Question

Question
In her article “How to kill creativity “
Teresa Amabile states “when it comes to granting freedom,the key to creativity is giving people autonomy “Amabile 1998”.
Critically assess the importance of this this statement for developing an organizational culture that fosters innovation. 25 marks

Answer 1

Any organization or for that matter a person needs to reinvent itself. The organization or business needs to be competitive and it requires innovation, creative, critical and out of the box thinking. This constant process of creating something new or finding a new way to do something feeds the innovation and puts that organization ahead of the peers.
Steve Jobs is considered one of the most innovative in the tech world and he put Apple Inc. in top position. He introduced the iMac to lift Apple from dire straits and then introduced the iPod as well as the iPhone which completely changed the world of mobile phones.

Creativity and innovation are the desired factors but as the organization grows it becomes bureaucratic with different management layers. The layers tend to be responsible for the execution and such a hierarchical structure kills the creativity. Creativity is not a routine activity and there is no formula for that. It is a constant process and may take time longer than expected. The organization needs to listen to each employee in this process and feedback should be analyzed to select those raw ideas which could be converted into a success.

There should be a team to spot those minds and spot their ideas. However, the most important thing is to have autonomy or freedom for such people in their work. As innovation or creativity has no formula and most of the time the great products we are seeing or using today have been gone through too many failures. The most famous example is of the bulb in which Einstein failed 10000 times but when asked he replied that it has shown him how 10000 ways it won't work. Another aspect is accidents or mistakes. Antibiotics in invented by an accident.

Einstein has quoted once that great success is built on failure, frustration, and even catastrophy. The organization needs to keep these factors in mind and if they won't allow the creativity or innovation then it is on the suicidal path would cease to exist one day because they won't be competitive in the future. Once the biggest names in the mobile industry Nokia and Blackberry are now in obscurity because they didn't innovate.