The Future of Creativity and Innovation

I am interested in creativity and innovation and where the two intersect. So I plan to cover this topic for a while. First I looked at a definition of creativity and Wikipedia, of course, provided a good start.

Wikipedia says, in part, "Creativity (or "creativeness") is a mental process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations between existing ideas or concepts. From a scientific point of view, the products of creative thought (sometimes referred to as divergent thought) are usually considered to have both originality and appropriateness. An alternative, more everyday conception of creativity is that it is simply the act of making something new. Unlike many phenomena in science, there is no single, authoritative perspective or definition of creativity. Unlike many phenomena in psychology, there is no standardized measurement technique.

Okay, now to the section on innovation that compares the two, "It is often useful to explicitly distinguish between creativity and innovation. Creativity is typically used to refer to the act of producing new ideas, approaches or actions, while innovation is the process of both generating and applying such creative ideas in some specific context. In the context of an organization, therefore, the term innovation is often used to refer to the entire process by which an organization generates creative new ideas and converts them into novel, useful and viable commercial products, services, and business practices, while the term creativity is reserved to apply specifically to the generation of novel ideas by individuals or groups, as a necessary step within the innovation process."

With opportunities to be innovative in today's world, it is interesting to note that companies are careful to define ownership of innovations by employed staff - so that the creator of an innovative idea within that environment really does not own this idea or concept, no matter how original it may be. Unless these companies begin to provide equity into these ideas, more and more innovators will work freelance and the fabric of the creative and innovative team environment will decline.