the organization. Also, it will

CREATIVE AND INNOVATIVE THINKING 4
be taken into consideration that there are six factors which have a severe impact on creativity
namely challenge, freedom, work- group features, resources, organizational support and
supervisory encouragement (Amabile, 1998).
The climate can be witnessed in the form of various aspects of the psychological atmosphere in
the surrounding organizational environment and in the team. There are a number of components
of a creative climate such as intellectual debate, flexibility and risk taking, challenging, top
management support and positive interpersonal exchange. Therefore, the team will continue to
take up challenging and interesting tasks in order to maintain the intrinsic motivation which is
considered to be an integral element of creativity. However, the tasks will not me much
overwhelming otherwise it will become an obstacle for the team. Moreover, while working with
the challenging and complex tasks, there are a number of problems which will be faced by our
team. However, there are different ways for resolving the problem (Hong, Hou, Zhu &
Marinova, 2018). The use of intellectual debate will be made such that my colleagues do not
stick use old solutions for new problems. Furthermore, risk tolerance will be used as a strategy
by our department which will also encourage experimentation. Since there is not much support
from the top management, some difficulties are always faced by our department in respect of the
implementation of innovation in our processes, However, the success of such ideas have always
impressed the CEO of our organization. All the other factors will be considered by our
department in order to maintain a creative climate. Another important component of the creative
climate that will be adopted by our department is joy. When a sense of togetherness will be
experienced by or team, the achievement of which is possible only through common goal, the
willingness among the team members to cooperate for their mutual benefit will increase
(Dawson & Andriopoulos, 2014).
Convincing the new Head of Department (HOD)
The new HOD is conservative, which is a plus point for our department. The creativity of the
conservatives is associated in their manner of performing the work and not with the goals
pursued by them (Litchfield, Ford & Gentry, 2015). In other words, there is no lack of creativity
among the conservative people. Moreover, findings of some researchers provide that

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conservative thinking is an important element of creativity. There are two different networks in
the brain, one is known as associative network and the other is known as conservative network.
Open- mindedness and free thinking is the job of the associative network while the conservative
network performs the task of offering creative solutions (Briggs, 2016). Therefore, the new HOD
will be convinced with the help of the explaining the benefits of creative and innovative thinking
so that he can also support it for the benefit of the division and the organization as a whole.
For the purpose of convincing the HOD, he will be made aware regarding the advantages of
creative and innovative thinking. The adoption of creative thinking by the department helps in
maintaining the originality of ideas and will allow the employees to search for the solutions to
different problems without falling back on the accepted methods and standards (Serrat, 2017).
This will further simplify the job of the HOD as he will not have to waste his time in finding the
solutions for the employees working under him. Moreover, creative thinking will offer an
opportunity to each and every employee in the department to express their innovative ideas in
front of others and therefore encourage idea generation and analysis instead of falling back on
habit (He, 2017).
Furthermore, the HOD will also be made aware regarding the fact that allowance of the creative
thoughts assists the employees in adhering to the guidelines at the time of searching for the
solutions of the problems. This will further simplify the problems face by the HOD when the
guidelines are not met by the employees (Grimm & Brandert, 2016). Old standard behaviors will
also be removed by creative thinking. Furthermore, he will also have an ample of ideas which
can be implemented in the division for the purpose of improving the performance. Therefore, a
number of advantages of provided by creative thinking in the context of a business and therefore
should be taken into consideration by Head of Department as the success of such ideas will
enhance his image in front of the CEO of the organization.
In other words, the use of creative and innovative thinking in the division will increase the
engagement of employees, interaction, staff morale, motivation, passion, productivity, problem
solving along with collaboration and team bonding. When all these factors will be portrayed by
the department in front of the CEO of the organization, this division will be regarded as the best
performing department of the organization (D’Innocenzo, Mathieu & Kukenberger, 2016).

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The performance of the department will now depend on the guidance and leadership of the new
HOD. The basic task of the leaders is to assist themselves and others in the performance of right
things. They are responsible for setting the right direction along with making the use of the
management skills for the purpose of guiding their followers to the correct direction in an
efficient and smooth manner. Along with this, the most important aspect of the leader is to
understand that risk taking is an important aspect of the business. Moreover, while taking risk, it
is obvious that mistakes will occur (Puccio, Mance & Murdock, 2010).
In order to become an effective leader of the division, the new HOD will be encouraged to allow
the creative and thinking in the department as it is the risk taking which is responsible for the
success of the ideas and the business. Making the use of creative and innovative ideas is also a
way of taking risk in the business. Furthermore, the new HOD should aim conducting the
brainstorming sessions for our department in order to fire the team with optimism, confidence
and energy for meeting their targets (Fragouli, 2017).
Conclusion
Therefore, it can be concluded that creativity is the ability of conceiving something
unpredictable, unique and original. On the other hand, innovation is closely tied to creativity and
puts those creative ideas into action whose outcomes are expected to be positive. This report
provided the manner in which our department can get the new HOD on our side along with
maintaining the climate and culture of creativity and innovative thinking in the department. Our
department will focus on soliciting ideas from individuals rather than groups and will also make
the use of suggestion boxes and brainstorming sessions. Moreover, the new HOD will be
convinced for adopting creative and innovative thinking in the division by making him aware of
its advantages.

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References
Amabile, T. M. (1998). How to kill creativity (Vol. 87). Boston, MA: Harvard Business School
Publishing.
Briggs, S. (2016). Why Creativity Requires Conservative Thinking. Retrieved October 28, 2018
from https://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/features/creativity-requires-
conservative-thinking/
Caniels, M. C., & Rietzschel, E. F. (2015). Organizing creativity: Creativity and innovation
under constraints. Creativity and Innovation Management, 24(2), 184-196.
D’Innocenzo, L., Mathieu, J. E., & Kukenberger, M. R. (2016). A meta-analysis of different
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Dawson, P., & Andriopoulos, C. (2014). Managing change, creativity and innovation. Sage.
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Grimm, B. L., & Brandert, K. (2016). How Does an Individual's Innate Preferences Impact
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Litchfield, R. C., Ford, C. M., & Gentry, R. J. (2015). Linking individual creativity to
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