Innovation and Creativity in the Workplace: A Comprehensive Analysis

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of creativity and innovation in the workplace. It begins by highlighting the importance of organizational creativity in achieving business success, emphasizing its role in improving employee engagement, motivation, and problem-solving abilities. The report then delves into the common blocks that stifle creativity, such as fear of failure, adherence to rules, and negative attitudes, and suggests interventions like proper leadership, mentoring, and fostering a culture that encourages innovation to overcome these obstacles. Furthermore, it discusses the significance of creativity and innovation in problem-solving, productivity enhancement, and gaining a competitive edge. The report also outlines a plan for individuals to develop their creative skills, including expanding their knowledge base, cultivating a positive mindset, and seeking diverse experiences. In conclusion, the report emphasizes the need for individuals to proactively implement strategies to modify their working attributes, fostering a more creative and innovative approach to achieve organizational goals. The report references several academic sources that support the arguments made.

Running head: INNOVATION AND CREATIVITY IN WORKPLACE
INNOVATION AND CREATIVITY IN WORKPLACE
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Executive summary:
Organizational creativity has been found to be extremely important in modern day attributes in
business to attain organizational effectiveness. It has many important benefits as it improves
engagement of the workers, increases interaction, staff morale and also passion towards work. It
also helps in increasing motivation and problems solving attributes in workplace environments.
It helps in increasing productivity as well as team bonding and collaboration. However, certain
blocks often arise that affects creativity and innovation. Fears for failure, short time, making
assumption, negative attitudes, bounded with habits, following rulebook and many others act as
blocks. Proper motivation by leaders, proper mentoring by mentors and development of
workplace culture encouraging innovation by employers and many others may help in removal
of the blocks and maintenance of smooth creative workflow.

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Introduction:
Organizational creativity is helpful in capturing the principles and the concepts that
relates to organizational transformation, organizational designs as well as organizational
dynamics. This results in the exploration of creativity in the workplace. It also helps in
subsequent exploration of the individual inherent creativity. Having creative spirit and thinking
with ‘out of the box’ approach is helpful in ensuring organizational success (Serrat 2017). This
assignment will mainly look over the blocks experienced in implementing creativity in
workplace and will also discuss the importance of organizational creativity in present day
generation. It will also help to provide a plan for individuals to develop creative skills.
Blocks in creative thinking and subsequent interventions to overcome them:
Many individuals in the workplace are seen to be firm believer of themselves of not-
being creative. This feeling of not being creative makes him stop from trying out new initiatives
and innovative approaches. This belief of the individuals is often spread around the workplace
environment which also makes other demotivated about their creativity. This continuous
negative belief makes the environment an automatic blocks for innovative approaches. This
makes every individual stop thinking himself to be creative by the time and this becomes one of
the most common block in innovative and creative thinking. Development of a positive attitude
is very important where individuals should not be rigid and give themselves more scope of
venturing different sides of hid working style (Sarooghi et al. 2015). For making such
individual’s positive about their thinking on the topic of creativity, proper leadership and

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mentoring is important who would be able to divert their thinking procedures and undertake
proper counseling.
Another important block occurs when the individuals are seen to follow rules by the
book. Often organizations strictly maintain decorum and rules which every worker needs to
follow to maintain a disciplined environment. Often employees work accordingly with the rules
which have been described to follow when conducting their tasks (Auernhammer and Hall 2014).
There are many individuals who take the rules more seriously and adhere to them in a way where
they fear to think out of the box and perform newer creative strategies to complete the task. This
strictness in complying with rules becomes a block for many workers in being creative. In such
cases, the employers and managers should encourage workers to be more creative and give them
enough spaces to apply their creativity in place where adhering by the rules will not result in
beneficial outcomes. A transparency needs to be established between the managers and workers,
where going over the rules do not bring punishments to workers. This will hamper the willpower
of the workers to go and think beyond rules.
Another common block which is experienced by the organization to promote a culture of
creativity is the fear of the employees to fail in their ideas. Often many individuals provide many
new ideas, innovations and creativity which are quite dissimilar to the regular method of
traditional working styles. Although it may bring out highest appreciation for the individuals
who proposed the idea, the idea may also fail which may hamper the work process and the
productivity of the company (Somench and drach-Zervy 2013). The fear to fail after applying
new ideas and the fear of criticism prevents many individuals to even take chances with creative
thinking. The outlook of such individuals needs to change. They must remind themselves that
being wrong is not bad but gives them opportunities to learn from mistakes and allow them to

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think more cautiously while planning creative ideas for a task. Proper mentoring and guiding
them will help them to change their outlook and be more participative.
Another important block arises when individuals cannot come out of their comfort zones
and adhere to their regular routines and habits. There are many individuals who develop a
comfort zone with their regular activities and habits and stop thinking out of the box as
performing the regular routine makes them comfortable (Litchfield, Ford and Gentry 2013). This
lack of enthusiasms acts as a block to creative innovations to provide creative thinking in their
jobs. Therefore, workers should be continuously provided scope where they can use their
creativity. Newer challenges should be thrown to them so that they are compelled to come out
form their comfort zone and think positively. Every leader should continuously flip the working
styles of the employees so that they do not get the scope to be adhered to particular habits. These
would make them come out of comfort zone and use innovative ideas to overcome the hurdles.
Other blocks involve executive stress faced by the workers where they remain jam-
packed with work and do not get time to think innovatively and develop creative strategies to
apply them. Unwanted stress not only reduces the quality of the mental processes but also makes
it difficult for him to think objectively. Proper management of time with proper scheduling helps
to manage work efficiently. It also provides them scope to think innovatively. Not only that the
organization should also make sure to give time to workers and encourage them to think out of
the box (Serrat 2017).
Besides all these, over reliance on logic, making assumptions, being judgmental and
others also act as blocks in innovative thinking and creativity.
Creativity and innovation:

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Creativity and innovation within organizations are important for ensuring a path of
success. Researchers have stated that stimulating creativity as well as exploring new and
completely unknown territories is one of the best ways of increasing productivity of the
organizations. Many researchers are also of the opinion that encouraging employees to think
beyond their regular habits and rule books and providing them with proper resources and time to
explore new and innovative ideas. Creativity also helps in improvement of process of solving
problems. This may involve development of a new strategy as well as a creative method to
remain ahead of the competition. Innovative problem solving methods gives competitive edge to
any organization which it is striving to achieve. Organizational creativity can come from any
sources within the organization (Cerne et al. 2013). This may come from any stakeholders in the
organization. This may include partners, target groups, customers, employees and many others.
All of them have the capability of bringing out fresh perspectives and innovative ideas. All of
these should be made possible by proper communication structures which would include active
listening as well as both feedback and feedback receiving. A proper environment should be
present in the organization which would enhance an open exchange of ideas and the need to
support and encourage by the company members (Naranjo et al. 2016). Often many issues arise
during regular business hours which are harder to resolve or can take a longer time to resolve if
taken by the regular rule book. It is possible to overcome such issues with the help of creative
ideas. Many creative ideas not only help in solving the issues easily but also provides many
strategic ideas which if undertaken will not create such issues in the near future. Not only regular
hardships, every business organization may face sudden circumstantial crisis or events which
were not anticipated earlier or preventive measurements were not taken (Liu et al. 2017). In these
sudden situations, researchers are of the opinion that creative and innovative ideas bring out

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more successful results for proper management systems than applying traditional method which
may not bring successful results. In such black swan events, it becomes very much important to
be willing and competent in adapting to the situations with a different thinking. Knowing to think
analytically as well as laterally is important. Moreover learning to think critical, creative and
associate levels are very important. In moments of black swan events, seeing and solving
problems and to respond to crisis in different ways by transforming them to creative ideas and
innovative solutions help in overcoming such events. Creativity and innovation mainly helps in
leading to improvements in the process of solving problems. Creativity also helps in propelling
innovation forward. It also helps in increasing the productivity. It also gives competitive edge so
that every business survives the cut throat completion in the present world (Valaei et al. 2017).
Plan:
Proper planning is to be conducted by every individual so that they can influence
competitive advantage to the work floor. Every individual should develop their ability to observe
and use all their senses which becomes dull over time. They should take charges in rekindling
the senses with proper motivation and implement creativity in their activities. Innovation is based
on knowledge and therefore an individual should continually expand the knowledge base by
reading things, discussing with mentors and others (Caniels and Rietzschel 2015). Perceptions
often limit reasoning and creative thinking and therefore care should be taken so that one
perceives everything in an organization with positive aspects. Researchers often suggest
individuals to take break from their regular long working hours or while working extensively on
projects. Making the mind free and giving oneself the time to think innovatively is important
(Fay et al. 2015). Proper encouragement should also be done by leaders. Individuals should also
open up themselves to different experiences. More the exposure of individual to different

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situations, it will help in inputting more ideas in the subconscious minds. Moreover researchers
also stated that treating patterns as a part of the work is important. Recognizing the new pattern
is useful but care should be taken that the employees do not become a part of it. Moreover,
looking in the areas where no one is looking would help the individuals to come up with
innovative suggestions which may bring out successful results (Perry-Smith et al. 2017).
Conclusion:
Hence, form the entire assignments, it is seen that fearing to fail, time constraints,
adhering to old habits, negative attitudes, and any others often create blocks. Organizational
creativity should be maintained by overcoming the blocks to ensure getting a competitive edge,
handling in black swan events, betterment often productivities and many others. Therefore every
individual should plan accordingly so that they can implement proper methods to modify their
working attributes and be more creative and innovative in their approach.

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References:
Auernhammer, J. and Hall, H., 2014. Organizational culture in knowledge creation, creativity
and innovation: Towards the Freiraum model. Journal of Information Science, 40(2), pp.154-
166.
Caniëls, M.C. and Rietzschel, E.F., 2015. Organizing creativity: Creativity and innovation under
constraints. Creativity and Innovation Management, 24(2), pp.184-196.
Černe, M., Jaklič, M. and Škerlavaj, M., 2013. Authentic leadership, creativity, and innovation:
A multilevel perspective. Leadership, 9(1), pp.63-85.
Fay, D., Shipton, H., West, M.A. and Patterson, M., 2015. Teamwork and organizational
innovation: The moderating role of the HRM context. Creativity and Innovation
Management, 24(2), pp.261-277.
Litchfield, R.C., Ford, C.M. and Gentry, R.J., 2015. Linking individual creativity to
organizational innovation. The Journal of Creative Behavior, 49(4), pp.279-294.
Liu, D., Gong, Y., Zhou, J. and Huang, J.C., 2017. Human resource systems, employee
creativity, and firm innovation: The moderating role of firm ownership. Academy of
Management Journal, 60(3), pp.1164-1188.
Naranjo-Valencia, J.C., Jiménez-Jiménez, D. and Sanz-Valle, R., 2016. Studying the links
between organizational culture, innovation, and performance in Spanish companies. Revista
Latinoamericana de Psicología, 48(1), pp.30-41.

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Perry-Smith, J.E. and 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), pp.53-79.
Sarooghi, H., Libaers, D. and Burkemper, A., 2015. Examining the relationship between
creativity and innovation: A meta-analysis of organizational, cultural, and environmental
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Serrat, O., 2017. Harnessing creativity and innovation in the workplace. In Knowledge
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Somech, A. and Drach-Zahavy, A., 2013. Translating team creativity to innovation
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Valaei, N., Rezaei, S. and Ismail, W.K.W., 2017. Examining learning strategies, creativity, and
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