The creativity advantage ‐ is your organization the leader of the pack?

Success in product and service innovation depends on creativity as a key input. Without a healthy and continuing supply of ideas, most organizations would cease to exist. A fundamental challenge facing leaders in the twenty‐first century is how to profit from individual potential and then leverage it so that it produces organizational innovation and excellence. This article takes a strategic view of creativity as a key element of competitive advantage. It outlines the conditions for creativity to flourish and is supported through the use of a number of case studies. Creativity is not predominantly something that can be “forced” through creativity “techniques”. It depends crucially on the setting of an appropriate context for ideas to emerge and their subsequent mobilisation into innovative products and services. When the context is right techniques can play their part in raising the level and type of creativity within organizations.