Innovation

What are creativity and innovation? There are several definitions. Often they are not distinguished. They are simply seen as part of the process by which knowledge is developed and transformed into business value. This is a perfectly acceptable definition but like the failure to differentiate between information and knowledge - it is not very useful for practical purposes.

A more useful approach is to view creativity as the process of generating ideas whilst seeing innovation as the sifting, refining and more critically - the implementation of those ideas. Creativity is about divergent thinking. Innovation is about convergent thinking. Creativity is about the generation of ideas and innovation is about putting them into action.

Creativity - coming up with new ideas - is not enough. We need innovation - the taking of new or existing ideas and putting them into action. This requires the application of existing knowledge and the development of appropriate new knowledge. Coming up with new ideas is the food of innovation. Innovation is a far tougher proposition than creativity.