In today’s business world, characterized by dynamism and vigorous competition, enterprises must seek ways to secure a competitive edge. An organization can establish and maintain a competitive advantage by creating a culture of innovation and organization. Relatedly, this report explores how HMD Global can infuse creativity and innovation in its organizational culture. HMD is a Finnish corporation, established in 2016, specializing in mobile technology. The company manufactures the Nokia brand smartphones (Who we are | HMD Global, 2020). Since HMD Global operates in the technology realm, creativity and innovation are essential to its success.
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Ideal Qualities and Characteristics of the Company Employees for Cultivating a Culture of Creativity and Innovation
Creativity and innovation allow an organization to exploit change as an opportunity. However, for this to happen, a company needs to have employees with ideal qualities and characteristics, to establish a culture that allows creativity and innovation to thrive. These include risk-taking, a growth mindset, determination to change the status quo, teamwork spirit, effective communication and interpersonal skills, and self-confidence.
Risk Taking. Creative and innovative individuals are characterized by the ability to take a calculated risk. According to Hon and Lui, free-flowing creativity and innovation involve significant considerable risk-taking (p.14). HMD Global employees, therefore, need to embrace risk-taking to achieve a culture that promotes creativity and innovation.
A Growth Mindset. Where creativity and innovation are involved, challenges and setbacks are inevitable. A growth mindset is necessary to ensure that an individual persistently strives for excellence despite the challenges and setbacks. Employees with a growth mindset view challenges and failures as learning opportunities, which allows them to keep pushing (Hon and Lui, p.18). This mindset will enable HMD employees to keep excelling even in the face of adversity; consequently, facilitating creativity and innovation.
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Challenge Status Quo. Creative and innovative individuals are action-oriented, always seeking means to change the status quo for the better. This enables them to research and seek innovative approaches to address underlying problems. As a result, they create a work environment characterized by creativity and innovation (Hon and Lui, p.18). Thus, HMD needs employees who are determined to achieve continuous improvements in everything they do.
Team Work Spirit. According to Mumford and Todd, teamwork is the backbone of creativity and innovation. Whereas a person can innovate new things or approaches individually, teamwork facilitates and enhances the creativity and innovation process (p.41). HMD, therefore, needs to emphasize collaboration among its employees by creating a culture that promotes team spirit.
Communication and Interpersonal Skills. Creativity and innovation thrive in a culture characterized by effective communication and the presence of strong, meaningful bonds and relationships among the employees. Communication and interpersonal skills strengthen team spirit, thereby promoting a collaborative culture (Mumford and Todd, p.58). As mentioned in this paper, collaboration is essential to creativity and innovation.
Self-Confidence. Without self-confidence, an individual cannot challenge the status quo nor take risks. Self-confidence is, therefore, a crucial quality for HMD employees to have. According to Mumford and Todd, one may have great ideas, but without self-confidence, they can never actualize the ideas (p.60). Therefore, self-confidence is crucial to establishing a creative and innovative culture.
Ideal Background and Experience Needed for Company Leaders
To establish and maintain a creative and innovative culture, HMD leaders need to have the qualities and characteristics discussed in the section above. Moreover, they must have a background and experience that align with the promotion of creativity and innovation. To start with, they must have experience in leading change. The technology industry is characterized by dynamism and, therefore, the need for players to keep changing to maintain a competitive advantage. As a result, the ability to lead change is essential to fostering an organizational culture centered on creativity and innovation.
Secondly, HMD leaders need to have high-risk tolerance and experience managing employees working in a flexible work environment. Flexibility in the workplace is essential to creativity and innovation. According to Cohendet, Parmentier, and Simon, it allows employees to try new approaches and things, which lead to the inception of innovative products and processes. If leaders micromanage employees or emphasize they stick to the established ways of doing things, it smothers creativity and innovation (p.27). As such, it is imperative that HMD leaders have a background and experience working in a workplace that encourages flexibility and risk-taking.
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Lastly, the leaders need to have background and experience in motivating and inspiring employees. Employees can have qualities and characteristics necessary to foster a creative and innovative organizational culture; however, without leaders who inspire and motivate them to create and innovate products and processes, they are most likely to accept the status quo (Cohendet, Parmentier, and Simon, p.32). Therefore, it is crucial that HDM have leaders who can effectively motivate and inspire the workforce to dedicate its time and effort towards creativity and innovation.
Leadership Qualities and Characteristics the Employees Should Have to Create a Culture of Creativity and Innovation
In the modern-day corporate realm, it is important that employees possess leadership skills. There are many leadership qualities and qualities that HMD employees should have to be effective in fostering creativity and innovation. However, the two most important ones are having a growth mindset and being action-oriented.
Action-Oriented. When an individual is action-oriented, he/she gets things done, whether on their own or through other persons. Hence, they follow through on their commitments and make sure other people do as well (Mumford and Todd, p.78). Having the action-oriented ability will see HMD employees strive to foster a corporate culture undergirded by creativity and innovation as well as push each other to work towards achieving the goal. Consequently, this will allow HMD to establish and maintain an organizational culture emphasizing creativity and innovation.
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A Growth Mindset. As explained earlier in this report, a growth mindset allows an individual to thrive even in the face of challenges and adversity. As a leader having a growth mindset allows one to influence team members to embrace challenges and view them as opportunities for learning and growth. As a leadership quality, a growth mindset will allow HMD employees to remain creative and innovative even when situations are challenging, or ideas keep failing to achieve desired results.
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Ideal Organizational Culture for Cultivating a Culture of Creativity and Innovation
HMD’s ideal organizational culture is one that places creativity and innovation at the heart of its operations. The culture entails various dimensions that define a creative and innovative environment. Firstly, it is challenging so that it gives employees a sense of meaningfulness in their work. Secondly, it promotes risk-taking by emphasizing tolerance of new ideas and willingness for experimentation and freedom of problem-solving and decision-making. Thirdly, it embraces flexibility, characterized by dynamism and liveliness, to facilitate the creation of new things and thinking. Fourthly, it is marked by openness so that individuals are open to new ideas, and the said ideas are received with attention and respect. Lastly, the culture is undergirded by an effective two-way communication framework. Effective communication promotes teamwork and collaborations, which are essential to creativity and innovation. It also provides employees with efficiency in exchanging information that can birth innovation.
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