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Creativity is a critical skill across disciplines and contexts, and it is an important trait for humans to survive and thrive, personally and collectively. The fast-paced culture of business innovation has sought to promote and reward creativity as a coveted thinking skill. Creativity in and of itself, however, is a value-neutral construct, because novel and effective ideas may also have negative consequences. This darker aspect of creativity has come to the forefront in many recent cases, particularly in contexts involving digital and networking technologies, where the rapid pace of technological change does not encourage the kind of deliberative thinking necessary for nuanced and ethical business decisions. The authors consider why education is essential for expanding the ethical capacity of creative agency in business, describing the need to bring creativity and ethics together in educational opportunities and cultural values. The authors explore the idea of ‘wise creativity’ and the need to infuse more human-centred learning from the arts and humanities into business fields. Further, the authors suggest better practices for creative business education, such as: infusing real-world ethics learning into business education and professional development; infusing the liberal arts curriculum in business; offering opportunities for arts-based approaches in business learning; and instilling genuine mindfulness training in business education environments. The authors’ focus is on a shift away from a culture that values creativity purely as an instrumental approach for greater profitability, and towards one that values wise and humanizing creativity for good business practices that consider societal and individual wellbeing.

This article discusses how managers can increase creativity from all workers, and how this increase will improve organizational outcomes at all levels.

Paper recommendations are based on existing conceptual and data based garden variety creativity studies. From these studies, a practical, management oriented implementation model is developed.

Managers can substantially improve worker creativity by removing creativity blocks, providing creativity support, and structuring work to promote creativity.

The provided recommendations will improve worker creativity, and this increased creativity will aid companies to better cope with unexpected changes in the business environment.

This paper reports on the development of Aqua Universitas ‐ Anglian Water’s University of Water ‐ and the Company’s journey towards wisdom creation. It supports the Company’s vision of “creating and sustaining knowledge for sustainable water management”. This vision draws on the work done by Nonaka and Takeuchi and recognizes different kinds of knowledge and methods of knowledge transfer. Aqua Universitas will enable Anglian Water to have the best people, teams and organization to provide the best service ‐ through wisdom creation and exploitation.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a perspective on how new interactive media trends affect the creative process in agencies and engage consumers as co‐creators, based on recently published research and observation.

Interviews, participant observation, and secondary analysis of recently published qualitative and quantitative research (1996‐2008) by the author and leading scholars in the field is used in this offering. A review of emerging trends and conceptual thinking in this area prompts the suggested perspective along with an empirical longitudinal global study on what drives creativity in advertising ADCRISP©.

This contribution illustrates examples of how a passionate approach drives creativity and change for an iconic brand. Ethnographic methods are suggested for reconnecting with changing consumers and environments. This viewpoint recognizes the potential of engaging the consumer and unleashing creativity while pointing out potential pitfalls of misplaced marketing and misdirected creativity.

This paper offers a creative viewpoint and a practical direction on how agencies might be more appropriate in engaging the target consumer. The consumer participates as co‐creator and impacts the agency‐client‐consumer creative development process.

This paper describes the qualitative evaluation of Imagine East Greenwich (IEG), a series of arts/health projects developed as part of a regeneration programme on two housing estates in a London borough. The evaluation seeks to identify (through consultation with various stakeholders) indicators for measuring the impact of arts/health on communities, and to itemise some of the key factors that appeared to influence the success of IEG's arts/health projects. The paper reflects on some of the challenges that attend arts/health evaluations and, in so doing, contributes to ongoing debates about the role and value of the arts, notably in deprived and fragmented communities.

With increasing market pressure and fragmentation Small to Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) must move beyond the change philosophy of Continuous Improvement (CI) and develop a culture of innovation. To find out if SMEs could go beyond CI to achieve effective business innovation as a change management philosophy, a literature survey and a research survey on 15 SMEs was conducted to provide additional relevant information. The main research findings were: the SMEs exhibited a range of Continuous Improvement and innovation characteristics – some had adopted a culture of Continuous Improvement, while others had not; the SMEs which had adopted a culture of Continuous Improvement found that it could provide a solid foundation on which to build a culture of effective business innovation; and these SMEs were found to have embraced all the different components of innovation, as measured, more readily than those SMEs which did not have a culture of Continuous Improvement.

This paper explains the concept of cultural synergy and provides a contrast of societies that could be characterized as having high or low synergy, as well as organizational culture that reflects high and low synergy. Within organizations, the research insights reported here center on behaviors and practices that contribute to synergy and success among teams, particularly in terms of international projects. The concluding section describes people who are truly “professionals” in their attitude toward their career and work, and how they can mutually benefit from the practice of synergy. Real European leaders actively create a better future through synergistic efforts with fellow professionals. The knowledge work culture favors cooperation, alliances, and partnership, not excessive individualist actions and competition. This trend is evident, as well as necessary, in corporations and industries, in government and academic institutions, in non‐profit agencies and unions, in trade and professional associations of all types. In an information or knowledge society, collaboration in sharing ideas and insights is the key to survival, problem solving, and growth. But high synergy behavior must be cultivated in personnel, so we need to use research findings, such as those outlined in this paper, to facilitate teamwork and ensure professional synergy. In addition to fostering such learning in our formal education and training systems, we also should take advantage of the increasing capabilities offered to us for both personal and electronic networking. Contemporary global leaders, then, seek to be effective bridge builders between the cultural realities or worlds of both past and future. Cultivating a synergistic mind‐set accelerates this process.

Designated peripheral regions within the European Union (EU) have economies and standards of living which are below average. One of the primary reasons recognised by local government for this poor economic standing has been low levels of innovation within indigenous small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). These SMEs have difficulties in growing and exporting or being part of successful supply chains. The aim of this paper is to explore how innovation is successfully incorporated or hindered in SMEs within an EU peripheral region. An innovation model was applied in a multiple case study methodology involving 41 SMEs. Both quantitative and qualitative data were gathered and analysed. The paper concludes that SMEs must strategically plan for innovation and move beyond continuous improvement, or “kaizen”, and states that such plans must avoid quick fixes and address the underlying cultural barriers to innovation, such as organisational structure, owner‐manager leadership issues, a lack of empowerment and lack of use of employees' ideas and suggestions for innovation.