Innovation, creativity, and design are all very important parts of creating and keeping a competitive advantage in today’s competitive business world. Even though these words need each other in order to make business run smoothly, their definitions are both similar and different at the same time.
Innovation is defined as the introduction of something new. Innovation equals creativity plus implementation. Creativity is defined as the idea itself and the definition of implementation is putting the idea into practice. Implementation has three aspects; idea selection, development, and commercialization along with creativity.
Implementation is a team effort and there needs to be processes, procedures, and structures in place that will ensure that projects will be done correctly and on time. If the company lacks creativity then the implementation may not go as planned. Design is the conscious decision-making process by which information (an idea) is transformed into an outcome, be it tangible (product) or intangible (service) (Stamm, 2003).
Comparing design, innovation, and creativity is easy to do. They all need each other. Without creativity, design and innovation would be a flop. Without Innovation, there would be no creativity or design. Without design, there would be no creativity or innovation. All of these stages need each other and are crucial to the well being of the end result. All of these stages all require a team effort. Putting different minds together give different aspects and angles of perception and will make for a more outstanding end result.
In contrast, these are all different stages and should not be combined into one stage. All of these stages need each other, but only to complement each other in different stages. Innovation, creativity, and design are still three different terms with three different meanings and will have three different outcomes.
Innovation, creativity, and design work hand in hand with each other and at the same time mean different things. Without all three, a company would not have a competitive advantage and would not be as successful as they could be.