Creative Strategy: Reconnecting Business and Innovation

Creative Strategy: Reconnecting Business and Innovation

by Chris Bilton, Stephen Cummings
Released April 2010
Publisher(s): Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN: 9781405180191

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Book description

People tend to think of creativity and strategy as opposites. This book argues that they are far more similar than we might expect. More than this, actively aligning creative and strategic thinking in any enterprise can enable more effective innovation, entrepreneurship, leadership and organizing for the future.

By considering strategy as a creative process (and vice versa), the authors define 'creative strategy' as a mindset which switches between opposing processes and characteristics, and which drives every aspect of the business. The authors draw experiences and cases from across this false divide - from the music industry, sports, fashion, Shakespearean theatre companies, creative and media organizations and dance, as well as what we might regard as more mundane providers of mainstream products and services - to uncover the creative connections behind successful strategy.

"Creative Strategy is a talisman for those looking to take a new path"

Matt Hardisty, Strategy Director, Mother Advertising

"It has been said that business is a hybrid of dancing and calculation - the former incorporating the creative within a firm, the latter the strategic. Bilton and Cummings show how these apparently contradictory processes can be integrated. Their insights about how firms can 'create to strategize' and 'strategize to create' are informative for managers and management scholars alike."

Jay Barney, Professor and Chase Chair of Strategic Management, Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University

"In today's world, new thinking - creativity - is required to tackle long-standing problems or address new opportunities. The trouble is few organizations understand how to foster and apply creativity, at least in any consistent manner. This book provides new insights into just how that can be done. It moves creativity from being just the occasional, and fortuitous, flash of inspiration, to being an embedded feature of the way the organization is run."

Sir George Cox, Author of the Cox Review of Creativity in Business for HM Govt., Past Chair of the Design Council

Table of contents

  1. Cover Page
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. Acknowledgements
  7. PROLOGUE: WHEN STRATEGY MEETS CREATIVITY
  8. CHAPTER 1: False Separations and Creative Connections
    1. Overcoming Five False Separations
    2. Five Creative Connections for the Future
  9. CHAPTER 2: What is Creativity?
    1. 1. Creativity's Content: Innovation + Purpose to Add More than Individual Value
    2. 2. Creativity's Outcomes: Transforming Contexts and Redefining Problems
    3. 3. The Creativity Process: Tolerating Contradictions Enables Bisociative Thinking
  10. CHAPTER 3: Uncreative Strategy
    1. 1. Creativity Can't be Planned Directly …
    2. 2. Creativity Requires Bisociation, Going Between Things, Seeing from the Edges, both/and Rather than either/or Thinking and Can be Thwarted by Rigid Classification …
    3. 3. Creativity Requires Plurality …
    4. 4. Creativity Requires Mistakes and Accidents, or at Least an Acceptance of Their Value …
    5. 5. Creativity Requires Slack …
    6. 6. Creativity Correlates Strongly with an Expectation that one Should be Creative …
    7. 7. Imagery is More Likely to Stimulate Creative Thinking than Language on Its Own …
    8. 8. Creativity is Often Spurred on by a Competitive Tension …
    9. 9. Strategy is Often Associated with Heroic Leadership by Individuals …
    10. 10. Strategic Management, Like Management in General, has been More Enamoured with Innovation as Opposed to Creativity …
  11. CHAPTER 4: A More Creative View of Strategy
    1. Strategy's Content: Plans, Patterns, Positions, Ploys, Perspectives
    2. The Process of Strategizing: Designing, Planning, Positioning, Learning, Emerging, Entrepreneuring, and so on
    3. The Outcomes of Becoming Strategized: Orientation, Animation, Integration
  12. CHAPTER 5: Creating and Discovering a Creative Strategy Process
  13. THE ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY PROLOGUE
  14. PART I: THE INNOVATIVE ACT: DISCOVERY AND CREATION
    1. CHAPTER 6: The Bisociations of Strategic Innovation
      1. The Importance of Being Innovative
      2. Defining Strategic Innovation: Discovering and Creating the New and Original
    2. CHAPTER 7: The Six Outcomes of Strategic Innovation
      1. The 1st Degree of Strategic Innovation: Value Innovation
      2. The 2nd Degree of Strategic Innovation: Cost Innovation
      3. The 3rd Degree of Strategic Innovation: Volume Innovation
      4. The 4th Degree of Strategic Innovation: Market Innovation
      5. The 5th Degree of Strategic Innovation: Boundary Innovation
      6. The 6th Degree of Strategic Innovation: Learning Innovation
    3. CHAPTER 8: Sparking Strategic Innovation
      1. Diversity
      2. Naivety
      3. Curiosity
      4. Urgency
      5. Beyond Best Practice
    4. THE ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY ACT I: THE INNOVATIVE ACT
  15. PART II: STRATEGIC ENTREPRENEURSHIP: DILETTANTES AND DILIGENCE
    1. CHAPTER 9: The Five Angles of Strategic Entrepreneurship
      1. The Force of a Creative Strategy
      2. The Five Angles of Strategic Entrepreneurship
      3. 1st Angle of Entrepreneurship
      4. 2nd Angle of Entrepreneurship
      5. 3rd Angle of Entrepreneurship
      6. 4th Angle of Entrepreneurship
      7. 5th Angle of Entrepreneurship
      8. The Cycle of Strategic Entrepreneurship
      9. From Cycle to Interconnected Star
      10. The Strategic Entrepreneur as a ¡Diligent Dilettante'
    2. CHAPTER 10: Three Angular Journeys of Entrepreneurship
      1. About a Writer-Entrepreneur
      2. 12000 Miles to Market
      3. Deciphering Codemasters
    3. THE ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY ACT II: THE ENTREPRENEURIAL ACT
  16. PART III: STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP: ENVISIONING AND INTERACTING
    1. CHAPTER 11: Leading from the Middle
      1. All Roads Lead to the Middle
      2. Route 1: The Rise of the ‘Knowledge Age’
      3. Route 2: Working with the ‘Wisdom of Crowds’
      4. Route 3: Rediscovering the Importance of the ‘Gut Instinct’ and Intuition
      5. Route 4: Tipping Rather than Charging
      6. Route 5: The Power of Networks and Relationships
      7. Route 6: From IQ to Many Qs
      8. Route 7: ‘Post-Heroic’ Leadership
      9. Route 8: Strategy from the Middle
    2. CHAPTER 12: The Strategic Leadership Keypad
      1. Switching Positions: Introducing the Strategic Leadership Keypad
    3. CHAPTER 13: Shifting Keys: Leadership as Envisioning and Interacting
      1. 1. Leading Ugly: Billy Beane
      2. 2. Leading Without ‘Leadership’: Arsène Wenger
      3. 3. Leading by Whispering: Bill Campbell
      4. 4. Reconnecting Leadership: Saatchi & Saatchi
      5. From Strategic Leadership to Strategic Organization…
    4. THE ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY ACT III: THE LEADERSHIP ACT
  17. PART IV: STRATEGIC ORGANIZATION: FOCUSSING AND LOOSENING
    1. CHAPTER 14: From Principles of Excellent Organizations to Organizational ‘Virtues’
      1. SLT
      2. Icarus, Aristotle and the Virtue of Virtues
    2. CHAPTER 15: Seven Virtues of Strategic Organization
      1. The 1st Virtue: Integrating and Fragmenting: Adaptive Culture
      2. The 2nd Virtue: Democracy and Dictatorship: Meritocratic Politics
      3. The 3rd Virtue: Naive and Expert: Deutero-Learning
      4. The 4th Virtue: Subjective and Disembodied: Development from Everywhere
      5. The 5th Virtue Distracted and Blinkered: A Multi-Tasking Orientation
      6. The 6th Virtue: Open Planned and Closed Planned: Ambidextrous Architecture
      7. The 7th Virtue: Static and Flux: Poised for Change
    3. CHAPTER 16: Strategic Organization: Where Creative Strategy Ends (and Begins Again)
      1. Organizing for Creative Strategy: Getting the Particular Balance Right
      2. Organizing Creative Strategy
  18. THE ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY ACT IV: THE ORGANIZATIONAL ACT
  19. Sources and Suggested Further Reading
    1. Prologue: When Strategy Meets Creativity
    2. Part I: The Innovative Act: Discovery and Creation
    3. Part II: Strategic Entrepreneurship: Dilettantes and Diligence
    4. Part III: Strategic Leadership: Envisioning and Interacting
    5. Part IV: Strategic Organization: Focussing and Loosening
  20. References
  21. Index

Product information

  • Title: Creative Strategy: Reconnecting Business and Innovation
  • Author(s): Chris Bilton, Stephen Cummings
  • Release date: April 2010
  • Publisher(s): Wiley-Blackwell
  • ISBN: 9781405180191