Creativity, innovation, and foresight in action (part 1)

Creativity, innovation, and foresight are closely connected concepts. This week’s reading from the Cambridge Handbook of Creativity introduced the connections between individual creativity, an organization’s capacity for innovation, and the ability to predict coming trends and other important developments successfully. The systematic approaches to creativity overviewed in this chapter offer a wide variety of means to foster creativity, but the most important knowledge you can gain from this reading is the fact that creativity is not an unexplainable phenomenon or a mysterious process. Rather, creativity can be approached systematically in order to seek out opportunities for innovation, based on foresight.

For this Discussion, you will analyze how foresight, creativity, and innovation are separate, yet interrelated, concepts. To prepare for the Discussion, read “Welcome to a World of Change: Life in the 21st century” (Puccio, et al, 2011) and “Moonshots for Management” (Hamel, 2009). 

• [removed]Puccio, G. J., Mance, M., Switalski, L. B., & Reali, P. D. (2012). Welcome to the world of change: Life in the 21st century. In Creativity rising: Creative thinking and creative problem solving in the 21st century(pp. 13–20). Buffalo, NY: ICSC Press. 
  Puccio, G. J., Mance, M., Switalski, L. B., & Reali, P. D. (2012). Welcome to the world of change: Life in the 21st century. In Puccio, G.J., Mance, M., Switalski, L.B. et al. (Eds.), Creativity Rising: Creative thinking and creative problem solving in the 21st century (1st Ed.), (pp. 51–70). Buffalo, NY: ICSC Press. Copyright 2012 by ICSC Press. Reprinted by permission of Omniskills, LLC/ICSC Press

  Many of us have probably felt frustrated that the world around us continues to change at an increasingly fast pace. A cell phone or tablet computer that was state of the art when purchased can be sadly out of date just one year later. The authors of this reading discuss the wide variety of changes we are experiencing today and explore how creative responses to the challenges presented by the rapid pace of change are necessary.

Also consider the tensions between innovation and creativity addressed in the article “Institutionalizing Ethical Innovation in Organizations: An Integrated Causal Model of Moral Innovation Decision Processes”. Use this article as a foundation for evaluating creativity, foresight, and innovation within an ethical model.

Post by Day 7 of Week 1 by selecting an organization – it could be a company or even a division of a company – and describing a situation that demonstrates this organization’s foresight, creativity, and innovation within an ethical model. Consider your own experience as well as observation. Your post should provide an analysis of how the organization demonstrated each of these separate concepts in an interrelated and ethical way. Next, analyze the situation you have presented in light of foresight, creativity, and innovation in one of the following ways:

1. Analyze how the situation you have presented reflects the workplace trends discussed by Puccio (2011) or,
2. Analyze how the management strategies discussed by Hamel (2009) inform the situation you presented.

Finally, after completing your analysis using one of the approaches above, evaluate whether the trends or strategies fit within an ethical model and provide examples to support your analysis.

General Guidance: Your initial Discussion post will typically be 2–3 paragraphs in length as a general expectation/estimate.