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Purpose: The importance of creativity and innovation can’t be overstressed today. Especially in the context of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) world, firms cutting across businesses have to pay special attention to building a culture of creativity and innovation around business processes.

Design/Methodology/Approach: The study uses an extant literature review and practical cases to highlight the parameters required to build a culture of creativity and innovation in companies. These parameters lead to the development of the conceptual framework that can help firms sustain innovation even amidst a fast-changing business environment.

Findings: The findings suggest that focus on internal and external forces is required to keep up innovation efforts in the VUCA world. Being agile with a discrete focus on learning is essential to remain creative and innovative for business sustainability.

Research Limitations/Implications: The study is crucial for academicians, practitioners, and policy makers. It is expected to open new avenues of research for further contributing to the body of knowledge related to the field of creativity and innovation while expected to help society by bringing them more innovative products at pocket-friendly prices.

Originality/Value: The study is unique as it delineates the relationship between creativity and innovation in the context of the VUCA world. The research also offers an innovation framework that is a valuable addition to both fields of academia and corporate.

Creativity is a strongly context related, collective and collaborative task across multiple boundaries that are of immaterial and material nature. Numerous factors play a role in the emergence of creativity. Leadership styles and diversity have undoubtedly an impact on team creativity. Creative teams face many processes inherent paradoxes which leaders and members need to balance and overcome together. According to the observations and research findings discussed in this chapter, effective management of diversity for creativity requires a ‘humble leadership’ style as well as different communication competencies and strategies. This book chapter provides theoretical and practical insights for those responsible for diversity management in creative teams, based on two empirical studies conducted between 2019 and 2022. Competencies and strategies are presented that may help leaders and teams navigate through highly dynamic, paradoxical interaction processes and, thus, turn their diversity into a creativity asset. In addition, a glimpse of the Team Creativity Navigator (TCN) is offered, which is a new assessment and development tool that supports leaders’ and team members’ learning processes for inclusive, creativity enhancing collaboration. As such, our chapter is an empirically based conceptual contribution with the objective of providing practitioners (and researchers) with insights into appropriate strategies to boost creativity in diverse teams.

Growing environmental challenge awareness among consumers is today's business reality that pushes for sustainable product development. Governments, industries, and consumers' attention are significantly moved from traditional products to eco-friendly product development. Green product development is the future for manufacturing businesses' survival in most markets. Green product development is an emerging phenomenon and, unfortunately, lacks theoretical and empirical research regarding effective organizational policies and practices for green product development. This study aims at filling research gaps towards green product development by highlighting green employee aspects influenced by leadership for sustainable business growth. The study hypothesized relations between the green effect of transformational leadership on green product development as an outcome through green behaviour, green climate, and green innovative creativity. Data was collected from small and medium enterprises (SMEs) of Karachi through a self-administered survey questionnaire. Results revealed significant support for hypothesized relations through the partial least square statistical tool. This study contributes theoretical and empirical advancement in past literature wherein leadership style influences employee behaviour that leads to predict product development from an environmental perspective. Study inferences suggest for visionary green leadership style for sustainable business growth. Limitations of this study regarding other variable inclusiveness, sampling, and geography are potential extensions for further scholarly investigation.

Elmar Mock's extraordinary story began in a small village in Switzerland. Born in 1954, he was the son of an Austrian immigrant and a Swiss mother. School was difficult, as he struggled with dyslexia. Nevertheless, he graduated from engineering school, obtained a job with a Swiss manufacturer, ETA. By the age of 26, he had co-invented the Swatch. Following the accidental death of his brother, Stéphane, in 1985, he decided to leave his job and launch his own creativity and innovation consulting company, Creaholic, in 1986.

In 2014, Elmar retired from Creaholic and created with his second wife Hélène Mock née Kett, a second company: ‘Mock-Kett’. He has created more than 80 families of patents in various industries and has been involved in more than 600 projects. He is also a member of the advisory boards of some of the spin-offs incubated by Creaholic. He remains active as a speaker and international consultant with ‘Mock-Kett’, which promotes the motivational side of invention. He has received numerous awards and his book ‘The Innovation Factory’ has been published in three languages.

The case depicts a one-of-a-kind creative mindset and offers in-depth reflections on the concepts of creativity, innovation and intrapreneurship and their applications in organizations. ¹

Introduction: Amidst Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity (VUCA), turbulence is a vital component of an entrepreneurial landscape. VUCA world has set a new dynamic in the business environment and organisation’s settings. In such an environment, it is pertinent for entrepreneurs to exhibit creativity, innovative service behaviour, and performance.

Purpose: The study investigates whether creativity, innovative service behaviour, and performance of entrepreneurs are fostered through employee engagement practices in a highly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment.

Methodology: The methodology involves a systematic review and meta-synthesis. By identifying the major topics, a systematic literature review helped critically analyse and synthesise the literature.

Findings: According to the study, corporate entrepreneurial factors like (management reinforcement, reward/reinforcement, job autonomy/discretion, time attainability, and organisational boundaries) entrepreneurial potential, entrepreneurial orientation, human capital, self-efficacy beliefs lead to employee engagement, which, in turn, fosters creativity, innovative service behaviour, and performance among entrepreneurs in the VUCA world.

This chapter first describes the essential aspects of a currently changing world, which is characterised by digitalisation, globalisation and politically unstable situations. Based on this transformation context, key concepts such as leadership, innovation, innovation leadership and leadership competences are introduced, along with a new definition and framework for innovation leadership. The chapter discusses the distinction between innovation leadership and innovation management, and the connecting lines between these two concepts. The innovation leadership framework is described and related to the individual contributions of the authors in the book. The chapter frames these contributions along the dimensions of self-leadership, team leadership, organisational leadership and ecosystem leadership.

One of the two main tasks of innovation leadership, a practice to inspire and enable creativity and innovation in organisations, is to construct a creativity-enabling organisational environment. One form of this main task is using developmental interactions, like mentoring, as innovation leadership practices. A hackathon is one type of innovation contest with three designed phases: pre-hackathon, hackathon event and post-hackathon, involving multiple stakeholders with distinct roles, such as hackers and mentors. In a hackathon, the central activity of mentors is to support the hackers’ innovation process, especially in idea creation and concept development. The mentor role has not been focal in hackathon studies; thus, this chapter addresses the role, impact, and ways to acknowledge the mentors as an integral, contributing innovation leadership practice in hackathons. As an empirical study, this chapter presents the results of a public sector case in a Swedish multi-disciplinary municipality conducting intra-organisational hackathons in three different collocations. The chapter contributes to the literature on innovation leadership at the team level with mentorship in innovation contests in the public sector context by revealing the dual-role tension of innovation leadership in mentor activities in the hackathon event phase from both the hackers’ and mentors’ viewpoints, and the necessity of mentor-benefitting training in pre-hackathon phase.

Purpose: The study discusses various concepts for human resources (HR) executives for effective decision making in VUCA times, talent management, hybrid work business model, creativity and innovation in HR practices, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in HR practices, and flexibility in HR policies.

Need for the Study: The driving truth of this study is to approach a successful dynamic critical model for HR leaders in the IT Industry in Chennai city during VUCA times. Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity are the four main components of VUCA.

Methodology: The essential information was gathered with Google Structures, and testing methods were embraced to review the Snowball Examining Procedure. The 211 reactions were settled for the concentrate after deficient reactions. The auxiliary information was gathered from sources like Papers, Business Magazines, Industry Reports, Articles, and Reading material. The information was dissected with measurable programming SPSS 25 and AMOS 23. The validity check, t-test, correlation analysis, regression analysis, and structural equation modeling (SEM) are the statistical methods used in the study.

Findings: The review results that the free factor is the ability of The board, Crossbreed Work Plan of action, Imagination and development in HR rehearses, Variety, Value and Consideration in HR practices, and adaptability in HR strategies altogether affect the reliant variable viable decision making during VUCA times.

Practical Implications: The study identifies hybrid work models and flexible HR policies as crucial parameters in VUCA times.

Effective leadership is critical in driving innovation and success in organisations, particularly in today’s rapidly changing environment. However, achieving effective leadership at all levels of the organisation can be challenging. This chapter argues that understanding how the brain functions is essential for innovation leaders to achieve positive results and higher rates of success in their projects. By analysing relevant research on neuroscientific functioning patterns and developing interventions based on these foundations, this chapter establishes that the brain’s self-organising ability and cognitive processing systems offer valuable insights for effective innovation leadership. Based on neuroscientific evidence this chapter concludes that effective innovation leadership should focus on inviting others to engaged co-creation, rather than directing others to perform specific tasks as if they were ‘a prolonged arm’. Additionally, effective innovation leadership integrates insights from information processing in the brain by providing behavioural-oriented impulses that activate the brain, enabling individuals to maintain focus, restore motivation or emotional stability, enhance mood and confidence, and increase cognitive flexibility. Evidence-based interventions range from structured breaks to powernapping and walking. The importance of self-leadership is stressed throughout the chapter. By deriving solutions from an understanding of how the brain functions, interventions that may have been known for a long time can become evidence-based and optimised for use in organisations. Future research could explore the intersection of neuro- and behavioural science with leadership to further innovate organisational principles.

Pina Bausch is considered one of the most influential choreographers in contemporary dance. She created a new dance language based on a groundbreaking form of joint artistic inquiry. As a leader, Pina Bausch transformed her company into a chosen family of diverse personalities whom she supported in the development of their individual artistic expressiveness. She encouraged her dancers to contribute to her signature style with inventiveness and authenticity. Her ability to integrate the dancers’ contributions into her pieces and bring them to the fore onstage makes Pina Bausch a prime example of creative leadership. While leveraging her company’s collective genius and international fame through boundless curiosity and artistic integrity, Pina Bausch balanced paradoxes of leading innovation. The essence of her leadership style points to the importance of curiosity, humanity, and embodiment in leader-follower relationships.