A Benchmarking Study on Organizational Creativity Practices in High Technology Industries

The Eu Approach To Innovation

Innovative performance and evaluation are extensively reported in various EU and other institutional documents, which provide several analyses of international examples (e.g. Étude sur les bonnes pratiques de dix pôles de compétitivité étrangers, from DGCIS, 2009; Assessing Community innovation policies in the period 2005-2009, from EU Commission, 2009; Les clusters américains, from DGE, 2008; Best practices in innovation policies, from Tekes Institute, 2005; European innovation scoreboard, 2009, from EU Commission, 2010).

The 3^rd edition of the Oslo Manual has included considerations about other types of innovation besides product and process, namely marketing and organizational innovation. Nevertheless this last definition (the implementation of a new organizational method in the organization’s business practices, workplace organization or external relations) is still far from allowing a quantitative analysis of data, thus making it difficult to gain further insights leading to improved success rates. One of the reasons seems to be the wide spectrum of what might be designated as an example of “organizational innovation.” Also, creativity appears connected with arts or creative industries, namely with design, or other indexes, as in the works of researchers like Richard Florida (Florida & Tinagli, 2004) the quality of the educational system, the desire of people to express themselves (artistically), or the openness of a society towards different countries and cultures. Therefore, measures have to rely on the so-called proxy indicators, which only indirectly measure creativity, thereby creating possible errors in measuring ‘true’ performance.