Enterprise Innovation

2From Creativity to Innovation: the Importance of Design

This chapter highlights the importance of creativity to innovation, and outlines the role of design as the discipline and the activity by which to deliver innovations from the results of creative thinking. It summarizes advances in design thinking principles and processes, and draws on the author’s own experiences with creative design processes to make some simple recommendations about the use of creativity techniques and design artifacts to enable more effective design innovation.

2.1. Creativity and innovation

The recent years have seen a growing interest in the adoption of creative and innovation processes in enterprises. Creativity and innovation are perceived to be increasingly important means by which enterprises can distinguish themselves in marketplaces. The strategic importance of creativity has been acknowledged by many commentators, both at the international level – the Nomura Research Institute’s proposition is that creativity is the next economic activity, replacing the current focus on information – and within the UK, where the Cox review commissioned by Gordon Brown in 2005 saw exploitation of the nation’s creative skills as “vital to the UK’s long-term economic success” [COX 05]. The Cox review concluded that: “The success of the creative industries notwithstanding, there is evidence that UK business is not realizing the full potential of applying creativity more widely”. Other European nations have similarly ...