CSG - What is Creativity?

Collaboration in creativity can create many ideas when given a safe space and the freedom to explore good creative processes. Individuals and departments can generate ideas without being concerned about the suggestion's practicality, scale or quality, ultimately leading to the spawning of ideas that challenge the norm and disrupt the marketplace. No idea is bad, as even the most radical suggestions can develop and combine to form new, achievable outcomes.

After generating a pool of potential ideas, projects or recommended improvements, the ‘best’ can be selected and added to a pipeline for further focus, research and development.

What is the difference between creativity and innovation?

So, if creativity is coming up with new and useful ideas, what is innovation? Innovation is all about the implementation of those creative ideas that have previously been generated. Everyone can and should get involved with creativity and think with innovation in mind, however, organisations often have individuals or departments dedicated to innovation (the implementation of these ideas). This is often assigned to departments such as Product Development, Research and Development, Project Teams, etc. Have you ever considered that an organisation can have a lot of creativity within the business, but this does not necessarily mean they have much innovation coming out the other end? Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for organisations to have lots of creative ideas, but lack the innovation to successfully implement these ideas.

In summary:

Creativity = Ideas, Imagination, Recommendations
Innovation = Implementation, Research, Processes

Is Micronclean good at creativity?

Micronclean has a dedicated Creativity Support Group (CSG) consisting of over 20 employees who put themselves forward to undergo creativity training and subsequently facilitate creativity sessions across the business. Since the CSG was formed they have implemented:

• Digital forms to capture company-wide ideas
• Dynamic systems to assign, approve and track all ideas
• Quarterly reports to monitor all aspects of idea generation
• Pop-up stands/creativity sessions at company days and internal events

Micronclean is proud to have onsite Research and Development departments including Product Development and a Laboratory, consisting of project leaders with specialities in the sciences, such as chemistry and microbiology to name a few. It is important to ensure that these departments and many more at Micronclean have a constant flow of creative ideas from across the business so they can add them into their pipeline and begin to implement those that introduce new technological solutions that change the shape of the markets Micronclean serve.

Author
Ryan Ashcroft
Marketing Assistant
Interim Chair of CSG