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TopInnovation And Creativity. From Individuals To Organizations, From Competition To Interaction
Creativity is usually understood as a process of generating ideas, designing something new, and producing an invention. Traditionally, this process ends up with a novelty that has some value and importance (Amabile, 1996a). As the character of the interaction and relationship between elements has a direct effect on creativity, creativity and social network theories can be integrated (Perry-Smith, 2006). It is obvious that strength of relationships, network position, and external ties could affect individual creative contributions. Some researches consider creativity, productivity, and innovation as a whole concept (Amabile, 1996b). Creativity is not directly related to a specific solution or product. Therefore, the result of creativity is not identical to innovation. Creativity is the sphere of entrepreneurship, because entrepreneurial thinking is based on new ideas about a new product, technology, materials, and methods. The development of innovation can also be studied as a combination of the management of innovation and the decision-making processes within the firm (Izadi et al., 2013). Also, creativity is one of the factors of entrepreneurial success (Baron & Tang, 2011; Cardon et al., 2013; Gielnik et al., 2012).
However, how does individual creativity form organizational innovation? What is the role of individuals in innovation processes?
Literature research highlights that creativity has an important role in the organizational context (Woodman et al., 1993) or in interpersonal networks (Bissola & Imperatori, 2011; Lingo & O'Mahony, 2010; Perry-Smith, 2006; Spelthann & Haunschild, 2011).
Creativity stops at the creation of ideas, while innovation is the implementation of the idea and its availability to all people: Customers, manufactures, distributers, and other entrepreneurs. Innovation is the idea that turns into reality.