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Innovation in family and non-family small and medium-sized businesses in South Africa

NMMU students' perceptions of their creativity

  • Authors: Rogers, Angela Louise
  • Date: 2016
  • Subjects: Creative ability in business , Creative thinking , Educational innovations
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MBA
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/8037 , vital:24478
  • Description: Creativity is seen as the driving force behind innovation. It can even be said to be the same process. It is critical to implement the creativity in order for innovation to actually take place. This combination of creativity and innovation is required for economic growth, sustainability, continuous improvement and competitive edge for organisations. Creativity is more than just artistic ability but includes scientific and problem solving steps and basic everyday creativity. This combination would be key in government departments, organisations and universities today. People’s perception on creativity could hamper their growth and development in this key area, not only for themselves but of others that they come into contact with. People’s perception on creativity is that it is either a genius form in either artistic or musical terms or it is not at all creative. They do not necessarily view the everyday tasks as creative. The research approach for this study is positivistic and deductive. The students’ perception of creativity is gathered using a quantitative questionnaire, where they rank their perceptions. The questionnaire was from an international study and it was made available to all students at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. The data analysis will be both descriptive and inferential in nature. The research seeks to examine students’ perception of their own creativity and how they rate various creative products or services. Students are on their way to the pinnacle in their fields and the creativity should therefore be at its peak to be able to take full advantage and to get maximum benefit from it. The research will gain insight into their perception via a questionnaire where they need to rate themselves. The literature review will investigate creativity, innovation and the links between them. It will analyse the importance of innovation to business and the unlocking of creativity. There are many differing ways to unlock and stimulate creativity and some of these are addressed.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

Business school creativity amongst MBA students at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University

  • Authors: Von Solms, Woudi
  • Date: 2014
  • Subjects: Creative ability in business , Creative thinking , Educational innovations
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MBA
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/4255 , vital:20574
  • Description: Innovation allows for competitive advantage. Competitive advantage and innovation lead to economic growth. For innovation to occur, creativity is necessary. All individuals are creative, but continuous practice is necessary to be creative. The process from creativity to innovation and competitive advantage and economic growth involves three stages. The first stage involves educating primary and secondary school children to be creative across different domains. Current school systems focus on mathematical and linguistic skills. Examples of domains are linguistic, performance, mechanicalscientific and artistic. These creative domains can be taught through encouraging children to use their imagination and different methods. In primary and secondary education little-c creativity and mini-c creativity are developed. Little-c creativity involves developing problem solving skills. Mini-c creativity involves the ability to recognise personal creative events, not necessarily recognised by others. Tertiary education involves students gaining knowledge in a specific domain. While studying to gain knowledge and conduct research on a specific domain, practicing creativity is still important. Upon completion of tertiary education the second stage in creating economic growth through creativity and innovation commences. This second stage involves organisations hiring creative employees that have knowledge within a domain similar to the organisation‟s industry. Creative employees develop creative ideas. The creative ideas allow for innovative products to be developed. Innovative products satisfy customer needs and lead to competitive advantage. Managers should encourage employees to be innovative. Employees that are motivated and encouraged to take risks develop a talent within the domain that they are employed in. The ability to be creative and innovative leads to pro-creativity and big-c creativity. Pro-c creativity refers to a talent being developed over approximately ten years. Big-c creativity involves creating products that benefits society positively. Upon creating products that benefit society, competitive advantage is created that allows for the third stage of creating economic growth to commence. This third stage involves economic growth that stems from innovation and creative individuals. Countries currently focus on stage two where they aim to encourage innovation amongst organisations. There is a realisation that to be innovative,creativity is necessarily and that creativity must be taught by means of education. This research study will use a questionnaire by Kaufman (2009, 2012, 2013) to determine how creative students perceive they are and whether they are capable of recognising different levels of creativity. A similar study was conducted in Germany and Mexico. Professor Alexander Brem was asked for the questionnaire. The questionnaire was translated from German to English. The objective is to determine whether students perceive themselves to be creative, thus being innovative within their organisations and indirectly allowing for competitive advantage and economic growth. Kaufmans‟ questionnaire was distributed to Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University Masters in Business Administration students. Ethics clearance was granted and answering the questionnaire was optional.To draw conclusions an Exploratory Factor Analysis was done on creative domains and the levels of creativity students are able to recognise. The first Exploratory Factor Analysis revealed performance creativity as the first factor, mechanicalscientific creativity as the second factor, scholarly creativity as the third factor and artistic creativity as the fourth factor. The second Exploratory Factor Analysis grouped pro-c creativity, big-c creativity and little-c creativity as the first factor, not being able to recognise creativity as the second factor and mini-c creativity as the third factor. The individual results from each factor were discussed. Each factor was further analysed by comparing gender, age, year‟s work experience and type of students to the type and level of creativity. The results show three trends. Firstly, results indicated that respondents perceived themselves to be predominantly scholarly and mathematical-scientific creative. This result is synonymous with secondary research that states that educational institutions focus on enhancing linguistic and mathematical skills amongst students and that developing skills in other domains are seen as less important. Secondly, the ability of students to recognise different levels of creativity decreases from big-creativity to pro-c creativity; pro-c creativity to little-c creativity and little-c creativity to mini-c creativity. Students are therefore better able to recognise large inventions than smaller inventions. Thirdly, results indicated that creativity levels do not differ when gender, age, year‟s work experience and type of students are compared. In this research study the above statements will be discussed in detail.
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  • Date Issued: 2014
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