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1. Creativity, Innovation and Research in Norwegian and European Enterprises
Mark Knell (mark.knell@nifu.no) NIFU - Nordic Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research and Education
Where does the idea of creativity come from?
• Early Greek philosophers had no word for creativity.
• They believed that creativity was not only as impossible but also undesirable.
• Plato believed that the idea of a creator and of creativity implied freedom of
action, and the arts necessarily involved knowledge of rules and an ability to
apply them.
• The imagination and inspiration was added to the Latin vocabulary, but the idea
of a creator was seen as synonymous with father or founding father.
• In Christian theology God was exclusively the creator.
• The creative nature of the imagination was known in the enlightenment, but
there is no reference to the use of the word creativity (see Adam Smith)
• This changed in the 19th century when the fine arts included the adjective
‘creative’ and the noun ‘creativity’ into its vocabulary.
• By the early 20th century, the word creativity was used to describe all fields of
social production, and a ‘creator’ became ‘a person or thing that brings some-
thing into existence’, such as a new technology.
Nietzsche and Schumpeter and creativity
• Nietzsche wrote about creation and creativity.
• from his early essays on Greek art and The Birth of Tragedy, to his later writings on Wagner’s literature,
philosophy and the visual arts.
• Nietzsche believed that living life creatively personified his idea of being an artist.
• Nietzsche suggested a relationship between creation and destruction.
• This dichotomy became important for Schumpeter.
• Joseph Schumpeter was one of the first economists to write creativity.
• He used the adjective schöpferisch several times (similar to creativity) in the first 1911 (German) edition
of Theory of economic Development.
• Schumpeter’s vision originated in the artistic avant-garde (Dekker, 2016).
• He wrote about the “Mann der Tat”, or Man of Action.
• But used the term the entrepreneur in the third (1934) English edition.
Creativity and economic development
• The entrepreneur as the agent of change that carries out innovation within the enterprise.
• Schumpeter’s ideas on novelty is the real novelty in his work, TheTheory of Economic Development.
• Innovation were seen as new combinations of existing knowledge available to the enterprise (1912, in
German)
• Schumpeter used novelty in 1932 paper, uses innovation in 1934 book on development and 1939 book on
cycles.
• Innovation takes place when profit seeking entrepreneurs introduce a new good, a new method of production,
a new source of supply, opens up a new market, or reorganises the firm.
• Development causes destruction of old means of production and social arrangements (Creative Destruc-
tion)
Toward a social psychology of creativity
• Herbert Simon believed that creativity requires that knowledge be pulled out at the right time
• Creativity is more than problem solving.
• It involves the ability to make selective searches, which require general knowledge and specific knowledge
related to particular situations.
• Simon developed computer simulations that can simulate
• Osborn (1953) used the term brainstorming to describe his method of creative problem solving, and Gordon
(1961) claimed that group thinking is always superior to individual thinking.Amiable introduced The Social Psy-
chology of Creativity (1983).
• Brainstorming work teams are a bit like a jazz group.
• Brainstorming usually yields dismal results in comparison with more solitary forms of problem solving.
The Norwegian survey on R&D
and innovation
• The 2000 Norwegian survey on R&D and innova-
tion of business enterprises contains a rich
amount of information on the inputs, the outputs
and the characteristics of innovation activities.
(see Oslo Manual)
• The survey contains all firms with at least 50 em-
ployees, and drew a stratified random sample cov-
ering about 35% of those firms with 5-49 employ-
ees. Almost 6,600 enterprises responded to the
survey.
• Like in previous CIS surveys it asks some general
questions, some innovation specific questions (in-
novation inputs and outputs), others aimed at dis-
tinguishing innovating firms from non-innovating
ones and others on the effects of organizational
innovations.
• The innovation survey also included the R&D sur-
vey to provide consistency, which is different from
most other European countries
Creativity and Skills in the CIS
• A unique set of questions on creativity and skills
was added to CIS in 2000.
• It also asked whether they successfully used one
of six different methods to stimulate new ideas
or creativity among the staff.
• And the methods to stimulate creativity included
brainstorming sessions, cross-functional work
teams, job rotation, financial incentives, non-fi-
nancial incentives, and training activities that
stimulate new ideas or activities.
• The survey asked whether the enterprise utilized
eight different skills and whether they were ob-
tained in-house or external sources.
• The skills included graphic arts, product design,
multimedia activities, web design, software devel-
opment, market research, engineering, or sta-
tistics and database management.
• Many different combinations can be made be-
tween these variables and traditional measures
of R&D and innovative activity.
The methodology
• A binary response model (a probit model with a
maximum likelihood estimator) together with de-
scriptive statistics was used.
• Following Schumpeter, the CIS 2010 includes four
types of innovation and information on forms of
information necessary for the innovation process
utilised were .
• Independent variables include novelty, creativity
and skills, among other determinants contained in
the questionnaire.
The Nordic Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research and Education is an independent social science research institute, organised as a non-profit foundation. NIFU aims to be a leading European research organization for studies of innova-
tion, research and education at all levels.We collect, analyse and disseminate national statistics and indicators for R&D and innovation, and are active participants in statistical cooperation at the European and international levels. Our research
and statistics offer a solid base from which policy- makers can develop integrated knowledge policies. NIFU’s research is funded through research contracts for public and private clients, allocations from national and international research programs and a
basic grant from the Norwegian Research Council.There are four main research areas in NIFU: Primary and secondary education; higher education; research and innovation; and statistics and indicators. (artwork by Edward Munch and Gidsken Braadlie)
What is the paper about?
• It is mainly about how creativity and skills within the enterprise can bring
about different types of research and innovative activities.
• The focuses on certain creative activities within the firm and how they
might affect the innovation process.
• It is not about the creative industries, but on how enterprises gain access
to relevant creative skills and stimulate new ideas or creativity among its
staff.
• The main premise of this paper is that innovation uses creativity by turning
creative ideas into economic use as new products, processes organizational
practices, and marketing strategies.
• The objective will be to demonstrate whether different methods to stimu-
late new ideas and creativity are successful or not and whether they lead to
new research, or product, process and other types of innovation.
• It also considers whether these methods are relatively more important in
enterprises of a certain size, particular industry and form of ownership.
• The connection between economics and cognitive psychology (and learning
theories).
Some conclusions
• Large enterprises were more likely to use brain-
storming than small ones, but it was also found
that small enterprises tended to use brainstorm-
ing more frequently than any other of techniques,
whereas large firms tended to use of multidisci-
plinary or cross-function teams.
• Diversity is essential for successful innovation.
• Small and medium enterprises have fewer em-
ployees than large firms; collaboration among
people with different backgrounds could foster
further innovative activities.
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Belgium
Bulgaria
Czech Estonia Ireland France Croa>a Cyprus Lithuania
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bouHungary
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alta
Netherlan
Poland Portugal Rom
ania Slovenia Slovakia Finland Norw
ay
10 to 49 employees 50 to 249 employees 250+ employees
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Belgium
Bulgaria
Czech Rep. Estonia Ireland France CroaAa Cyprus Lithuania
Luxem
bourg Hungary
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alta
Netherlands Poland Portugal Rom
ania Slovenia Slovakia Finland Norw
ay
10 to 49 employees 50 to 249 employees 250+ employees
Brainstorming sessions, stimulating creativity Stimulating creativity through multidisciplinary work teams.