Managing innovations and creativity – How Disney keeps ideas coming

Ecclesiastes

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Table of Contents

1.  Introduction to the case  2

2.  Literature review in the disciplines of innovation and creativity  2

3.  Analysis of Disney s way of managing innovation and creativity  3

4.  Conclusion  7

  References  8

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1. Introduction to the case

The movie industry is one of the industries with the highest demands on innovation and creativity. Hence, creativity and innovation are vital for long term business success. Innovate or die, as Gary Hamel (2000) says. The case study ‘How Disney Keeps Ideas Coming’ describes how Disney - one of the most successful American movie companies – achieves a high amount of creativity and innovation. The following case report discusses Disney’s approaches for achieving creativity and innovation.

During the following case study report, I will first start with definitions of innovation and creativity. After that, I will compare Disney’s approaches with the identified approaches in the literature concerning creativity and innovation in organisations. At the end of the report, I will give a conclusion and summarise the main findings. I will not include a separate chapter about how I would encourage creativity in my organisation. This would depend mainly on the employees, the industry, the organisation, the company size and the business model of my organisation. Nevertheless, I will analyse and assess suitable methods for encouraging creativity and innovation in the text.

2. Definitions of innovation and creativity

Innovation and creativity were already discussed 300 years before Christ but are still very popular and important topics. (Allison, 2004) Heraclitus wrote about the continuous flow of events which changes the present permanently. (Freeman, 1993) According to him, there is no status quo which remains unchanged. This description sounds like the ideal processes every company should achieve in the areas of innovation and creativity. In addition to that, Ecclesiastes developed the philosophical concept that no idea is unique because it was already thought or is based on other ideas. (Freeman, 1993) If you focus now on the current definitions of innovation and creativity, it can be said that innovation is defined as “the introduction of new ideas, goods, services, and practices which are intended to be useful”, according to Wikipedia (2005a). In addition to that, the definition for creativity retrieved from the web site of Princeton University is “the ability to

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