Essay on Barriers to Innovation and Creativity in the Organization

Nowadays workload and stress in the organizations has increased a lot, the employees or workers are so busy doing the tasks that they don’t have time to think about some innovative and creative ideas, the stressful environment of the workplace has become a barrier to innovation and creativity in the organizations, the workers focus on completing their tasks and sometimes the burden is too much that they cannot even complete their given tasks and hence this results in depression and anxiety. The employee faces really hard times in the organizations working under such stressful condition.

The organizations should change this trend and develop an innovative culture in the organization, an organization should follow some theories of creativity and innovation and some change in management so that they can lower the stress and burden from the employees and will be able to make them think and work with more innovation and creation.

Hence the contemporary organizations are based on the team of people and workers, the matrix structure, the structure of the project and it is a learning organization. And learning organizations need some creativity and productivity to run a successful organization with creative and innovative products by the innovative thinking of the workers.(Susan E. Jackson, 2003)

The organizations must follow some theories of innovation to bring some innovation and release the stress from the workers. First of all an organization must create a healthy and peaceful environment, the employees should have a good and friendly bonding with each other as well as with the leader or the boss, if the work load is more on a person the leader should hire some more workers to share the burden or divide the burden equally with every employee working in the organization. The leader should spend some good time with his employees so that in this way they will be more satisfied and encouraged to do the work. (Sundgren, 2005)

According to the creativity model of personal connections, creativity is not just a cognitive ability; it is the personality of the person because personality shows much creativity. He breaks down the personality into two different parts, one is the little creativity and other is the big creativity, little creativity occurs from the things which we seen in our everyday life and these re the small opportunities which we can avail to be creative. Big creativity occurs when we see the significant changes in the lives of the different people, that how they live, how they feel and how they think. The big creativity is divided into the 5 personality traits that we see in lives of the other people and this personality traits are enclosed in a word called OCEAN, this means Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism. These are the personality traits that we see in the lives of the other people, hence, organizations should provide a comfortable and friendly and relaxing environment so that the workers can learn and be creative from the little things in life and by observing the traits and lives of a person by spending some good time with his colleagues.

The workers in the organizations should also be innovative and develop some new ideas to shape the existing product or strategy in a more attractive way and perform new experiments to take the company to a leading success, but how can the workers be creative in such a burdened environment. The organization should follow some models of innovations or some innovation processes and structures to develop an innovative environment in the organization, the Familiar Linear Innovation Model was proposed by Benoit Godin. This innovation model includes some steps: Basic Research leads to the applied research, applied research leads to the Development and Development leads to diffusion. The basic thing for innovation is Research and any company or organization that is over burdened with the work cannot perform any research, the burden of work should be limited for each person, or the work should be relevant to some research and exploring, only then the employees will be innovative and creative. This model emphasize on the contributions from the employees of the company, because contributions lead to innovations. (Godin, 2014)

As well as the company should follow some models of change management to bring some changes in the organization. One of the famous change management model is the Lewin’s Change management model, it is one of the popular models. In his model he suggested change with just three simple steps: 1) Unfreeze 2) Change 3) Refreeze. In his model he depicts some simple steps that the organizations should unfreeze the process and perceptions of the organization, in this step the leader should analyze all the potential problems and what improvements are to be made to make the workers more comfortable and relaxed and to take the company to a leading ways. By this procedure he will be able to identify the mistakes and that how he can change his mistakes. The next step is to make a change that every employee and person can adapt and that change is for the betterment of the employees. Some positive changes should be made in the policies of the organizations to provide a relief to the employees. After making the changes, the last factor and step is to refreeze the changes so that the changes that are made should remain constant in the organization for some time. By implementing the models of innovation, creativity and change, we can change the environment of the organization and can promote innovation and creativity in the organization by the ideas and help of the workers and the employees. (Kaminski, 2011)

But individual person has other potentials for creativity while the organizations have other potentials for creativity, innovation and change. An individual have different perspectives and different thinking’s, he can work differently with different innovative ideas and can support the company or organization, an individual observe his surroundings, the people In his surroundings, the environment around him and the behavior of the people, their actions and how they react to different situations. He will jot down all the things which he faces in life in life and the things that influence him, in this way, he comes to new innovative ideas and approaches and can think more innovatively, he will surround himself with more inspirational and creative people because surrounding himself with these kind of people will do his brainstorming and generate idea about different new topics. The individual person will then provide his ideas for the companies and he can bring change in the company and bring out his potentials for the company in terms of creativity and innovation. An individual person will develop his skills and knowledge to lead the company to the stage of higher progress. (Mulgan, 2007)

An organization will lead to innovation and creativity in a different way. N individual does the work on its own, only a single person is involved in this but in the organization many different people with different perspectives are involved. The organization should provide a healthy communication environment to the people so that they can speak up their creative ideas, the company should boost up the employees by asking different questions and solutions of the different problems, in this way they will be forced to think more innovatively and creatively.

An organization should conduct different group meetings and discussions because it is a brain storming for the employees, as well as the company should appreciate the employees for their hard work and new and innovative ideas and reward them in this way they will be more appreciated and encouraged to do the work more passionately. An organization should divide the burden of company equally on every employee in this way the burden will be less and they can work more efficiently and have enough time to think and research to get some innovative ideas. The organization should give their workers a sense of freedom so that they can work freely with open mind and new ideas. The organization should invest the time in workers for their creative nourishment, so that they will develop the skills in the employees to work more hard and creatively. Bare the mistake of the employees, so that the employees can learn from their mistakes and to find a solution for their mistake they will think more creatively and this will boost up their minds. The organization should develop an accommodating leadership style, because leadership styles depend on the performance of the employees. An organization should have a democratic leadership style, so that he will involve all the employees of the organization before taking any decision.

So it is concluded that the individual and organization contribute differently in developing a innovative and creative ideas. Both have different perspectives and different sources to generate new ideas and both contribute differently to bring a change in the organization and develop the organization in a positive way. But an individual and organization both leads in the development and the success of the organization. An individual is an important part of the organization and many individuals make a team in the organization that leads the organization to a next level.

References of Barriers to Innovation and Creativity in the Organization 

Godin, B., 2014. Invention, diffusion and linear models of innovation: the contribution of anthropology to a conceptual framework. Journal of Innovation Economics & Management, p. 196.

Kaminski, J., 2011. Theory applied to informatics – Lewin’s Change Theory |. CJNI Journal, pp. 1-4.

Mulgan, G., 2007. social innovation. what it is, why it matters and how it can be accelerated. p. 52.

Sundgren, A. S., 2005. Managing Creativity in Organizations. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Susan E. Jackson, A. D. M. A. H., 2003. Managing Knowledge for Sustained Competitive Advantage: Designing Strategies for Effective Human Resource Management. s.l.:John Wiley & Sons.