Nowadays creativity and innovation are becoming extremely important to the success of all business organizations; because they are facing major and rapid changes in the environment. To cope effectively with the change, organizations must become more innovative, developing the ability to quickly plan and implement adoptions to change their environments.
There is a direct link between creativity and important organizational outcomes such as productivity and quality; because creative thinking increases the quality of solutions to organizational problems, helps to stimulate profitable innovations, revitalizes motivation, upgrades personal skills and catalyzes effective team performance. Therefore organizations must motivate creative thinking because it is obvious that the success of businesses in the rapidly changing future will be determined by their ability to become more creative.
Definition of Creativity:
Creativity is the generation of novel, useful, and predictable ideas that may meet perceived needs or respond to opportunities for the organization. In other words; creativity is seeing analogies where no one else sees them. Actually creativity is the essential first step in innovation, which is vital to long term organizational success.
The Creative Process:
Creativity is a complex process and it is really a part of most non-programmed decisions. Creativity is not something which can be saved for special occasions. On the other hand there are unique features for the creativity. The creative process is used to find problems, identify alternatives and implement solutions. The creative process has 5 basic steps:
a) Preparation: Creativity is not a passive activity; therefore the first step requires a thorough investigation to ensure that all parts of a problem are understood fully. During the preparation stage the employee gather the necessary information and concentrate on the problem or issue.
b)