Creativity and Innovation

Creativity and innovation
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Contents
 Introduction
 Learning outcomes
 1 Creativity
 1.1 Creative people
 1.2 Creative competence
 1.3 Creative culture
 1.4 Creative environment
 1.5 Review
 2 Innovation
 2.1 Radical v evolutionary change
 2.2 Organisational implications
 2.3 Product, service and process?
 2.4 Disruptive innovation
 2.5 Open innovation
 2.6 Review
 Conclusion
 Keep on learning
 References
 Further reading
 Acknowledgements
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Introduction
Creativity and innovation addresses ways of doing things better
and differently. Section 1 focuses on how different theories about
the causes of creativity lead to different strategies to facilitate it. It
draws on Henry (1994). Section 2 introduces some key
approaches to innovation.
This OpenLearn course is an adapted extract from the Open

University course BB842 Sustainable creative management
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Learning outcomes
After studying this course, you should be able to:
 understand the roles of skill, experience, motivation

and culture in creative endeavour
 appreciate how the perspective taken on creativity
affects the policy used to engender it
 differentiate between radical and incremental
innovation
 identify some potential disruptive innovations and take
advantage of ‘open’ innovation
 reflect on experiences of creativity and innovation at
work.
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1 Creativity
Creative ideas are new and appropriate. The appropriateness of
the idea is critical as creative ideas need quality as well as
originality. To have lasting impact a creative idea must be
perceived as valuable by others: being different is not enough – it
must also be apt, i.e. the idea works in the context in which it is
applied.
1.1 Creative people

Activity 1 Source of ideas
Where do new ideas come from?
View discussion - Activity 1 Source of ideas
To be in a position to draw out creativity in the workforce, you need

some idea of what conditions favour creativity. An examination of
the various explanations put forward shows that historically these
have changed considerably over time (Henry, 1994).
Traditionally creativity was seen as unfathomable and, like

intuition, seemed so mysterious that possessing it was attributed
to an act of grace (Claxton, 2005). In many parts of the world
creativity is still associated with divine inspiration. An alternative
perspective assumes creativity results from serendipitous good
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fortune; a case of being in the right place at the right time (Henry,
2001).
In the 1950s creativity was often thought to be an ability

possessed only by the gifted few; in the 1960s it was often
associated with skills of mental flexibility that could be learnt. In the
1970s the role of relevant experience was more fully appreciated
by researchers, and in the 1980s, attention was drawn to the key
role of intrinsic motivation (doing things because you want to).
These theories focus on creativity at the level of the individual;
more recently managers and researchers have turned their
attention to the part played by the social context. In the 1990s
organisations paid more attention to the effect that work culture
and environment have on the potential for creativity on people in
organisations. In the current millennium the focus has shifted
towards understanding creativity as an emergent phenomenon
that builds on what has gone before and arises from ongoing
interactions, a perspective that considers the part social context
plays in the genesis of ideas (Henry, 1994). We will consider the
implications of each of these theories.
1.1.1 Ability
Activity 2 Creative people
Think of one or more people you believe to be creative. What sort
of people are they and how do they set about their work?
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View discussion - Activity 2 Creative people
Early psychological research on creativity focused a lot of effort on

identifying what abilities are involved in creativity. Guildford (1959)
concluded that originality, flexibility, idea fluency, problem
sensitivity (sophisticated understanding of the problem area) and
redefinitional skills (the ability to view issues from different angles
and reframe them) were all critical to creative performance.
Perkins’ (1981) studies stressed the importance of intrinsic
motivation, sensitivity to form (deep knowledge of and sensitivity to
an area of work), a capacity for objectivity, the ability to take risks,
mental mobility (including tolerance for ambiguity), and problem-
finding skills. A number of other studies have come to similar
conclusions about creative abilities regardless of the domain they
are studying. One common finding is that creative people seem to
possess problem-finding abilities – the art of recognising the
important question. They are also able to tolerate ambiguity better
than less creative people so can avoid premature closure (not
settling on a solution too soon before more useful ways forward
have been considered).
Some people assume that creativity is a trait possessed by the

gifted few but not others. In this view, Fleming’s discovery of
penicillin was not accidental but a reflection of his exceptional
creative ability. A consequence of this perspective is that managers
are best advised to identify who are the creative and innovative
staff. Research suggests that in certain areas the calibre of staff is
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important – companies do well to seek out the best exploratory
scientists, for example. A number of successful informational
technology (IT) companies, including Google, also make a point of
recruiting the very brightest enthusiasts in their field.
1.1.2 Style
A more modern perspective focuses less on who is and is not
creative and more on different styles of creativity. Kirton (1989)
suggests there is a case for differentiating between the ‘innovative’
approach to creativity, which involves reframing problems and
coming up with radically new approaches, and the ‘adaptive’
approach, which involves improving existing practice incrementally.
He suggests there is a continuum across people favouring a
creative approach, involving doing things differently, to preferring to
do things better. In Western societies we tend to associate
creativity with innovative breakthroughs, but most innovations
come about through a series of incremental improvements. Until
recently, the adaptive style of creativity – building on what has
gone before – has received less attention in the West but has
arguably been better appreciated in the East (Nonaka and
Takeuchi, 1995).
1.2 Creative competence

We discuss two components of creative competence: skill and
experience.
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1.2.1 Skill
Many people associate creativity with insight, and assume that this
is caused by creative association – applying previously unrelated
ideas or metaphors from one field to another. Archimedes offers a
well-known example. While taking a bath, he suddenly realised
that his irregularly shaped body displaced a measurable volume of
water and that this principle would allow him to work out the
irregular amount of gold in the king’s crown. Velcro offers another
example of applying an idea from one field to another: it fastens
two fabrics together as a prickly burr sticks to fabric. Studies of
creative individuals reveal that they tend to possess a certain
mental flexibility that allows them to think outside the box, withhold
judgement, shift their perspective on a problem, redefine issues
and tolerate ambiguity. In the late 1960s and 1970s Edward de
Bono (1984) popularised the idea of training people in creative
thinking skills like lateral thinking (illustrated in Chapter 7). This
type of creativity training aims to break through mental barriers and
increase mental flexibility to make it more likely that potentially
useful insights are not missed. In this view, creativity is a skill that
can be taught.The implication of this approach is that creativity is a
transferable skill, a notion that is in keeping with the current
policies that stress the acquisition of competencies as a route to
learning (e.g. Godbout, 2000). While many trainers and politicians
accept the idea that management competencies and creative
problem-solving skills are transferable, researchers who have
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studied the genesis of ideas tend to take a different view – that the
skill of mental flexibility is only part of the story.
1.2.2 Experience
Studies of creative people, whether they are chess players,
musicians, business people or scientists, have emphasised the
role of relevant experience and with it the idea that chance favours
the prepared mind. Investigation suggests that creative people
draw on their knowledge of an area to tackle problems differently
from novices in their field. It seems that, as they build up their
experience, they organise their knowledge in ever more
sophisticated chunks, which means they can access key cues
more quickly. Consequently they are better placed to recognise
important problems (e.g. Simon, 1988). For example, Fleming may
have stopped to question the unusual reaction in a Petri dish, that
subsequently led to the discovery of penicillin, because years of
work had alerted him to notice irregularities that were likely to be
significant. In other words his experience had led to superior
problem-finding skills.Many great industrial inventors, just like their
counterparts in science and music, have worked in particular fields
for many years before apparently stumbling upon their inventions,
and have taken many years afterwards to develop their ideas. For
example, Edward Land took three years to develop the Polaroid
instant camera after his initial insight (Westley & Mintzberg, 1991,
p.43). Dyson, an industrial design engineer, made over 5,000
modifications to his prototype before he was satisfied with his
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bagless cyclonic vacuum cleaner (Mayle, 2006;
http://www.dyson.co.uk/). It was a Cambridgeshire paramedic,
Bob Brotchie, who suggested the idea of storing an In Case of
Emergency (ICE) name and number on your mobile phone, so
someone could be contacted if you were hurt. As a paramedic, he
had experience of trying to identify people involved in traffic
accidents and realised it would be easier if people used an ICE
number as most had mobile phones.Weisburg (1986) has
presented evidence to suggest that in a number of different fields
individuals need to work in an area for many years before they are
capable of exceptional creative achievement. Many business
people who have successfully turned around their organisation
have indeed been working in their industry for many years. For
instance, Jan Carlzon, who rejuvenated Scandinavian Airlines, was
a travel veteran. Likewise Lee Iacocca, who revitalised Chrysler,
had worked in the car industry for decades. In this view, creativity
is largely a matter of expert recognition. The implication is that
creative competencies are domain dependent and not necessarily
transferable skills. One consequence is that the wise manager is
well advised to think twice before downsizing and letting
experienced staff go – younger staff may be cheaper but they may
not have the know-how of experienced staff.
1.3 Creative culture

Activity 3 Creative projects
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Think of two creative projects in which you are, or have been,
involved. Select one that worked successfully and another that
failed.
In each case note the way ideas were handled, the people
involved and your dealings with others. What were the working
relationships like? What was the atmosphere in the group? How
did you set about the project and deal with the outside world?
View discussion - Activity 3 Creative projects
Activity 4 Creative organisations

What helps creativity in organisations? Think of an organisation
known to you that you believe to be creative. What strikes you as
interesting about the way it works?
View discussion - Activity 4 Creative organisations
1.3.1 Motivation
Amabile (1990, 2006) argues that neither the possession of mental
flexibility nor relevant experience is sufficient for creativity to
flourish. Rather creativity emerges when there is a combination of
these factors along with intrinsic motivation (i.e. people are
doing what they want to do). So, while chance may favour the
prepared mind, motivation seems to be an equally important factor,
and the love people feel for their work may be a good
measure of their level of creativity. The argument here is that you
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need to be intrinsically motivated to drive the persistent effort
needed for a creative outcome. Richard Branson has said:
‘Business is not about winning, about the bottom line, and about
trade or commerce, or any of the things conventional business
wisdom maintains. Rather, business is what concerns us. If you
care about something enough to want to do something about it,
you're in business’. Branson proclaims that he has never been
interested in business in terms of making money but that rather he
was interested in creating things and ‘creating businesses he could
be proud of’ (Branson, 2011, from the Introduction).
If you really care about something, you are more willing to take
risks to achieve it and both perseverance and a capacity for risk-
taking seem to be necessary creative attributes. The implication is
that people are more likely to be creative in areas they are most
interested in. Employers could be well advised to allow employees
considerable freedom to work on the projects they are most
attracted to and to determine how they do their work. (Amabile,
(2006), elaborates on how organisations kill creative ideas.)
Many innovative companies have policies that allow research

scientists to follow their own motivation to some degree. For
example, 3M, a company that aims for 30% of its products to have
been developed in the last five years, has a motto: ‘find the
inventors and do not get in their way’. It allows some
researchers 15% of their time to pursue projects of personal
interest; Google has allowed 20% and Hewlett Packard, 10%. The
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highly successful Post-it™ pads, superconductive materials, and
Gmail all emerged from projects conducted in researchers’ ‘free
time’ (e.g. Mediratta, 2007). Marissa Mayer, then Google Vice-
President, worked out that half of Google's new launches came
from employee’s one day a week working on projects of their own
choosing (Mayer, 2006).
Watch: How successful organisations

draw out creativity in their staf
Google is probably the world’s most successful creative company.
You might like to watch Marissa Mayer, former Google Vice-
President and now Yahoo CEO, speaking about some of the ways
Google draws out the creativity of its staff.
Video content is not available in this format.
Marissa Mayer - Part 1
View transcript - Marissa Mayer - Part 1
Video content is not available in this format.
View transcript - Marissa Mayer - Part 2
These two videos are from a podcast by Marissa Mayer for

Stanford University.
1.3.2 Organisational culture

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Work culture is important for creativity in several ways. An open
culture is likely to afford more opportunities for people to work on
tasks and in ways that they find motivating. People are also more
likely to explore new areas and try different approaches in a culture
where they feel safe (West, 2002) and know they will not be
punished for exploring new avenues (Handy, 1997). So motivation
and, through this, performance, are affected by the work
environment.
It is a psychological truism that people rarely take risks in thinking

unless they feel safe and valued. If people feel threatened they
tend to react defensively. This is perhaps one reason why
initiatives like total quality management (TQM) that attempt to
document and control the process of creative improvement can
face an uphill battle. You cannot readily legislate for creativity, it
tends to emerge naturally where people are motivated and within a
culture that encourages exploration rather than rewarding
inhibition.
Studies of creativity at work (e.g. Jelinek and Schoonhoven, 1991;

Ekvall, 1991) have emphasised that, by and large, certain
organisational cultures are more conducive to creativity than
others. The more favourable cultures are more open, they give
employees freedom and responsibility for their work, tolerate rather
than punish mistakes and make a point of nurturing new ideas.
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In the West many organisations have accepted the importance of
developing conditions that favour creativity, notably more open
organisational cultures. Towards the end of the twentieth century,
numerous companies endeavoured to change their culture and
structure to support more open climates that have a better chance
of nurturing creative endeavour.
Not everything is easy in open and creative climates: typically

people find they need to allow more time to communicate with
each other and working in multidisciplinary teams with people who
do not agree with you and have other concerns and priorities is
bound to be uncomfortable from time to time. However, it seems
there are few other ways to run innovative, creative companies in a
number of sectors, including information and communication
technologies (ICT).
Activity 5 Creative and successful activity

Think of an occasion when you felt you performed particularly well
and another when you were creative. What factors do you think
accounted for this?
View discussion - Activity 5 Creative and successful

activity
One organisation that is consistently creative is Pixar, the company

that makes animated films such as Toy Story and WALL-E. You
might like to read ‘How Pixar fosters collective creativity’ (Catmull,
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2008), which describes the processes the author believes help
them maintain their creative output.
1.4 Creative environment

We discuss two approaches to the creative environment: the social
field and emergent creativity.
1.4.1 Social field

Until relatively recently, a lot of the work on creativity, especially in
the West, tended to locate the source of creativity within the
individual. Now many researchers have turned their attention to a
wider context, focusing on the role of collaboration in creativity and
the community of practice (where people with similar interests
and expertise can build on each other’s experience and
knowledge) from which creative endeavour emerges (Wenger,
1998).
Csikszentmihalyi (1996, 2006), for example, has looked at the

interaction of three aspects of creativity: the creative individual, the
domain of knowledge they are working within (marketing,
accountancy or psychology, for example) and the social field (the
norms and gatekeepers that govern the area) within which these
endeavours take place. (See Csikszentmihalyi, 2006, for more on
this systems perspective on creativity.)
Certain fields at certain times seem to foster and accelerate

creative endeavour in particular domains. For example, art and
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architecture in Florence at the beginning of the fifteenth century;
the London Bloomsbury Set novels and poetry of the 1920s and
1930s; Silicon Valley, California and the development of computers
in the latter part of the twentieth century; pop music in Liverpool in
the 1960s; new business and the ASEAN countries in the 1970s
and 1980s; Cambridge (UK) biotechnology in the 1990s and
software applications in Bangalore, India in the twenty first century.
This suggests that despite our globally interconnected world, a
location near other enthusiastic people knowledgeable about the
topic you are working helps advance creative development in a
number of areas.
Can you think of other, perhaps lesser-known, examples of

creative flourishing in your area of work?
This social view of creativity draws attention to the extent to which

ideas build through people learning from each other and from what
has gone before. A consequence of this view is that managers
might be better advised to spend less time looking at the qualities
and behaviour of creative individuals and focus instead on the
system of social relations from which creative endeavour emerges,
examining the conditions and systems that nurture and sustain
creativity.
In attempting to predict the creative potential of companies it can

be argued that research and knowledge are key factors.
Csikszentmihalyi (1996) suggests companies that place more
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emphasis on research and make their knowledge available to staff
are more likely to come up with new products than those that do
not.
1.4.2 Emergent creativity

Another approach to understanding creativity borrows from the
new science of complexity to stress the idea of emergent
creativity. Complexity science involves the study of complex
dynamic systems involving many agents capable of learning.
Complexity models show that, if the individual agents go about
their business following a few simple rules, patterns of behaviour
begin to emerge in the group that enable the group to learn. One
implication is that even quite complex systems composed of many
agents seem perfectly well able to self-regulate. Wikipedia, the
free editable online encyclopaedia, can be seen as a case in point.
Though dynamic systems demonstrate learning, the nature of the

patterns that emerge in such systems are not predictable at the
outset. Neural net software based on these ideas is used to
analyse the stock market. These programs need practice, they
start out performing poorly but, as they build up knowledge of the
different patterns that can arise, they gradually ‘learn’ to match the
existing data better than expert systems. Software engineers only
apply them in real situations once they have got to the point where
they predict market trends well and repeatedly. A feature of the
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software is that the programmers are unable to explain exactly
how it works, as the interactions involved are too complex.
Creativity can be seen in a similar way, as a property that emerges

from a social field due to an interaction of factors, but one that is
almost impossible to predict. Creativity is more likely in
organisations that are neither too stable and ordered (for example,
bureaucracies) nor totally disordered. Since no functioning
organisation can be totally disordered, the suggestion is that
creative endeavour is more likely to emerge at the ‘edge of chaos’,
in the mess between order and disorder. ((Pascale 1999, 2006)
elaborates on organisational creativity as seen from the
perspective of complexity.)
Activity 6 Applying ideas

Which of the ideas presented in this section seem most relevant to
your situation? Could you see a case for adapting any for your
organisation or not? How would you do this?
View discussion - Activity 6 Applying ideas
1.5 Review
This section has explained how personality, mental flexibility,
experience, motivation, organisational culture and context play
their part in creative endeavour. It has sought to show how the
search for a single cause of creative output has given way to an
understanding that multiple factors and influences are involved,
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and how the concern with seeking creativity within individuals is
giving way to strategies that pay more attention to the community
of practice within which creativity emerges.
In terms of policy, this has meant that the search to assess those
with creative abilities has been supplemented with attempts to
teach everybody creative skills and employ management
strategies that recognise the need to nurture communities of
creative endeavour.
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2 Innovation
This section introduces radical and incremental innovation and
discusses disruptive innovation and open innovation.
2.1 Radical v evolutionary change

Michael Kirton differentiates between innovators, who do things
differently, and adaptors, who do things better (Kirton, 2003).
There are occasions when an individual or team is able to propose
a radical new way of doing things that appears to owe little to
conventional wisdom or past practice. Such discontinuous change
may justifiably be regarded as ‘risky’. Should it require major
investment to make it happen, many risk-averse management
teams may take quite a bit of convincing before backing such an
endeavour.
The ‘safer’ alternative is described by Kirton as adaption. For

example, the original Boeing 737 first flew in 1967. Its longevity
implies a really sound basic design, but masks the myriad, often
small incremental changes that have kept the aircraft competitive
over the years. In much management literature the term
continuous improvement is used to describe the accumulation
of small incremental changes that collectively amount to something
quite significant.
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Figure 1 An early Boeing 737 and a later version
The Boeing 737 is the best-selling commercial jet in history with

more than 7400 being delivered to customers around the world by
November 2012. To the untrained eye, a 737 looks pretty much the
way it did when it entered service in 1968, and yet the changing
environment for commercial jets (in terms of available technology,
required fuel economy, noise levels, pollution control, evermore
rapid turnaround at airports, passenger facilities and expectations)
means that, in nearly 40 years, few of the 350,000 plus
components involved in the aircraft will have survived unchanged.
This gradual process has resulted in so many improvements that a
‘Next Generation 737’ will significantly outperform the original
design in just about every area. The cumulative effect of the
incremental changes probably merit the term innovation, as would
the process by which all those changes came to pass.
The importance of evolutionary, incremental change, tends to be

underestimated in the West; most public and press attention has
historically been focused on ‘glamorous’ big breakthroughs. (This
has parallels with the attribution of organisational success to some
heroic figure, usually the Chief Executive or equivalent.) Yet radical
innovation is still the exception rather than the rule and cumulative
gains from incremental improvement are critically significant. It
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seems likely that the vast majority of innovations, both in terms of
impact and number, are of an incremental or evolutionary nature
(see Figure 2).
Figure 2 The iceberg of change
View description - Figure 2 The iceberg of change
Activity 7 Radical v incremental innovation

Think of some innovations you have been associated with. Were
they the result of radical events or did the experience result from
the accumulation of a series of more minor changes?
View discussion - Activity 7 Radical v incremental

innovation
2.2 Organisational implications

Once a product has reached the market, it typically goes through a
life cycle. Initially several rival designs compete to outperform each
other and key features are improved. Conventional wisdom has it
that gradually a dominant design emerges. Subsequently,
manufacturers devote their attention to improving the
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manufacturing process, for example, using machine- rather than
hand-blown bulbs for incandescent lights. Manufacturing costs are
usually substantially reduced; in the case of the electric light bulb,
for example, labour time has fallen from (originally) about an hour
to less than 20 seconds. At some point another radical innovation
comes to challenge the technology, e.g. fluorescent lights (Taylor,
1996) or, in an increasingly energy conscious-world, solid-state
lamps may crossover from the automotive industry and make both
these forms of domestic light obsolete. LED lights are making
increasing inroads in the lighting market (Cardwell, 2013).
Figure 3 A modern solid-state car light
Figure 4 A domestic lamp
Foster (1986) presents a graphic account of the impact of radical

and incremental innovations, shown in Figure 5 as a series of s-
curves.
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Figure 5 Radical innovation
View description - Figure 5 Radical innovation
With each radical innovation progress is initially slow, as research,

design and development efforts produce limited improvements in
technical performance; but subsequent development produces
rapid improvements in the performance (curve A). Then, another
radical innovation comes along that eventually replaces the
existing technology (curve B). For example, when steamships
replaced sailing ships, ballpoints replaced fountain pens, or
aluminium replaced steel beverage cans.
This distinction between radical and incremental change matters

because managers have to deal with both. In most cases,
depending on circumstances, dealing with either one alone is
unlikely to be sufficient.
Tushman and O'Reilly’s (1996) article on ambidextrous

organisations illustrates patterns of organisational evolution in
various industries that encompass long periods of incremental
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change alternated with discontinuous or radical change. Their
message is two-fold. First, to underscore the power of an
organisation’s culture; culture being the set of beliefs, attitudes and
behaviours that made the organisation in question ‘what it is
today’. Second, to notice that things change both incrementally
and radically, and that organisations need to respond to both.
Culture may help with the response to incremental changes, but
‘that which made the organisation what it is today’ may actively
prevent it becoming what it needs to be tomorrow. To borrow a
term from the article, managers need to be able to ‘juggle’.
2.3 Product, service and process?

A distinction is commonly made between product, service and
process innovations.
Product innovation refers to new products, such as the invention

of the mobile phone or the BAC/Sud-Aviation Concorde supersonic
airliner.
Product improvements often enhance performance and reduce

cost; an example would be a cheaper, lighter mobile phone with a
higher resolution screen or the continuously updated Boeing 737.
Service innovations include ATM (Automated Teller Machine)

banking and direct-to-the-customer insurance. Once upon a time,
insurance was largely sold face-to-face, either at the insurer’s
business premises or via agents at the purchaser’s home. Today it
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is considered normal for the entire process to be conducted either
online or by phone. The approach has, arguably, been improved
further with the introduction of price comparison and customer
review sites.
Service improvements include the introduction of flat beds in

first and business class by British Airways, Virgin and certain other
airlines. Airline check-in services have also been improved with the
option of online seat selection, check-in and print-it-yourself
boarding passes.
Process innovation refers to new processes used to provide the

product/service, either in a way others have yet to master, or in a
way that enables better performance or lower cost. A classic
example is the perfection of float glass pioneered by Sir Alastair
Pilkington and his colleagues.
Process improvements are often aimed at reducing costs and/or

improving performance. Volume production of motor-cars evolved
towards a production-line approach, but several manufacturers
experimented with cell structures where small teams were
responsible for entire cars. Modern factories now make use of
elements of both approaches.
Business models often entail a combination of product, service

and process; the elements themselves may be innovative, or just
their combination. Amazon has invested a great deal in designing
a system for buying books and other consumer goods. Their
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business model is innovative, if for no other reason than that many
of its components (low-cost computing, high-speed internet
access) were not widely available in many countries at the turn of
the millennium.
Activity 8 Examples of innovation

Try to find examples from your experience to illustrate each cell in
the following matrix. (Don’t be surprised if it is sometimes difficult
to decide which box to allocate each innovation to.)
Table 1
Pro Serv Proc Busi

duct ice ess ness
mod
el
Ra
di
cal
in
no
va
tio
n
In
cr
e
m
en
tal
im
pr
ov
e
m
en
t
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View discussion - Activity 8 Examples of innovation
2.4 Disruptive innovation

When companies have to name their most daunting competitor,
they often point to the leading incumbent in their market-place.
Thirty years ago, General Motors would point to Ford Motor Corp.
[. . .] Harvard Business School would point to Stanford Business
School.
These are all sustaining rivals, where companies are fighting for
existing customers in existing markets. These battles are
important, but companies also need to watch for disruptive
innovations incubating outside of the core market.
(Anthony and Christensen, 1995, p. 41)
The term ‘disruptive innovation’ was coined by Clayton

Christensen in a seminal article for the Harvard Business
Review (Bower and Christensen,1995). The premise is plausible:
large companies, significant players in their field, may be quite
good at innovation that fits within their existing paradigm, but are
often vulnerable in the face of radical changes that challenge their
worldview. (It would be unfair to give Christensen all the credit for
this concept. For example, something quite similar was advanced
by Michael Tushman and Philip Anderson (1986) in ‘Technological
discontinuities and organisational environments’, which introduced
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the concept of competence-enhancing developments and
competence-destroying breakthroughs.)
Box 2.1 Big company vulnerability
The list of potential candidates that support Bower and

Christensen’s contention is immense. IBM dominated the market
for mainframe computers in the 1960s and 70s and yet are now
viewed more as a ‘business solutions’ company than a computer
company. After the mainframe came the minicomputer, with Digital
Equipment the dominant player. They failed totally to adapt to the
era of the personal computer (PC), and were eventually subsumed
into Compaq, a very successful PC company, who were
themselves eventually merged into Hewlett Packard. More
recently, Hewlett Packard has experienced problems making
significant job cuts (Arthur, 2012).
Xerox made a name for itself with an innovative photocopying

process, but the company’s worldview comprised large, centralised
copiers. They recognised Kodak’s similar machines as
competition, but failed to appreciate the threat posed by much
smaller machines from Canon. Xerox’s policy of concentrating on
copy volume at the expense of photocopier machine placements
left it vulnerable to competitors like Canon. Xerox is now seen
more as a systems integrator (i.e. building semi-bespoke
‘solutions’ from largely off-the-shelf components – hardware or
software – for individual customers). Kodak made its name on the
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strength of the silver-halide photographic process. Polaroid was
recognised as being in a similar business, but the implications of
solid-state photo-sensors and digital cameras were not really
understood until it was too late. Kodak the organisation filed for
Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January 2012 (Smith and
Yousuf, 2012).
No one is really going to offer management any form of reliable

crystal ball, but there is merit in examining innovation history in an
attempt to avoid repeating the same mistakes. Many critical
failures arise because a management team has been to some
extent ‘blind-sided’ by developments that lie outside their previous
experience. Therein lies the peril of organisational orthodoxy; the
‘way we do things around here’ may be a key ingredient in current
success. However, it can lead to blinkered vision (concerning what
might be possible, or what might be just around the corner) – core
competencies are often inextricably linked with ‘core rigidities’
(Leonard-Barton, 1993; Tushman and O’Reilly, 1996).
When innovations do emerge from major players in an industry,

their value may not always be recognised. For example, Xerox’s
world-famous research facility in Palo Alto (PARC) was responsible
for many wonderful ideas, including the invention of the Ethernet
and also the WIMP (windows, icons, mouse, pull-downs) operating
system that still informs your personal computer today. How much
profit this finally accrued to Xerox is a separate question.
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Smaller, younger, and more agile organisations often have, as yet,
few traditions to define the ‘right way to do things’. The lack of
conventional wisdom often makes it easier for a smaller
organisation to create something radically new; in Christensen’s
terms, to produce disruptive innovations.
Large organisations sometimes set up skunkworks (groups of

innovators charged with developing a new product outside
standard systems) to get around the potentially inhibiting effect of
standard reporting procedures. These groups often report directly
to top management. The term ‘skunkworks’ was originally coined
to describe an initiative at Lockheed Aerospace where key staff
were deliberately isolated from the day-to-day constraints of
company bureaucracy in order to foster innovation (Rich and
Janos, 1994).
Activity 9 Current and potential competitors

Who does your organisation currently recognise as its major
competitor(s)?
You may like to consult your colleagues too. When most of us are
asked about our own organisation, it can be very difficult to ‘step
outside’ the conventional wisdom. Intelligent folk who have no
intimate knowledge of your sector or industry are often able to ask
all sorts of ‘silly’ questions, not least ‘Why does it have to be like
that?’.
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Try this: explain the organisation's activity, say who you think your
competitors might be, and ask other people who they might see as
your competitors, both current and potential.
View discussion - Activity 9 Current and potential

competitors
2.5 Open innovation

The term open innovation is generally credited to Henry
Chesbrough (2003). It was first advanced in the article ‘The Era of
Open Innovation’. Open innovation starts with the premise that ‘not
all the smart people work for us’ (Chesbrough, 2003). This
approach legitimates the acceptance of ideas that were not
invented here (NIH) within the organisation.
You may like to consult Chesbrough's (2003) influential article on

open innovation. Open innovation leads inevitably to ideas of
innovation networks where different aspects of the total process –
i.e. from generating ideas through to commercial realisation,
marketing and continuous development – are not just conducted
by different people but by different organisations, in an extension
of the more widely-known concept of supply chains.
Table 2 compares the principles of closed innovation with those of

open innovation.
Table 2
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Cl Op
o en
s inn
e ov
d ati
in on
n pri
o nci
v ple
at s
io
n
pr
in
ci
pl
e
s
Th Not
e all
sm the
art sma
pe rt
op peo
le ple
in wor
ou k
r for
fie us
ld so
w we
or mus
k t
for find
us. and
tap
into
the
kno
wle
dge
and
exp
ertis
e of
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brig
ht
indi
vidu
als
outs
ide
our
com
pan
y.
To Exte
pr rnal
ofi R&
t D
fro can
m crea
R te
& sign
D, ifica
we nt
m valu
ust e;
dis inter
co nal
ve R&
r, D is
de nee
ve ded
lo to
p clai
an m
d som
shi e
p port
it ion
ou of
rse that
lv valu
es. e.
If We
we don’
dis t
co hav
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ve e to
r it orig
ou inat
rse e
lv the
es, rese
we arch
wi in
ll orde
ge r to
t it prof
to it
m fro
ar m it.
ke
t
fir
st.
If Buil
we ding
ar a
e bett
th er
e busi
fir ness
st mod
to el is
co bett
m er
m than
er getti
cia ng
lis to
e the
an mar
in ket
no first.
va
tio
n,
we
wi
ll
wi
n.
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If If
we we
cr mak
eat e
e the
th best
e use
m of
ost inter
an nal
d and
be exte
st rnal
id idea
ea s,
s we
in will
th win.
e
in
du
str
y,
we
wi
ll
wi
n.
W We
e sho
sh uld
ou prof
ld it
co fro
ntr m
ol othe
ou rs’
r use
int of
ell our
ect IP,
ua and
l we
pr sho
op uld
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ert buy
y othe
(I rs’
P) IP
so whe
th nev
at er it
ou adv
r ance
co s
m our
pe own
tit busi
or ness
s mod
do el
n’t
pr
ofi
t
fro
m
ou
r
id
ea
s
(Source: Chesbrough, 2003).
Activity 10 Internal and external contributions

Think of a product, process or service, or a combination of these,
with which you are familiar. Consider what was involved in its
creation, and then draw up a list of those activities which involved
people that were not actually employed by the originating
organisation. Are there any elements of your existing
organisation’s activities that are handled in-house that might be
more effectively performed by someone else?
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Not very long ago, a key performance indicator for a large
organisation was the proportion of its turnover spent on R&D. In
some (relatively high-tech) fields this could approach and even
exceed 10 per cent. The number would be paraded in the annual
report, and city analysts might even be prepared to take this figure
as a proxy for an organisation’s ability to innovate. What this
indicator does is provide a measure of input (to the R&D process)
rather than provide any indication of the effectiveness achieved
with that money – and large corporate R&D labs can consume vast
amounts of money. Open innovation suggests this is no longer
necessarily a reliable indicator of innovation potential.
Previous attempts at gathering intellectual property (IP) often

involved buying the company involved to get access to the IP. This
was always dangerous as the IP may have been of transient
benefit and the process by which that IP emerged may not have
worked quite as well under the arrangements favoured by the
acquiring organisation. For example, the Daisy Wheel is important
in the story of the evolution of the typewriter. When Xerox acquired
Diablo Systems, the originators and market leader, they evidently
did not offer the key technical player a sufficiently tempting deal;
he promptly moved to the other side of Silicon Valley, founded a
company called Qume and proceeded to write his way around (his
own) patents. Very soon Qume became the dominant player in the
daisy wheel market. Successful open innovation obviously requires
a dynamic system and network that will endure.
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Activity 11 Listen
Audio content is not available in this format.
Dr Richard Mason
View transcript - Dr Richard Mason
Listen to the Big Pharma and Baby Bio audio clip (01.20mins).
This very short clip illustrates the concept of open innovation in the
context of the pharmaceutical industry. The clip suggests that the
shape of this sector now fully embodies the principles of open
innovation. It is also worth mentioning that some of the Baby Bios
were founded by ‘refugees’ from Big Pharma who failed to gain
acceptance for their ideas, quite possibly because they were too
disruptive.
The Big Pharma / Baby Bio axis represents the classic modern
illustration of open innovation. For many years, the major
pharmaceutical companies have maintained a massive R&D
capability, spending significant proportions of their turnover in the
search for the next generation of drugs. The process is long
(regulation necessarily demands it be so), expensive and uncertain
(the majority of drugs fall by the wayside). Also, the companies
involved are increasingly aware of the extent to which their own
internal efforts may be a victim of the corporate mindset (‘the way
we do things around here’).
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On the other hand, the emergence of the biotechnology sector has
signalled new products, new processes and almost a new
paradigm regarding therapeutic treatments. It seems to be the
nature of this emerging field that it is populated by small players
with expertise that may be very deep, albeit over a relatively
narrow domain. Though the cultures of the two sectors remain far
apart – there is scope for mutual interdependence. The baby
biotechnology companies have potentially promising ideas for new
product(s) that have been worked up to point where some degree
of feasibility has been demonstrated. These ideas may be hugely
radical for the more traditional pharmaceutical companies, or
concern areas that had earlier been discarded as ‘unpromising’.
However, once they have acquired the new approach, big

pharmaceutical companies have other skills that come into play
including negotiating the regulatory process, scaling up to
commercial volumes and marketing to the medical profession. The
number of possible permutations of cooperation between the
players are legion, with a mass of complex funding and licensing
agreements the frequent result. Yet, it does seem to be working, as
both parties acknowledge there is much to be gained from working
together.
Activity 12 The not-invented-here syndrome

Can you think of a potentially useful idea that was effectively
blocked because it came from the wrong place?
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View discussion - Activity 12 The not-invented-here
syndrome
2.6 Review
This section has introduced the topic of innovation via a
consideration of radical innovation and incremental improvements;
product, process and service innovations, and changing business
models.
It has discussed disruptive versus sustaining innovation (after

Christensen) and open versus closed innovation (after
Chesbrough). Both can be seen as timely responses to the
increasingly networked nature of innovative enterprise and both
are influential. Christensen's work on disruptive innovation (Bower
and Christensen, 1995) has highlighted how important it is for
organisations to make a point of watching out for disruptive
technologies that could take their market share and how easily
large companies can be blinkered into concentrating on what they
do well. Chesbrough (2003) has shown how often innovation
involves working with partners outside the organisation.
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Conclusion
This free course provided an introduction to studying Business and
Management. It took you through a series of exercises designed to
develop your approach to study and learning at a distance and
helped to improve your confidence as an independent learner.
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References
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technologies: catching the wave’, Harvard Business Review,
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Claxton, G. (2005) The Wayward Mind, London, Little Brown.
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in Henry, J. (ed) Creative Management and Development,
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Psychology of Discovery and Invention, New York,
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innovation’, European Journal of Work and Organizational
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in Henry, J. and Walker, D., Managing Innovation, London,
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New York, Summit Books.
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Godbout, A.J. (2000) Managing Core Competencies: the
impact of knowledge management on human resources
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Creativity and its Cultivation, New York, Wiley.
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London, Sage.
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Design, pp. 18–25.
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consequences’, Chapter 8 in Henry, J. and Walker, D. (eds)
Managing Innovation, London, Sage.
Kirton, M. (2003) Adaption-Innovation in the Context of

Diversity and Change, Hove, Routledge.
Kirton, M. J. (1989) Adaptors and Innovators: Styles of

Creativity and Problem-Solving, London, Routledge, also 2nd
edn, 1994.
Mayer, M. (2006) ‘License to pursue dreams’, Stanford

Technology Ventures Program, recorded May 17, 2006,
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http://ecorner.stanford.edu/author/marissa_mayer, Stanford School
of Engineering. (Accessed 20 June 2012).
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(eds) Creativity, Innovation and Change Media Book, Milton
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Westley, F. and Mintzberg, H. (1991) ‘Visionary leadership and

strategic management’, Chapter 4 in Henry, J. and Walker, D.,
Managing Innovation, London, Sage.
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Further reading
Amabile, T. (2006) ‘How to kill creativity’, in Henry, J. Creative
Management and Development 3rd edn, London, Sage.
Anthony, S.D. and Christensen, C.M. (2005) ‘How can you benefit
by predicting change’, Financial Executive, vol. 21, no. 2, pp.
36–41.
Bower, J. L. and Christensen, C. M. (1995) ‘Disruptive

technologies: catching the wave’, Harvard Business Review,
vol. 73, no. 1, pp. 43–53.
Brown, B. and Anthony, S. (2011) ‘How P&G Tripled Its Innovation

success rate’, Harvard Business Review, vol. 89, no. 6, pp. 64–
72.
Catmull, E. (2008) ‘How Pixar fosters collective creativity’,

Harvard Business Review, vol. 86, no. 9, pp. 64–72.
Chesbrough, H. (2003) ‘The era of open innovation’, Sloan

Management Review, vol. 44, no. 3 (Spring), pp. 35–41.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2006) ‘A systems perspective on creativity’,

Chapter 1 in Henry, J. Creative Management and
Development , 3rd edn, London, Sage, pp. 3–17.
Henry, J. (2006) Creative Management and Development,

3rd edn, London, Sage.
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Henry, J. (2001) Creativity and Perception in Management,
London, Sage.
Jaruzelski, B., Loehr, J. and Holman, R. (2011) ‘The Global

Innovation 1000: Why Culture Is Key’, Business+Strategy, Issue
65 [Online]. http://www.strategy-business.com/article/11404?
gko=dfbfc. (Accessed 2 April 2013).
Kotter, J. P. (2012) ‘ACCELERATE!’, Harvard Business Review,

vol. 90, no. 11, 45–58.
Mayle, D. (2006) Managing Innovation and Change, 3rd edn,

London, Sage.
Miles, R.E., Snow, C.S., and Miles, G. (2007) ‘The ideology of

innovation’, Strategic Organization, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 423–4.
Norton, R. (2011) ‘The thought leader Interview: Henry

Chesbrough’, Strategy+business, Issue 63, 24 May [Online].
http://www.strategy-business.com/article/11210?gko=af24f.
(Accessed 3 April 2013).
Pascale, R. (2006) ‘Surfing the edge of chaos’, Chapter 18 in

Henry, J. Creative Management and Development , 3rd edn,
London, Sage, pp. 235–250.
Sinfield, J. V., Calder, E., McConnell, B., and Colson, S. (2012)

‘How to identify new business models’, MIT Sloan Management
Review, vol. 53, no. 2, pp. 85–90.
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Tidd, J. and Hull, F.M. (2006) ‘Managing service innovation: The
need for selectivity rather than best practice’, New Technology,
Work and Employment, vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 139–61.
Tushman, M. L., Smith, W. K., and Binns, A. (2011) ‘The

ambidextrous CEO’, Harvard Business Review, vol. 89, no. 6,
pp. 74–80.
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Acknowledgements
The material in this OpenLearn course was written by Jane Henry.
Section 2 was written by David Mayle with contributions from Jane
Henry.
Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms
and conditions) the content is made available for use under the
terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
ShareAlike 4.0 Licence.
The material acknowledged below is Proprietary and used under

licence (not subject to Creative Commons Licence). Grateful
acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission
to reproduce material in this free course:
Cover image Matthias Ripp in Flickr made available under

Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Licence.
Text
Section 1 was written by Jane Henry. It draws on Henry 1994.
Mayer, M. 2006 Creativity at Google. Stanford University

Enterprise Ventures.
Figures
Figure 1: (c) Boeing Images
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Figure 2: Open University.
Figure 3: (c) Drive Images/Alamy.
Figure 4: (c) Rami Aapasuo/Alamy.
Figure 5: Foster, R.N. (1986) Innovation: The Attacker’s

Advantage, New York, Summit Books.
Illustrations
Creative scientists cartoon: Open University.
Tables
Table 2: Chesbrough, H. (2003) ‘The era of open innovation’,

Sloan Management Review, vol. 44, no. 3 (Spring), pp. 35–41.
Media
Mayer, M. 2006 Creativity at Google. Stanford University

Enterprise Ventures.
Baby Bio audio: Open University
Every effort has been made to contact copyright owners. If any

have been inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be pleased
to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.
Don't miss out:
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Activity 1 Source of ideas

Discussion
In business and management, some of the most influential
theories about creativity are the belief that some individuals are
creative and others are not, the importance of thinking ‘outside the
box’, the role of luck, having an open culture and removing blocks
to innovation. As we shall see, research suggests that experience,
networking and collaboration are equally critical factors in creative
endeavour.
Back to Session 1 Activity 1
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Activity 2 Creative people

Discussion
Creative people are often seen as independent, single-minded and
determined in their main interest, verging on the obsessional in
some cases, and sometimes as difficult people to work with. They
are often flexible as to how they set about things, making good use
of the people and resources available to them. The engineer
developing Post-it® pads, for example, made a machine in his
garage at home to adhere the not very sticky glue to squares of
paper when told by superiors this was not possible.
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Activity 3 Creative projects

Discussion
What differences do you notice between these two situations? Do
they apply to other successful and unsuccessful projects with
which you have been involved? Are there particular ingredients
that you associate with creative projects?
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Activity 4 Creative organisations

Discussion
Research suggests that creative organisations often share certain
characteristics including an open culture, empowered staff, flexible
structure, integrated procedures, idea development systems and
good external partnerships. However, most of this research was
done on Western organisations.
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Activity 5 Creative and successful

activity
Discussion
Often you will find that you were interested in the areas you were
working on, had experience in the field, and that the culture
afforded you some flexibility in how you worked on the project.
Other factors including management support, the opportunity to
network, sufficient time and resources may also be important.
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Activity 6 Applying ideas

Discussion
For example: what do you think helps creativity emerge in
organisations in your part of the world? Also, how adequately does
this section address creativity in your sector and organisation?
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Activity 7 Radical v incremental

innovation
Discussion
Innovation can be defined asthe successful exploitation of new
ideas that implicitly allow the continuous accumulation of
incremental changes alongside major, potentially discontinuous
change.
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Activity 8 Examples of innovation

Discussion
The purpose of this activity is primarily to cement your appreciation
of what is encompassed by ‘innovation’, even though it doesn’t
really fit into neat categories – as different ways of thinking about it
can help. The real-world conclusion remains; innovation is much
easier to recognise and categorise in hindsight, and its design,
implementation and refinement is often a remarkably messy
business.
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Activity 9 Current and potential

competitors
Discussion
Seeing disruptive innovation coming is never easy. Many
organisations use the concept of the enabling technology advance
(ETA) – (i.e. something that we don’t currently know how to do) in
their processes for evaluating potential new products. The key
question in this regard is usually ‘how many ETAs are required for
this thing to fly?’. The more ETAs, the higher the perceived risk.
This concept can also be applied to scanning the environment for
competition; given a particular ETA that you might be able to
imagine (for example, batteries that held twice as much power for
twice as long), how would that change the ‘industry’ you are in?
What ETAs would radically change the nature of your

organisation’s business? (Again, you may like to canvass opinion
from others.)
Responses are likely to be industry specific, but the ability to

understand that such things might come to pass generally help an
organisation deal with them if they do.
section-0
Activity 12 The not-invented-here

syndrome
Discussion
Sometimes this syndrome comes into play due to opposition to
doing things the way the competition does it – at other times, the
rivalry can be between divisions of the same organisation.
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Figure 2 The iceberg of change

Description
This diagram explores innovation, using the concept of the iceberg of change. It is
represented as a pyramid, divided in two by a horizontal line just below the tip. The
large lower portion (‘below the waterline’) is labelled evolutionary changes – lots of
detailed changes, improvements, new generations, and incremental innovations. The
small, ‘visible’ upper area is labelled revolutionary changes – a few landmark
innovations and some radical innovations.
Back to Session 2 Figure 2
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Figure 5 Radical innovation

Description
This diagram explores the concept of radical innovation.
It is in the form of a line graph with an x, or horizontal, axis and a y,

or vertical, axis.
The x axis is labelled time/effort and the y axis is labelled technical

performance.
Two approximately s-shaped curves are drawn on the graph.
The first is labelled ‘established technology A’ and rises from near

the point of origin at first in a shallow arc, then more steeply, before
flattening again.
Where it begins to level off, the second curve starts, labelled new
technology B. This traces the same shape as the first curve.
The area of their entanglement is labelled technological

competition.
Back to Session 2 Figure 5
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Transcript
MARISSA MAYER: Ideas come from everywhere. A lot of people
will say ‘well, how do you get the idea for Google Maps, or the
Google toolbar? Where did it come from?’ And the answer is, in an
environment like Google, ever since the company was small, even
until now when it’s really large, we expect everyone to have ideas.
Our engineers come up with ideas, some things come top-down,
some ideas come from our users. And it’s interesting, because
when you look at the myriad of different products Google has
released, we actually have examples of almost all of the above.
Google Maps, the idea for that actually came from an acquisition.
We found these four engineers in Australia who were just
amazingly good at building mapping interfaces and combined them
with a bunch of JavaScript experts at Google. And said ‘OK, let’s
take their ideas on how you navigate maps, place them on the web
using JavaScript, and ultimately build this really great application’.
So ideas really do come from all kinds of different
inspirations.There’s other things that we do that are very strategic
and top-down. When we looked at, say, something like Google
Desktop we thought, for a lot of strategic reasons, we need to have
a deeper, more meaningful relationship with our users. What
functionality could we provide them that they’ll want to have on
their computer and that will allow them to access Google really
section-0
easily all the time? So sometimes it comes from an overall strategy
or strategic concerns. Sometimes it comes from an acquisition that
we’re doing. And sometimes it just comes from someone wanting
to solve a problem that they feel we could solve better. Google
News is a great example of that. There was an engineer named
Krishna Bharat, and he was a news junkie. And after September
11, he found himself really consumed with reading news and he
found he had the same pattern every day. He would go and visit
his favourite 15 news sites, and he would try and find the same
story about anthrax all throughout the different stories to get all the
different perspectives and get the maximum amount of
information.And then after he did this for about month, he thought
well, this is kind of silly. Because he’s like, ‘I work at a search
engine, I actually could probably crawl all this data’. And he’s
actually an expert in artificial intelligence, so he thought, ‘I could
cluster things’. So he built this little script that crawled his favourite
15 news sites, gathered up all the news, and then clustered it so it
would actually group the stories he wanted to read together. And
he built this little tool for himself to read news more efficiently, used
it for a while, thought it was pretty useful. Mailed it out to the
company, and said ‘hey, I use this to read my news, maybe some
of you would find it useful’. And a bunch of us saw that, and
immediately said this isn’t just an internal tool to help Krishna read
news better. This is something that could help a lot of people read
news better. And we should take it up to the next level so it’s not
just a plain white page with lots of blue links, but actually looks
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more like a news experience, and make it available to our users.
So there’s a myriad of different places that ideas come from. And
what you really want to do is set up a system where people can
feel like they can contribute to those ideas. And that the best ideas
rise to the top in sort of a Darwinistic way by proof of concept, a
powerful prototype, by demonstrating it’s going to fill a really
important user need, and so on and so forth.
Back to Session 1 MediaContent 1
section-0

Transcript
MARISSA MAYER: Share everything you can. And I think that one
thing that’s been really fundamental about Google is we have an
incredibly open culture. Until we went public, in fact until about
three months before, our VP of sales got up every day and told us
the revenue numbers for the company. And it’s amazing when you
take a lot of smart, motivated people and give them access to a
huge amount of information, how well-informed their choices are
about what they want to work on and what needs to be done. And I
think that’s been really amazing, because it’s helped us manage
the organisation in a way that’s really flat. So you may have heard
things like, GE has a 1:12 rule, which means for every 12
employees, there’s one manager. We’ve had a very flat
organisation. So we have situations where we’ll have 40 or 60
employees with one manager. And the idea there is we want
people, if they can prioritise their own time and manage
themselves really well, because they have access to a really broad
array of information, that works well. And it gives them the
empowerment and feeling of independence that they need to be
really successful. Share everything you can also applies to another
philosophy that I think is rather interesting, which really struck me
from a book that was written by Tom Kelley called The Art of
Innovation. And he has a concept there around taking credit. And
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he’ll say that, one thing that happens sometimes is that when
people come up with an idea, they’ll think that they have a really
good idea. And they throw it out there to the organisation, and then
they follow it around, because they want to make sure that
everyone knows it’s their idea. And he said that there will be
people who can become so consumed with ‘does everyone know
this is my idea?’ that they ultimately stop producing new ideas. And
he said that he made this observation that at IDEO, he saw this
phenomenon where people who just put all their energy into
coming up with the most ideas possible and not really worrying
about where those ideas flowed inside the organisation, or how
they got used, or whether or not they got credit, ultimately ended
up flourishing more, because they became known as such
fountains of ideas that someone would say, ‘Well, where did this
idea come from?’ And they’d say, ‘Well, I don’t know. Maybe it was
Joe. Joe always has ideas’. It was this very interesting concept of
not being territorial to the point of actually hindering yourself. And I
think it was a really interesting observation. It’s something that we
do a pretty good job practising at Google. Which is not to say that
people don’t get credit for the ideas that they come up with. But I
think that people are focused more on the users and on innovation
and less on how they themselves are fulfilled. And as a result, they
actually have a more fulfilling experience and are known for their
achievements more.
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Dr Richard Mason
Transcript
Dr Richard Mason is senior Vice-President of business
development at Cambridge Antibody Technology, a company
specialising in monoclonal antibody therapeutics. Richard Mason:
Big Pharma is spending an increasingly large amount of money
and there are many, many graphs to show this, increasing
amounts of money being spent on R&D. I don’t have the exact
numbers to hand, but actually the number of new product
approvals is not keeping pace. It’s not going up in proportion to the
spend on R&D. So the whole phenomenon is probably
simplistically answered by saying that the explosion in biomedical
science is such that no one company can have it all in house,
regardless of how much money they spend. The nature of
innovation in this biomedical game is so unpredictable, so from the
outside it would appear, so random; happening all over the world
and in small institutions, in universities, and companies, whatever.
That to think that you’ll get the right innovation you’re after through
your own labs is probably something that is more difficult today.
Really, organisations such as the large pharmaceutical companies
have woken up to this and are realising that they cannot hope to
have the next innovation in whatever particular field they’re looking
at happening in their own lab, just because they’re spending five
hundred million on a particular oncology research campaign
section-0
doesn’t mean the next way of approaching that particular cancer
they’re interested is going to happen in their labs. It may happen in
a laboratory in Hungary, or it may happen in a consortium of
researchers around the world. That is just the nature of science.
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Creativity and innovation

Creativity and innovation

Page 2 of 81 6th November 2018

About this free course

This free course is an adapted extract from the Open University

This version of the content may include video, images and

You can experience this free course as it was originally designed

Copyright © 2016 The Open University

Unless otherwise stated, this resource is released under the terms

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We believe the primary barrier to accessing high-quality

This is because the learning experience will always be the same

When using the content you must attribute us (The Open

The Acknowledgements section is used to list, amongst other

The Acknowledgements section is also used to bring to your

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We have also identified as Proprietary other material included in

Unauthorised use of any of the content may constitute a breach of

We reserve the right to alter, amend or bring to an end any terms

All rights falling outside the terms of the Creative Commons

Head of Intellectual Property, The Open University

Page 5 of 81 6th November 2018

 1.2 Creative competence

 1.3 Creative culture

 1.4 Creative environment

 2.2 Organisational implications

 2.3 Product, service and process?

 2.4 Disruptive innovation

 2.5 Open innovation

Page 6 of 81 6th November 2018

This OpenLearn course is an adapted extract from the Open

Page 7 of 81 6th November 2018

 understand the roles of skill, experience, motivation

Page 8 of 81 6th November 2018

1.1 Creative people

View discussion - Activity 1 Source of ideas

To be in a position to draw out creativity in the workforce, you need

Traditionally creativity was seen as unfathomable and, like

Page 9 of 81 6th November 2018

In the 1950s creativity was often thought to be an ability

Page 10 of 81 6th November 2018

Early psychological research on creativity focused a lot of effort on

Some people assume that creativity is a trait possessed by the

1.2 Creative competence

Page 12 of 81 6th November 2018

Page 13 of 81 6th November 2018

1.3 Creative culture

Page 15 of 81 6th November 2018

View discussion - Activity 3 Creative projects

Activity 4 Creative organisations

View discussion - Activity 4 Creative organisations

Page 16 of 81 6th November 2018

Many innovative companies have policies that allow research

Watch: How successful organisations

Video content is not available in this format.

Marissa Mayer - Part 1

View transcript - Marissa Mayer - Part 1

Video content is not available in this format.

Marissa Mayer - Part 2

View transcript - Marissa Mayer - Part 2

These two videos are from a podcast by Marissa Mayer for

1.3.2 Organisational culture

It is a psychological truism that people rarely take risks in thinking