Have you ever met someone who is not creative? Probably all of us are creative. We all try to find excuses when we are too late, or want to leave earlier than planned. Sometimes with really cool and creative ideas. In urgent cases we find crazy solutions for repairing things. We all can design a “something” on a paper if asked. There are a few of us who are creative artists, ok, I admit: between daily creative activities and art creativity there are miles in between, and some of us can also make money being creative. They perform.
But in most of the cases creativity helps us to manage the day. Not more, not less.

Creativity in business is cool – innovation makes the difference!
Creativity is always needed when you need to solve a problem immediately. Often these creative ideas are interim solutions only and help you to manage the spontaneous challenge. Creativity in this case is subjective, and often re-active.

Creativity is important in today’s business world, but it’s really only the beginning. Organizations need to foster creativity. Driving business results by running ideas through an innovation process puts those ideas to work — for companies and their customers. Creativity is the price of admission, but it’s innovation that pays the bills.
Innovation is a completely different thing. If you are innovative, you change something that works. You identify an unmet need.You identify a new way on how to do different and better. You are interested to perform better. Which means you can count/measure it somehow. And you are proactive. Organizations often chase creativity, but what they really need to pursue is innovation. And innovation is based on three phases which require much more than just a creative, spontaneous managing:

• Inspiration
• Ideation
• Implementation

For being able to go through these phases you need the right basis: openness, transparency, and a positive leadership to push innovation.

Therefore, it makes sense to clarify in your teams, with colleagues, for yourself and with your boss whether you should be creative or you take the big approach of innovation.