Innovation & creativity are the valuable intangible assets which play a vital role in the transformation of business, society and organization. The emergence of globalization & increasing competition created a threat for the organizations to survive in market and innovation & differentiation became necessity to sustain economic development and competitiveness. Recessions and times of uncertainty present unusual opportunities. Therefore every organization wants to be more and more innovative. Innovation comes in many forms like product innovation, process innovation, service innovation, business model innovation etc. but it is not so easy to become innovative. Many barriers exist in the way of innovation and one of the biggest & powerful hurdles to becoming more innovative is changing the corporate culture to accept and embrace innovation. This paper takes a brief look on the dimension of innovation and different forces & strategies that can help in shaping the culture to drive innovation. The focus is on the idea that how the people of an organization may become more innovative. The majority of the literature on creativity has focused on the individual, yet the social environment can influence both the level and frequency of creative behavior. This article reviews the literature for factors related to organizational culture that act as supports and impediments to organizational creativity and innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a model linking creativity and Innovation to organizational competitive excellence. Drawing upon existing theoretical and empirical evidence the paper develops and presents a conceptual model of the relationship between creativity, innovation and competitive excellence. The term creativity and innovation are often used interchangeably; however, there is a clear distinction between creativity and innovation, the former being the generation of ideas and the latter its implementation. In this era of globalization and competition, creativity and innovation are considered to be key factors for survival, success and excellence of organizations.

Originally Published in Textile Review, November-2011

Dr. N. Shani is a Research Supervisor & P. Divyapriya is Ph.D Research Scholar with Department of Management Studies & Research, Karpagam University, Coimbatore.