Necessary Trifecta : Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship: A Literature Review
Lola Smith
Morehead State University
College of Business
Morehead, KY 40351
606 783-9425
Rik Berry
University of Arkansas Fort Smith
College of Business
Fort Smith, AR 72913
479 788-7785
Abstract
Numerous authors express the need for a systemic approach to incorporating creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship into the educational process. The paper brings to one resource the logic and desired outcomes of this systemic approach that requires changes toward an integrative, holistic approach to education to remain competitive in the new economic environment of the 21st century. The views of academics, general press authors, and businesspersons converge on an understanding of the need for changes. Additional research is suggested for development of systemic pedagogical models of education that incorporate creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship to enhance competitiveness in the future.
Key Words
Systemic, creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship, competitive advantage, education
Introduction
In the life of an organization, there are inflection points when the balance of forces shifts from the old structure of doing business and competing to the new (Grove, 1996). The speed of change itself fundamentally changes the environment—business as usual does not work in today’s knowledge based economy (Carlson and Wilmot, 2006). Technology is one of the bases of change blurring the edges of organizations (Hunt, C., and Smith, L. 2007) into an interconnected stew (Anderson, 2006), i.e., the UPS World Hub blurring of supply chain relationships that allows individuals, via technology, to share a supply chain similar to that of Wal-Mart, rather than a multi-course meal, with the caution “Will (redefinition) be done by you or to you?” (Friedman, 2006).
Change comes in other forms than technology, one of the more important of which is globalization, which moves from monopolistic centers of power “to multiple centers of expertise and influence,” (Kanter, 1995, 4) as the developed world’s “economy (moves) from an (industrial grade) corporate-centered system defined by large companies to a more (individual) driven one,” (Florida, 2002, 6) and right sizes from big to small (Godin, 2006). The old model assembled the right resources inside an organization to lower transaction costs (Maney, 2006). Today, fed up with rising costs, a new generation of entrepreneurs (Hopkins, 2006); outsourcing helps 20 million micro-businesses work with zero employees. Maney (2006) notes a combination of the Internet, cheap computing, open source projects, and new ways of managing are dramatically dropping transaction costs for doing business outside an organization’s walls.
Design visionary Robert Berner (2006), remarks that companies struggle to transform themselves from cost and control cultures to organizations that profit from creative thinking to ones morphing from the industrial system based in extractive, agricultural and manufacturing industries to a creative economy bound “only by the limits of human talent and imagination,” (Florida, 2005, 25).) Today’s needed skills are those of great “collaborators, orchestrators, synthesizers, dot.com people, and Chief Integrations Officers” (Friedman, 2006, 195) where winning companies emphasize innovation, learning, and collaboration, and select people who are broad, creative thinkers (Kanter, 1995). Organizations need to manage for the future by using creative approaches to “introduce new ideas, products, services, marketing ideas, etc.” (Tucker, 1998, 12). Mescon (2006) suggests that real opportunities emerge for entities that focus on incremental innovation, building competitive advantages by listening to the customer, and responding in real time with products and/or services.
Hockfield (2006) finds the 21st century economy “fueled” by competition. Saffo comments, “…the most important economic actors are neither producers nor consumers, but creators” (2006, 56). Caputo (2006) believes that universities need to do more than teach their students how to adapt to change, but to educate change agents and develop future entrepreneurs. Romer, the developer of New Growth Theory remarks that ideas don’t fall from the sky but come from people who write software, design products, and start businesses. Every new thing that gives us pleasure or convenience, i.e., an I-phone or a well-run chemical plant, is traced to ingenuity. The basis of economic activity is an iterative knowledge-based economy with increasing speed (Carlson and Wilmot, 2006).
Need for a Reformed Education al System
The world has arrived at the dawn of a new era where knowledge workers are evolving to creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers and meaning makers (Pink, 2005). Unfortunately, today’s educational system focuses on convergent thinking with multiple choice answers to solve problems (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996). On the other hand, divergent thinking leads to no agreed upon solution generating “…ideas, …switching from one perspective to another, and originality in picking unusual associations of ideas,” (60). He also observes that “often, one senses that school threatens to extinguish the interest and curiosity that the child had discovered outside its wall,” (173). Furthermore, today’s K-12 environment, where the “No Child Left Behind” curriculum focuses on convergent thinking, has produced an atmosphere that also inhibits teachers’ morale. Moore (2007) notes performance measures are geared toward memorization, creativity.
A major building block needed by organizations to achieve and maintain competitive advantage is an educational system that values creative and critical thinking. Genuine learning and application is achieved by teaching fundamentals as well as creative problem-solving; both are needed to build an economy (Coulombe, and Marchand, 2004). Those who are encouraged to question and to be divergent thinkers are more likely to develop a problem-finding (problem-solving) attitude (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996).
The International Education Organization (2007) observes that states or school districts must today compare themselves against world benchmarks. China is set to nurture a pioneering approach to entrepreneurship in its classrooms (Friedman, 2005). In terms of educational initiatives, China has recognized that if “one wishes to be more of a systems thinker, you need to engage the creative imagination of people in formulating the problem in diverse and multiple ways,” (Mitroff, 2004, 53).
The U.S. in particular is falling behind in math and science skills, those at the heart of the innovation economy. In 2004, the National Science Board noted that the number of American eighteen- to twenty-four year olds receiving science degrees had fallen to seventeenth in the world (Friedman, 2006). Americans graduating with engineering degrees is 5 percent, compared with 25 and 46 percent in Russia and China, respectively. By 2020 the regenerative ability of U.S. educational institutions may be “damaged and their preeminence lost to other regions” (Friedman, 2006, 258).
The global economy is on the learning curve based on technology breakthroughs; technology drives change. Utterback (1996) suggests “(t)he generality of technology competition is that firms that can run only a little faster than others will pull far ahead given time,” (189). The Chinese are learning how to run faster. Both India and China are leveraging large university populations into technology-based development. The medical school in New Delhi is one of the world’s best; China ranked first in the 2004 Economist magazine’s leading countries for global research and development investment (Florida, 2005). In 2007, China challenged U.S. dominance in space by destroying one of its orbiting satellites with a ballistic missile (Kahn, 2007). Shanghai’s Nanyang High School is a model for educators with a combination of an innovative, hands-on approach to education along with demanding results oriented lessons (Hvistendahl, 2006). Few U.S. institutions have followed Carnegie Mellon’s lead and implemented an interdisciplinary masters program bringing artists and technologists together to envision, explore, design, and create (Smith and Hunt, 2007).
Many countries promote creative and innovative thinking, a necessary component of a strong emphasis on math and science. However, in some countries, when cuts are to be made in a school’s budget, the arts (music, theater, painting, as well as team building disciplines such as physical education) are the first to be eliminated. Dyson (2006) notes the wonky scientist is “as our economy develops it’s the ability to innovate and to be creative and build new things that will help us compete,” (54). Smith, Hunt, Berry, Hunt (2005) indicated a need for organizations to understand and promote the relationship among creativity, innovation, and performance. Qualitative reasoning (artistry, empathy, and emotion) is essential if students are to gain a competitive edge in the global market place (Smith and Hunt, 2007). Combining logic and creativity requires development of both skill sets. It is the “artist’s ability to shape inert matter into lifelike forms that, once created, take on a life of their own and in doing so become a symbol for the human power to change, order, and improve,” (Getzels and Csikszentmihalyi, 1976). Educators taking the attitude of a sailor who needs to adjust his/her sailboat to a sudden wind shift will meet this new need; getting a feel for the strength as well as direction of the wind is required to reconfigure the course. Understanding creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship is the first step to meet the stated needs.
Innovation is essential for long-term economic growth and the technological global economy gives rise to new opportunities for innovative business ideas. However, a greater emphasis on creative thinking, along with an increased emphasis on science and math, is needed in schools to develop in students innovative and integrating ideas. Leaders need to understand that big ideas without the resources to pursue those ideas do not translate into long-term economic incentives. Financial support is required to upgrade students to compete for and to create jobs as entrepreneurs in this new economy.
Creativity
The world would be a very different place if it were not for creativity; there would be no ideas such as freedom or democracy (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996). Creativity is generally innate in children. Everything is doable without the preconceptions that it can not be done; if a child makes a mistake, he or she just tries again. If one observes children, one realizes that they ask questions as a basis to form ideas and come up with new ones; they learn from everything in their environment by frequently using critical and creative parts of their brains. Albert Einstein’s experiences in developing the Theory of Relativity led him to believe that imagination is more important than knowledge.
Vygotsky (1987) considered imagination to be an active, conscious process of meaning-making that forms a special unity helping a person make sense of the world. Shaw noted that imagination is the beginning of creation, “We imagine what we desire; we will what we imagine; and at last we create what we will” (McCoy, 2002). McCoy concedes that while imagination may start at birth, he holds that creativity only happens by applying imagination to creative ends. Feldman, Csikzentmihalyi, and Gardner, (1994) acknowledge that while childhood creative acts are not equivalent to the creativity needed for high-level innovation (technological or otherwise), they lay the foundation for high-level mastery of creativity and innovation. However, educational and social cultures are such that by the time children reach second grade, they are only using only ten percent of their brain power—both critical and creative (Rovaris-MacDonald, 1997).
To understand creativity, one needs to investigate various types of creativity—Shaw was culturally creative and Einstein scientifically creative; both men are considered creative giants. Florida notes that “Creativity is multi-dimensional and comes in many mutually reinforcing forms along a spectrum,” (Florida, 2002). Creativity is found in invention—technological, entrepreneurship, economic, as well as artistic; creativity in one field is not the same as in another (Feldman, Csikszentmihalyi, and Gardner, 1994).
Creativity’s complexity becomes apparent from its study. It involves the ability to synthesize what is useful in such varied ways as to produce a practical device, theory, or insight that can be applied to achieve a problem resolution or develop a work of art (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996). “Technological and economic creativity are nurtured by and interact with artistic and cultural creativity. This kind of interplay is evident from computer graphics to digital music and animation,” (Florida, 2002, 8). Imagination plays a crucial role in creative thinking “because it allows the mind to see the unseen, envision the invisible, and transform ideas into reality,” (McCoy, 2002, 140). At its most basic, creativity involves change in the way of doing or thinking; as such, creativity may be incremental or revolutionary. Isaac Newton noted that his breakthroughs added to scientific thought that had come before. On the other hand, creativity can be “the achievement of something remarkable and new, something which changes a field of endeavor in a significant way,” (Fedlman, Csikszentmihalyi, and Gardner, 1994, xii).
Simonton (1999) suggests that creativity is favored by an intellect that has been enriched with diverse social and economic. McCoy (2002) suggests that a person cannot be creative in a domain to which he or she is not exposed; creativity most often begins with what individuals know, then moves to what they do not know. Wallas (1926) in the seminal book, “The Art of Thought”, saw creative thinking as a process: preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. Csikszentmihalyi (1996) builds on Wallas’ model: 1) preparation (immersion in a set of issues that are interesting and arouse curiosity); 2) incubation (ideas churn around in both the conscious and unconscious; 3) insight (the aha, eureka moment); 4) evaluation (an internal locus of control determines the merit of the idea; and 5) elaboration (time consuming as the idea is made manifest).
As such, the process of creativity emerges by a dialectic methodology among individuals of talent who hold domains of knowledge processes and practices that are found within fields of knowledgeable judges (Csikszentimihalyi, 1988); creativity is both individual and social. In addition, Harman and Rheingold (1984) note the conditions for constructive creativeness are also both internal and external. In addition, there seem to be certain personality traits that are characteristics of more creative individuals (Gardner, 1988). Csikszentmihalyi (1996) notes these complex and contradictory traits are present in all of us, but usually one is trained to develop only one pole of that direction. Such training limits the individual’s ability to think holistically. Galenson suggests that creativity comes in two distinct types—quick and dramatic or careful and quiet (Pink, 2006). Each style represents radically different approaches. One style is more conceptual wherein the artist thinks through his/her work carefully before beginning to paint—i.e., Picasso . “The underlying ideas is what mattered; the rest merely execution,” (152). On the other hand, some creative individuals, such as Cezanne, progress in fits and starts. Galenson calls these creative types “experimental inventors” who work slowly perfecting their technique and move towards a goal that never fully understand until they reach it and know they’ve reached it. Galenson’s colleagues often scratch their heads over his research; it doesn’t immediately fit neatly into their definitions of what economists do. That is understandable when one considers that the “currently acceptable beliefs about the limits of human creativity, as viewed by our society, and approved by science, tends to be based on a number of implicit premises that have gone unchallenged until recently,” (Harman and Rheingold, 1984, 60). These premises are: 1) People can acquire knowledge only through the physical senses, 2) all qualitative properties are ultimately reducible to quantitative ones, and 3) the capacity for inspiration is limited intellectually one’s IQ at birth. Given these generally accepted principles, basic scientific research is minimized in favor of immediate practical applications. “The rigors of science restrict the scientists’ ability to deal with the broad, ill-defined domains that are so much a part of the human experience,” (Holland, 1998, 220). Recently, a thirty three member panel of national higher education and business leaders convened by the Association of American Colleges and Universities found that employers today often see missing in new hires the ability to use the creative part of their brain (Marklein, 2007, D9). Galenson believes that nurturing innovators is an imperative; “economic ability is all about creativity–given that advanced economies shed routine work and gain advantage through innovation and ingenuity,” (Pink, 2006, 166). Galenson calls for “brash, paradigm-busting youthful conceptualists,” as well as experimental innovators. For example, the dominant view of a banker may be a person who is a rather pedestrian common sense realist, yet if one looks at financial leaders such as John Reed, who produced a string of 425% returns for Citicorp investors because of investments, one sees the possibilities of imagination at work.