Methods to Improve Creativity and Innovation: The Effectiveness of Creative Problem Solving

Innovation, Culture And Knowledge Creation

Innovation, within the framework of a knowledge-based economy goes far beyond the linear or chain linkage models that have long been used in innovation theory to explain innovation processes in high-tech knowledge industries. Here, innovation is seen as a social, spatially embedded, interactive learning process that cannot be understood independently of its institutional and cultural context (Cooke, Heidenreich, & Braczyk, 2004; Lundvall, 1992). Innovation results from the involvement of a diversity of stakeholders, each one contributing with its own body of knowledge in order to build a new common and shared perspective of reality.

Strambach (2002) suggests that the interdisciplinary view of innovation systems is concerned with understanding the general context of the generation, diffusion, adaptation and evaluation of new knowledge, which determines innovativeness. It follows that the focus is on non-technical forms of innovation as defined above. Common characteristics of the different approaches to innovation, identified by Edquist (1997), include (1) innovation and learning at the centre, (2) a holistic and evolutionary perspective, and (3) an emphasis on the role of institutions, meaning that innovation do not happen in isolation: organizations are shaped and influenced by institutions and, simultaneously, influence and shape the institutions, setting a two way relationship, thereby influencing the innovation processes and systems.