The Psychology of Innovation in Organizations

In today's highly competitive market, organizations increasingly need to innovate in order to survive. Drawing on a wealth of psychological research in the field of creativity, David H. Cropley and Arthur J. Cropley illustrate practical methods for conceptualizing and managing organizational innovation. They present a dynamic model of the interactions between four key components of creativity - product, person, process, and press - which function as building blocks of innovation. This volume sheds new light on the nature of innovative products and the processes that generate them, the psychological characteristics of innovative people, and the environments that facilitate innovation. It also fills a significant gap in the current literature by addressing the paradoxical quality of organizational innovation, which may be both helped and hindered by the same factors. The authors demonstrate that with proper measurement and management, organizations can effectively encourage individuals to produce and take advantage of novel ideas.

1. Understanding innovation: a reorientation; Part I. Basic Concepts: 2. Products: what does innovation lead to?; 3. Process: how are innovative ideas formed?; 4. Person: the personal resources that support innovation; 5. Press: where the innovation happens?; Part II. Managing Innovation: 6. Paradox: the contradictions of innovation; 7. Measuring the building blocks of innovation; 8. Innovation and organizational performance; 9. Managing the paradoxes of innovation; 10. General conclusions.

David H. Cropley is Associate Professor of Engineering Innovation at the University of South Australia. His publications include Creativity and Crime: A Psychological Analysis (with Arthur J. Cropley), The Dark Side of Creativity (with Arthur J. Cropley, James C. Kaufman and Mark A. Runco), and Creativity in Engineering: Novel Solutions to Complex Problems.
Arthur J. Cropley is Emeritus Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Hamburg. He was the founding editor of the European Journal of High Ability (currently known as High Ability Studies), and he is the author or editor of twenty-eight books, which have been widely translated.