Creativity, innovation, and leadership.

In a class discussion about facilitating ideas, the teacher presented the concepts of creativity and innovation. After a class discussion about both terms, we concluded that they are very similar. But we could not differentiate one from the other properly.

During the dialogue, the teacher said something that stuck with me: “creativity can be fun; innovation is a lot about hard work.” As I understood, this meant that creativity has no boundaries. Its made without any schedule, program, or purpose. Although we can have specifics on what we are working on, but by letting ourselves go, we reach far more creative alternatives. Innovation is different; it thrives with structure.

The whole point of using creativity for innovation is that we take what is best from our creative process and direct it towards a specific purpose. To innovate, any creative process needs constraints, for example, a well-planned schedule, realism, and a clear goal. Innovation is about structuring fun processes to serve a resolution.

Even as leaders, it is not always easy to understand the path a project has to take to reach innovation, but if we want a creative solution, we first need to give our team freedom to perform, to be as artistic as they can. From there, we have to constrain the possibilities and shape them towards the goal. Leadership comes from understanding how best to make your creative team structure their thoughts and ideas towards a goal.

For a creative process to become an innovative solution, a leader must establish paths and constraints for the project. We have to understand that without a clear structure and proper limitations, creativity will stay like that. Creativity is part of innovation, but not all creative processes can reach innovation.