Enterprise Creativity and Innovation

Innovation has become increasingly central to corporate advancement. It underpins new ways of working, new targeted strategies, the creation of new products and lines of business. However, unlike most other commercial activities, for innovation there appear to be no dependable templates, rules, processes or even measures of success. In a sense, each act of innovation is a unique feat that can neither be reliably predicted nor guaranteed as repeatable. Yet in spite of this certain organisations are somehow able to devise and realise great ideas time after time. This raises the question: is there a common thread, an unspoken schema or set of rules-of-thumb that some companies instinctively develop to make inventive outcomes more likely? Using information synthesised from 73 managers of 62 successful technology-reliant businesses this book explores factors involved in shaping an organisation's potential for innovation. The framework it provides is directly applicable to enterprise leaders seeking to better understand - and more deftly manage - the practices and cultures that help transform human creativity into new products, services and approaches to doing business.