Creative Climate a Prerequisite for Supporting an Innovation Culture: A single case study at CEVT

Abstract

Innovation is a widely used concept, which is considered as an important factor to remain competitive in an everchanging business environment. Research suggest that creativity is a prerequisite for innovation to occur. Creativity relates to the generation of new and useful ideas, whereas innovation is considered the implementation of those ideas. Meaning that companies must first create or develop an environment that promotes creativity in order for innovation to occur at a later stage. CEVT, that is the research subject for this exploratory case study, has the vision to become ‘World Leading Innovation and Research Centre, Developing cars for a different tomorrow’. Through a qualitative research method performing semi-structured interviews, the research aims to assess the current creative climate at CEVT in order to give recommendations on how the company can support the development of a successful innovation culture. A framework was therefore developed by the authors, which includes seven categories containing different success factors and activities for developing an innovation culture. The findings show that the categories organizational structure and processes, management support and resources have the greatest impact on the current creative climate at CEVT among the categories in the framework. The company demonstrates great potential in fostering a creative climate through its management support. To improve it further, findings suggest that the company should focus on the communication of the strategic direction and alignment of resources for creative activities, to support the innovation culture.