Discussion forum for members of the Massachusetts Bay Organizational Development Learning Group

Thursday, September 29, 2005

How are creativity and innovation different?

I think we're all a little guilty of buying into the interchangeability of "creativity" and "innovation." It's difficult in the mad cycle speed of business to slow things down long enough to differentiate them for our clients as OD professionals. Even if we can't accomplish that slow mo for them, we can try to keep creativity & innovation straight in our own minds for the sake of the structure and spirit of our recommendations. I subscribe to Ned Hermann's philosophy on this one point: "...creativity is a PROCESS that produces an original outcome or product, while innovation is THE CHANGE, MODIFICATION OR IMPROVEMENT of an existing product." Even if we can't agree that creativity leads to innovation, we can agree that innovation is an event and creativity is a process. Hope Ned's perspective helps.

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