New Ways of Working Network

Research on organizational creativity has increased rapidly in the last decade. Not only is creativity of interest to scientific researchers, it has become a compelling topic in the popular media, with recent articles in Psychology Today (Gryskiewicz 2000), Fast Company (Dahl 2000), and in business-oriented publications such as the Harvard Business Review (Hargadon and Sutton 2000). Why this intense interest, and why now? Part of the answer comes from the nature of science and business today, especially in competitive fields where the pressure for innovation and maintaining a competitive edge has become more intense. Creativity provides the raw intellectual materials – ideas, concepts, insights, and discovery – that eventually become new theories, approaches, tools, products, and services that underlie innovation. Innovation is the adoption and social transmission of creative discovery.