Is Too Much Creativity Killing Innovation?

Okay, how’s this for stirring the pot?  Have you noticed how many articles about innovation are focused on being more creative?  Some folks suggest taking long walks.  Some advise that team building games are just the thing.  While others write about how there is no such thing as a bad idea.  Is all of this focus on creativity a good thing?

We don’t seem to be able to break free of the mythology of innovation.  Our passionate affair with the mystery of inspiration and how it fuels the creative process is deeply fixed in our universal ethos.  Yet, history teaches us that this myth of the big, creative idea is just that—a myth.

That is not to say that creativity is not an important element of the innovation process, but that the role of creativity is often misunderstood and over stated.  The vast majority of innovation is not driven by pure creation; it is driven by synthesis, a particular form of creation that builds on the existing to make something which is new.

But, even if this is so, does that make the focus on creativity a bad thing?  Isn’t it still helpful to develop the skills to envision new solutions?  Maybe yes; maybe no.

Organizations have a limited set of resources to apply to any issue.  Innovation is no different in this regard.  The company that wants to pursue innovation as something more than a buzz word has a limited amount of attention, resource, and time that can be allocated to the effort to instill a sustainable innovation framework.  It is also the case that the degree to which the organization sees that early efforts at developing innovation competence are deemed successful will greatly influence the company’s commitment to continuing to move down the path from accidental innovation to high performance innovation.

Few of the companies I talk to feel that coming up with great ideas is their biggest innovation challenge.  Rather, they feel the key issues are instilling a sustainable innovation culture, developing the innovation skills and best practices to ensure reliability in the innovation to product development process, and feeling confident that their processes will achieve the optimal realization of their ideas as delivered products.  If this is the case, then it is reasonable to question whether the incremental value of a tactical creativity exercise will deliver the value the company is seeking.

There is a statement which has been attributed to a variety of great thinkers including Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin.  I don’t know who actually said it, but it is worth repeating in this context.  “Vision without execution is hallucination.”

In this scenario, it may be argued that creativity is the enemy of innovation because it creates a diversion that distracts attention from the things that the enterprise considers most important.  If the enterprise focuses its investment on creativity development but doesn’t have the rest of its innovation ecosystem in good order, it will yield little reward for the effort.  On the other hand, if the enterprise has a health engine for innovation fueled by a strong innovation culture and innovation best practices, it will succeed with the ideas it has already.

What do you think?