Managing Creativity

For over a century, creativity has unfolded as a valuable field of knowledge. Emerging from disciplines like psychology, management and education, the field of creativity is making strides in others including the arts and engineering. Research and education in this field helped it establish an identity as evidenced by a growing number of courses and specialised journals. However, this progress has come with a price. In a domain like management, institutionalisation of creativity in learning, research and practice has left creativity subordinated to concerns with standardisation, employability and economic growth. Values like personal fulfilment, uncertainty, improvement and connectedness which could characterise systemic views on creativity need to be rescued to promote more and inclusive dialogue between creativity stakeholders. The author aims to recover the importance of creativity as a systemic phenomenon and explores how applied systems thinking, or AST, can further support creativity. This demonstrates how creative efforts could be directed to improve quality of life for individuals as well as their environments. The book uses the systems idea as an enquiring device to bring together different actors to promote refl ection and action about creative possibilities. The chapters offer conceptualisations, applications and refl ections of systems ideas to help readers make sense of the field of creativity in academia and elsewhere. Complemented by the author’s own personal, conceptual and practical journey, the insights of the book will act as a vital toolkit for management researchers, career-driven students, practitioners and all creators to define and pursue creative ideas and thrive through their journeys to benefit themselves, other people and organisations.

Managing Creativity in Organizations addresses the notion of organizational creativity and innovation in general, and explores in some detail how it is achieved. The first part of the book critically reviews the literature on creativity. The second half explores the management of organizational creativity in the pharmaceutical industry. Here issues such as technology, cognition and leadership are introduced as central resources and practices in the management of organizational creativity and innovation. The research is based on management practices in four companies, all of whom have demonstrated a significant ability to exploit their organizational creativity.

Hiring an all-star workforce and keeping it in place is a challenge for any organization. Packed with hands-on tips and tools, Hiring and Keeping the Best People offers managers comprehensive advice for hiring more effectively and increasing retention. Book jacket.

Packed with practical information designed for business readers and managers at all levels, this essential volume offers insights on managing creativity in groups, developing creative conflict, and using technology to help foster innovation.

Creative ideas fuel corporate grow. But what we really know about creativity? Which are the drivers? What are the boundaries of creative processes? How to evaluate creative ideas in startups? The age of the lone heroic inventor is over and now business creativity is process-based, often outsourced, it involves organizational resources and management practices, while creative expressions are increasingly protected as key intangible asset. In this book a diverse team of contributors from academia, intellectual property law and venture capital, offer an interdisciplinary, cross functional view about corporate creativity. How creativity is defined, the nature of the theories underpinning it, the relationship between creativity and entrepreneurship will be explored as well as how boundary spanning activities help in selecting and mobilizing creative talent in industries such as fashion. Finally the book shows how creative entrepreneurs embracing the tension between creative disruption and operational efficiency created innovative business models of extraordinary success.

Super series are a set of workbooks to accompany the flexible learning programme specifically designed and developed by the Institute of Leadership & Management (ILM) to support their Level 3 Certificate in First Line Management. The learning content is also closely aligned to the Level 3 S/NVQ in Management. The series consists of 35 workbooks. Each book will map on to a course unit (35 books/units).

Addressing the issues unique to managers of creative technical staff, this guide reflects not only Ronald Kay’s long experience observing and teaching successful management techniques, but also treats the expanding challenges due to increasingly globally-based projects and staff. As before, Kay’s guide helps readers to prepare themselves, graduate students and others to understand and improve their managerial skills and covers such practical, yet sometimes overlooked, steps such as: individual and team behavior of creative technical staff; managing their own and others’ R&D projects; hiring, evaluating and compensating technical staff; R&D proposals and administrative functions; and presentations, meetings and organizational culture. New to this edition are a chapter on the global impact of high-tech enterprises and sections on the roles of foundations and government funding and task-force participation. Also tackled are the basics of starting, financing and staffing venture-capital-funded enterprises. What’s more, this book also serves to increase the awareness and knowledge base of anyone who needs to meet the challenge of managing people with the creative energies that drive technologically-based economic growth.