Assignment: Creativity, Innovation, and Foresight in Action

Creativity, innovation, and foresight are closely connected concepts. This week’s reading from the Cambridge Handbook of Creativity introduced the connections between individual creativity, an organization’s capacity for innovation, and the ability to predict coming trends and other important developments successfully. The systematic approaches to creativity overviewed in this chapter offer a wide variety of means to foster creativity, but the most important knowledge you can gain from this reading is the fact that creativity is not an unexplainable phenomenon or a mysterious process. Rather, creativity can be approached systematically in order to seek out opportunities for innovation, based on foresight.

For this paper, you will analyze how foresight, creativity, and innovation are separate, yet interrelated, concepts. To prepare for this assignment, read "Welcome to a World of Change: Life in the 21st century" (Puccio, et al, 2012) and "Moonshots for Management" (Hamel, 2009). Also consider the tensions between innovation and creativity addressed in the article "Institutionalizing Ethical Innovation in Organizations: An Integrated Causal Model of Moral Innovation Decision Processes". Use this article as a foundation for evaluating creativity, foresight, and innovation within an ethical model.

Select an organization – it could be your present company or a previous company for which you worked in the past, or an organization in your personal life (professional, fraternal, charitable, social, etc.) – and describe a situation that demonstrates this organization’s foresight, creativity, and innovation within an ethical model. Some examples situations might include the development of a new product or service, a removal of a barrier to productivity, an action to improve employee productivity, a marketing/advertising campaign that induced more sales, a fund raising drive, a membership drive, etc. Your paper should:

• Provide an analysis of how the organization demonstrated each of these separate concepts (creativity, innovation, and foresight) in an interrelated and ethical way.
• Next, analyze the specific situation you have presented in light of foresight, creativity, and innovation in one of the following ways:
  • Analyze how the situation you have presented reflects at least three workplace trends discussed by Puccio, et al. (2012) or,
  • Analyze how at least three of the management challenges and goals discussed by Hamel (2009) helped you to understand the situation you presented.

Refer to the Week 1 Individual Reflection rubric for this assignment for specific grading elements and criteria. Your Instructor will use this Rubric to assess your work.

Guidance on Assignment Length: Your Week 1 Individual Reflection assignment should be 2–4 pages (1–2 pages if single spaced), excluding a title page and references.