Creativity versus Innovation

There's a lot of confusion today around creativity and innovation. Some people claim that creativity and innovation can't be measured. Others link them to performance, but not totally... In a world that changes every moment, it's important that companies figure out the difference between creativity and innovation. 

Creativity vs. Innovation

The main difference between creativity and innovation is the focus. Creativity is about unleashing the potential of the mind to conceive new ideas. Those concepts could manifest themselves in any number of ways, but most often, they become something we can see, hear, smell, touch, or taste.

Creativity is subjective, making it hard to measure. 

Innovation, on the other hand, is completely measurable. Innovation is about introducing change into relatively stable systems. It's also concerned with the work required to make an idea viable. By identifying an unrecognized and unmet need, an organization can use innovation to apply its creative resources to design an appropriate solution and reap a return on its investment. 

Organizations often chase creativity, but what they really need to pursue is innovation.

Managing Innovation

Because creativity and innovation are often confused, it's long been assumed that you cannot force innovation within an organization. It's either there or not. Not true, you can always develop innovation. But to do it is necessary to understand it as a system of overlapping spaces, rather than a set of process steps to move through. Those spaces are: inspiration, during which the problem that motivates solution-finding is identified; ideation, the process of generating and developing ideas; and implementation,the activities that enable a creative idea to move from the drawing board to the marketplace.

Leaders are critical to the success of any group's long-term innovation strategy. It's their job to ensure that innovation is consistently pursued and their employees don't settle into business as usual. They set the tone for what is, and is not, possible in the business through their attention and action.

Creativity is important in today's business world, but it's really only the beginning. Organizations need to foster creativity driving business results by running creative ideas through innovative processes. Creativity is the beginning, innovation will make the difference.