Organizations and Creativity: Trends in Research, Status of Education and Practice, Agenda for the Future

Publisher Summary The science of organizational creativity is growing such that the knowledge of it is increasing significantly. There are still specific areas were the science of organizational creativity is lagging, however, and organizational scholars should attempt to address those gaps. The US and European scholars seem to be emphasizing somewhat different conceptual and methodological approaches to the study of organizational creativity. Greater dialogue between those two categories of organizational creativity scholars and greater integration of their approaches seems called for. The gulf between the science and the practice of creativity and innovation seems to have closed in some important ways, but continue in others. Surprisingly, (to the current authors, at least) practitioners' approaches to organizational creativity (or, at least, practitioners' descriptions of their approaches) appear to better reflect the scientific literature than the scientific literature reflects applied interests and applications. Moreover, the practice of organizational creativity (at least, in consulting) may also be somewhat more multi-level than is the organizational science of creativity. The manifestly increasing attention being paid to creativity by organizational scientists indicates, though, that practical interest in work creativity is influencing science.