Does Creativity Harm Innovation?
25 June 2006 at 1:36 am Peter G. Klein 1 comment
| Peter Klein |
The always-interesting Robin Hansen argues in Business Week that creativity may harm, not help, innovation.
[M]uch of the hoopla over creativity is a crock. Why? Because we are already up to our eyeballs in it. Make no mistake: Innovation matters. Nothing is more essential for long-term economic growth. But to get more innovation we may want less, not more, creativity.
The sobering truth is that the dramatic artistic creations or intellectual insights we most admire for their striking "creativity" matter little for economic growth. . . . Instead, the innovations that matter most are the millions of small changes we constantly make to our billions of daily procedures and arrangements. Such changes do not require free-spirited self-expression. Instead, people quite naturally think of changes as they go about their routine business and social lives. . . .
Entry filed under: - Klein -, Entrepreneurship, Myths and Realities, Strategic Management.
Organizations and Markets 
1.
D. Collins | 22 September 2007 at 2:31 am
The article barely provides the reader with anything close to a clear considered legitimate point. Instead, what ensues is a flagrantly jumbled, uninformed and unsupportable rant based upon hear-say, assumption, stereotype, and the thinnest pedestrian Hollywood understanding of “creativity”. To claim, “The sobering truth is….” and “In fact…” without providing even a glimpse of legitimate substantiation renders this piece of writing intellectually and academically flaccid. Even the “creative” person would be put to task to effectively contextualize, let alone make sense of a writing that tries to connect Picasso, “fashion”, suggestion boxes, Star Wars and street mimes. The dialectical leaps and stretches taken to try to deliver a point are practically epileptic. My favorite is the authors likening of ‘creativity’ to suggestion boxes. That is truly riveting insight.
signed,
Art Professor