What is really driving performance?: The impact of enabling creativity and innovation within the organization

Introduction Many researchers have studied organizational creativity theory as it relates to the work environment for creativity to flourish (Amabile, 1996), characteristics of high versus low innovation organizations (Delbecq, 1985) and what motivates creativity, intrinsically and extrinsically (Amabile, 1997). However, the following research questions still persist. Why is it that some firms are able to leverage several years of innovation to fuel the growth and prosperity of the organization for long periods of time (e.g., 3M's 100 years of innovation), while other firms have very rapid life cycles and are not able to reinvent themselves? What are the drivers of successful growth through innovation? Perhaps the following from 3M's Senior Vice President of Research and Development, Dr. William Coyne, may provide some insight into how a focus on innovation within the organization drives sustainable growth and firm performance: " Our (corporate) vision is that we would like to be the most innovative organization in the world. I can tell you from experience that one still sees a great many misshapen innovations. However, …given time and support, many of them grow into very pleasing and well proportioned products and technologies. " This paper has a twofold objective. First, it will attempt to identify what are the drivers that enable and disable creativity and innovation within an organization. In studying innovative organizations such as 3M, what are the resource differences that allow 3M to continually innovate and create while other organizations lack such abilities. The second objective is to show that a focus on innovation and creativity is a performance driver of successful growth. The next section will discuss current theory on creativity and innovation and take a critical look at what current research has contributed to the understanding of creativity and innovation. The later sections will present my theoretical predictions on how resource based management enables 2 creativity and innovation. This theoretical perspective will also discuss how enabled creativity leads to profitable growth for organizations. There are virtually no studies in the current creativity literature exploring this performance based perspective. From there, a research methodology will be presented to test the research hypotheses linking creativity to organizational performance. Finally, the implications of such a study will be discussed to demonstrate its relevance to current business practices and research perspectives. The use of creativity and innovation is referenced from a variety of perspectives, including psychological personality traits, cognitive decision making processes, and …