To support the Transfer Agent (TA) and Curriculum Development activities at Birmingham City University (BCU), we have discussed and researched innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship. As a team, we have found it necessary to engage with the topic as part of the process, thereby creating a working definition and common understanding as a starting point. However, it is anticipated that the project will challenge our working definition and enrich our understanding of innovation as it applies to the creative and media industries.
Innovation is defined by the National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship (UK) as ‘creating and exploiting opportunities for new ways of doing things resulting in better products and services, systems and ways of managing people and organisations. Innovation tends to be associated with technical skills but it is increasingly associated with cognitive skills such as adaptability, collaboration, problem-solving, leadership and creativity.
This is supported by much innovation literature including Drucker who defines innovation as not being about invention but as a term of economics rather than of technology. Drucker explains that innovations can be found both in new products and services but also in new markets creating economical innovation. All organisations need to include innovation as one of their core competencies and need to find a means of measuring their “innovation performance” not just internally but in relation to their competition (Drucker 2001:106).
Bilton explores innovation is relation to organisational change and with reference to Adorno’s critique of the “fetishization of novelty in our culture’ (Bilton 2007: 130). He describes how change for the sake of it, without consideration of the overall strategic vision or structure of the organization, can become a distraction rather than leading to true organizational change, and innovation.
Bilton argues that cultivating a risk culture where individuals are able to run with ideas or where funds are mobilized to support experimental projects is critical in an organisation which seeks to be innovative. Creativity and innovation are not the result of a lone genius inventor but the result of team effort and of the right organizational structure and culture. A “level of complexity and diversity” in a team enables new ideas, debate and can avoid the stagnation of ideas, a “groupthink” approach resulting in less innovation (Bilton 2007: 101)
In his article, The Era of Open Innovation, Chesbrough describes the traditional place for innovation as being in R&D laboratories and as being secretive and closed. In contrast to this, he states that: “Useful knowledge has become widespread, and ideas must be used with alacrity. If not, they will be lost.” This suggests “open innovation” and a willingness to share, work in partnership and in collaboration. However, businesses still need to convert these into products and services in a meaningful way and to meet customer needs.
Bessant and Tidd describe the imperative for innovation in business as being simply about survival; survival in the sense that only organizations which are capable of regular and focused change can survive. Innovation can take place in different ways as demonstrated in the four Ps of innovation:
