Fostering Creativity

Innovation is universally recognized as key components of first world economies that is vital for continued prosperity. Innovation is driven by the generation of effective novelty - in other words, creativity. However, both in higher education and also in business and industry, insufficient effort is being made to encourage and develop creativity, with negative consequences for innovation. This is partly due to inadequate understanding of what creativity is and how it can be fostered. This book draws on complementary views of creativity and innovation - as a business process and as a social-psychological model - to create a more detailed and more highly differentiated model which is capable of serving as a practical foundation for diagnosing, analyzing, optimizing and fostering creativity and innovation in a variety of organizational settings. It is built around a large number of case studies and down-to-earth examples, and offers many concrete suggestions for fostering what the authors call 'functional' creativity.