Nickname: Mass

Review: My understanding about creativity and innovation within a corporation is that they are totally different. Creativity is to create something fron scrach. On the hand, innovation has to do with organizing or reorganizing processes by colleagues.

Date reviewed: May 16, 2006 10:06 AM

Nickname: dukestory

Review: I believe the key problem with the management of today is the fact that most of them are trained on process, live by process, and measure by the processes. Innovation is usually something that is outside of the normal processes used within an organization. In today's world many "job experienced" MBAs come from the ranks of the "process" people. So when they receive their MBAs and go back to work they are greater slaves to process. Innovation (in most cases) is the antithesis of process and it will always score low among these kinds of business leaders. They will talk innovation but when the rubber hits the highway they will always go back to standard operational processes--until they are forced to change.

Date reviewed: Apr 28, 2006 7:20 PM

Nickname: mw

Review: I believe startups have the most incentive to be creative in products/services because they need to create identity, but I think established companies need to be more open to creative rethinking on processes. I see a lot of inefficient and broken processes from small to mid-sized companies that have survived 5 or more years. Those inefficiencies I believe hold up the existing political structure for better or worse. So the big question is does a company value productivity or value the political status quo? Or how can you change without threatening those who need power?

Date reviewed: Apr 12, 2006 12:55 AM

Nickname: oyck

Review: I agree that when corporations focus more on short term gain than long term profit, creativity and innovation become less critical in judging today's great leadership. The problem we are facing here might be how HR could play an integral role to helping businesses gain competitive advantages through the selecion, training, and retaining process.

Date reviewed: Mar 28, 2006 3:13 AM

Nickname: rp

Review: Seems perhaps that the creativity and innovation talked about in this article are being misunderstood by some of the readership. This isn't about designers or brand managers; rather, it is speaking to managers from all parts of the business and their willingness to entertain (or better yet, initiate) discussions and ideas outside the confines of "everyday" routine and process. To that end, this type of research is vital at the very least to spark these conversations within anyone's organization.

Date reviewed: Mar 21, 2006 9:05 PM

Nickname: RS

Review: First of all, creativity and innovation are not synonymous, so that's one reason this information is suspect. Secondly, with few exceptions, HR people do not participate in setting the agenda for their companies. They are not leaders. They are usually implementers. This is dreadfully unimportant information because of the above.

Date reviewed: Mar 5, 2006 8:58 PM

Nickname: tc

Review: I am the primary creative in my organization. People envy, fear, despise, snarl at, begrudge, or otherwise try to discredit my efforts. But the results always bear me out. I don't understand "un-innovative" people just as much as they don't understand me. They are two separate processes. Yet, their perception of my work borders on the ridiculous. It takes just as much education, discipline, drudgery, and talented effort on my end as in any other demanding profession. The only difference is that I - gasp - have a soul.

Date reviewed: Mar 1, 2006 8:20 PM

Nickname: chris

Review: For responses to "innovation" questions to be meaningful, we need much more clarity about innovation and the traits that lead to its successful management. For example, you should be encouraged by the high ranking of "ability to motivate a team" in the survey. Collaboration and alignment of a team to achieve something larger than any individual is a strong trait of innovation leaders. It is very different than the creative rebel model trait so often cited and far more effective.

Date reviewed: Feb 22, 2006 1:03 AM

Nickname: chris

Review: Interesting article. We should be careful of interpreting the results in the standard, "creativity isn't valued because its risky and creative people are different." Innovation is hard work, needs discipline, and few companies have any sort of business process that allows them to manage it. Yes, innovation is a manageable process -- it just doesn't look like how we manage general business operations. Innovation is a tremendously broad topic and it is not suprising it does not score high in the survey. Only a small proportion of business leaders should be working on innovation if we think of innovation as creating something new that becomes widely adopted and drives disproportionate growth. 90% of what a company works on keeps the existing business running and growing at a 5-7% clip. And that's good. If we mean innovation to simply be looking at every problem no matter how small in a creative way, then I don't think it would be meaningful to measure.

Date reviewed: Feb 22, 2006 12:59 AM

Nickname: Ben H.

Review: It's kind of sad that in North America, integrity and ethics is only 7% as opposed to China's 15%. And people wonder why some larger corporations are failing.

Date reviewed: Feb 21, 2006 7:07 PM