The Role of Creativity as a Driver of Innovation

The innovation process is a complex combination of factors. Creativity the development of novel products; Innovation - the process of commercializing the novel product, and; Entrepreneurship - the skills, knowledge and capabilities needed to execute the process, all play a role in taking an idea from concept to market. This paper identifies creativity, in particular, as the driving force of the innovation process. Without novel ideas the innovation process is starved of its raw material. The paper considers a model of functional creativity as most appropriate to the innovation process and describes critical cognitive and non-cognitive components of individual and group behavior that support the production of effective novelty