Learning objectives

After reading this chapter you should be able to:

Introduction

This chapter draws together and develops further a number of themes that have been visited in earlier chapters in this book. Most importantly, this chapter returns to the topics of innovation management and innovation orientation and cultures which were introduced at the end of Chapter 2 and continues consideration of the organizational context for innovation. It also takes into account the nature and challenges of public sector entrepreneurship as explored in Chapter 3. Other sections focus specifically on innovation leadership, innovation teams, innovation strategy and the change management associated with innovation implementation.

Throughout this chapter are intermingled considerations of entrepreneurship, innovation, and creativity, entrepreneurial orientation, innovation orientation and creative organizations. This approach is adopted counter to authors who see innovation and entrepreneurship as separate processes, in the belief that there is actually a considerable overlap. As Ireland, Kuratko and Morris suggest:

We add creativity into the mix because it is widely recognized to be tightly coupled with innovation (as discussed in Chapter 1), and, specifically, considerations of discussions of creative organizational climates complement those discussions associated with the characteristics of innovative organizations.