Without innovation, the survival of a business is an illusion. Just as our immune systems fight off disease, innovation guarantees the health of businesses. Thanks to innovation, businesses can survive in a constantly evolving environment in which new competitors, products, markets or business models force us to come up with new ideas and to differentiate ourselves.
Innovation cells can and must have a presence in any organisation: in product design and improvement, in the production, marketing and talent attraction processes. It is not an activity restricted to big corporations or technological start-ups, but rather an essential business practice irrespective of the size of the business or the sector it operates within.
Innovation capacity relies chiefly on people. As is pointed out in the study “Intellectual capital in technological innovation” (G. Martín et al.), investment in R&D alone does not develop innovation capacity. It must be combined with intangible assets based on knowledge, on the skills and abilities which people bring to the table, those within the organisation as well as those who interact with it.
Apart from contributing technical expertise, each individual also brings values, aptitudes, skills and beliefs which condition their perception of reality, their behaviour and, of course, the way they tackle challenges and problems. As innovation specialists such as Juan José Goñi and Debbe Kennedy note, this fact is key to generating and developing innovative ideas: “…the people most likely to bring us the paradigm-shifting innovations we need to create new wealth are almost always outsiders, people who know little or nothing about the normal way of doing things - people different from us […]. New wealth is the result of innovation. And innovation is driven by diversity”, Kennedy explains in her book Putting Our Differences to Work.
As we can see, innovation thrives on diversity, which means that differences within an organisation in terms of gender, skills, origin, aspirations or training background help to boost and drive innovation. This is an approach which intrinsically entails the challenge of establishing spaces and a dynamic in which opinions, visions and knowledge can be shared, a collaborative and creative environment which allows innovative solutions to be devised for the business.
The CreO Project has emerged with the intention of facilitating this integration and playing its part in improving business innovation processes with the help of external talent, uninfluenced by an organisation’s own idiosyncrasies. Specifically, CreO aims to integrate the skills of creative professionals from the cultural and creative industries (CCIs) into the industrial sector. It is designed to bring two worlds together, worlds which a priori are assumed to be opposing forces but which in reality, as indicated in the study The Role of Creative Industries in Industrial Innovation (K. Muller et al.), interact with each other in different phases of industrial innovation, “from the generation of ideas to the marketing of new products”.
Consolidating this interaction is the goal of the organisations which lead CreO. They are six European organisations specialised in innovation, training, business and collaborative working which aim to define, develop and test a methodology so that teachers as well as business leaders can facilitate the integration of students on CCI vocational training courses into the industrial sector. This is a system whereby businesses strengthen their innovation capacity thanks to the talent of students specialised in the world of ideas, students who, in turn, will benefit from a wider professional experience. Creative thinking in the industrial sector: diversity for innovation.
The CreO project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the exclusive views of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. Agreement number: 2018-1-ES01-KA202-050289.
Sources:
The Role of Creative Industries in Industrial Innovation. K. Müller. C. Rammer, J. Trüby.
Putting Our Differences to Work. Debbe Kennedy. 2008.
El capital intelectual en la innovación tecnológica. Aplicación a las empresas de servicios profesionales de España. G. Martín, E. M. Alama, J. E. Navas, P. López. 2007.