Creativity and knowledge management

Abstract

PurposeInnovation within companies is becoming mandatory and vital. A policy of voluntarism aiming at supporting innovation can be based on an operational process managing the evolution of the firm's intellectual corpus, becoming a tool for innovation. This paper seeks to explain and demonstrate the link between knowledge management and innovation.Design/methodology/approachThe fundamental assumption is to regard knowledge creation as an intellectual corpus evolution process, based on knowledge workers' creativity. Their creativity is stimulated by the critical analysis of the intellectual corpus, which leads to the creation of new technologic trajectories in continuity or divergence from existing trajectories. Based on a systemic model of intellectual capital, the analysis of the dynamic of knowledge has shown that the increase of value of intellectual capital may be described as an evolutionist process.FindingsAn experiment was conducted to validate the assumptions based on the analysis of the intellectual capital of a company, on the process of generating new items for the intellectual capital, on the regulation of this process by a community of knowledge workers and based on the integration of the results into the value chain of the organization.Research limitations/implicationsBased on interviews with experts about their inventive tracks during recent decades, the main limitations/difficulties come from making the inventory of the intellectual corpus of an organization.Social implicationsSocial implications include an emphasis on the projection of experts' inventive tracks onto the knowledge map of the organization.Originality/valueThis paper links intellectual corpus and creativity: creation leads to intellectual property rights.

Situational appropriation of information

“…Similarly to how the adoption of the ICTs to fit in particular cultural settings with distinct characteristics and societal needs has been described as a situational appropriation rather than a reception of commodity (Feyten & Nutta, 1999, p. 3), we argue that the exploitation of information is not necessarily best described only as a human-centric processes of finding, receiving and 'using' information, bricolage (Baker & Nelson, 2005;Garud & Karnøe, 2003), creativity (e.g., Smith & Paquette, 2010;Saulais & Ermine, 2012;Kuhlthau, 2008), innovation (e.g., Esterhuizen et al, 2012;Iacono et al, 2012), or in more general sense sagacity (Cunha et al, 2010), bisociation (e.g., Dubitzky et al, 2012;Garud & Karnøe, 2003), Sense-Making (Dervin, 2003) or learning. The notions of creativity and bisociation foreground arbitrary associations, bricolage and improvisation focus on somewhat different aspects of the reuse and reorganisation of information, sagacity and Sense-Making the cognitive dimension of the information processing, and innovation the significance of the generation of new ideas from the human point of view, but none of the approaches is specific about that what happens to information when it becomes informational in a particular context.…”

“…Unlike the concepts of bricolage (Baker & Nelson, 2005;Garud & Karnøe, 2003), creativity (e.g., Smith & Paquette, 2010;Saulais & Ermine, 2012;Kuhlthau, 2008), sagacity (Cunha et al, 2010), bisociation (e.g., Dubitzky et al, 2012;Garud & Karnøe, 2003), Sense-Making (Dervin, 2003) and, for instance, innovation (e.g., Esterhuizen et al, 2012;Iacono et al, 2012), the situational appropriation of information is situation driven and based on the application of existing instrument (information) in an emerging situation. In spite of the existence of preprogrammed preferential uses, information can be applied in many different ways, and similarly to how Twidale et al (2008) suggest that "a successful system is likely to be one that supports appropriation, where people use it in productive ways that the designers had never intended" it might be suggested on a more abstract level that a successful information ecology (as defined in Davenport & Prusak, 1997) is open to the situational appropriation of information.…”

“…Savolainen (2009b) notes that much of the recent discussion on these topics in information disciplines is characterised by a certain propensity for constructivism in a broad sense of the term. The specific moment when something happens has been discussed in more specific terms, for instance, as bricolage (Baker & Nelson, 2005;Garud & Karnøe, 2003), creativity (e.g., Smith & Paquette, 2010;Saulais & Ermine, 2012;Kuhlthau, 2008), sagacity (Cunha et al, 2010), bisociation (e.g., Dubitzky et al, 2012;Garud & Karnøe, 2003) and innovation (e.g., Esterhuizen et al, 2012;Iacono et al, 2012). Even if the scope of these latter types of studies vary, they have a strong tendency to focus on extreme cases of sagacity, for instance, in science and scholarship (e.g., Andel, 1994) and business innovation (Bean & Radford, 2001).…”

“…"resourcefulness and improvisation on the part of involved actors" (Garud & Karnøe, 2003), creativity (e.g. Smith & Paquette 2010;Saulais & Ermine 2012;Kuhlthau 2008;George 2007, "related to the capacities which allow ideas generation" Saulais & Ermine, 2012), sagacity (keenness of insight) (Koh, 2000;Cunha et al, 2010), bisociation (a capability to "join unrelated, often conflicting, information in a new way" Dubitzky et al e.g., 2012) and, for instance, innovation (e.g., Esterhuizen et al, 2012;Iacono et al, 2012), defined by Baregheh et al (2009Baregheh et al ( , p. 1334 as "multi-stage process whereby organizations transform ideas into new/improved products, service or processes, in order to advance, compete and differentiate themselves successfully in their marketplace".…”

Does knowledge based psychological ownership matter? Transformational leadership and knowledge hiding: A proposed framework

“…This is as a result of its positive impact on organizational performance (Alegre, Sengupta, & Lapiedra, 2011;Emadzade, Mashayekhi, & Abdar, 2012). It encourages creativity and innovations in the organization (Nonaka & Lewin, 2010;Saulais & Ermine, 2012;Sigala & Chalkiti, 2015). Described as "the process of capturing, developing, sharing, and effectively using organizational knowledge" (Davenport, 1994), knowledge management contributes to the achievement of organizational competitive advantage (Meihami & Meihami, 2014;Rahimli, 2012).…”