Networked creativity: a structured management framework for stimulating innovation A. Brennan a , L. Dooley b, * a Information Technology Department, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland b Department of Management and Marketing, University College Cork, Ireland Abstract The effect of today’s turbulent environment means that organisations need to improve their competitive advantage and swiftly respond to changing technology and markets. An organisation’s ability to continuously innovate its products and business systems is essential to its future success. However, this ability to stimulate innovation is highly dependent upon the stock of potential ideas and problem solutions, which is available to feed the innovation process. These ‘seedlings of innovation’ are the product of the creative processes of an organisation. Whilst continuous, sustainable innovation is an essential competitive capability for future organisational success, to date the creative process has been allowed to operate in an ‘ad hoc’ and serendipitous fashion. Continuous innovation means that organisations need to be able to effectively manage their creative processes to ensure their innovation process has a plentiful supply of good ideas and solutions. To this end, a framework for enhancing networked creativity is presented as a means towards the effective management of the creative process within organisations. q 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Innovation; Knowledge sharing; Networked creativity framework 1. Introduction “Intensifying global competition increasingly challenges domestic and multi-national firms. Global markets are becoming more fluid, requiring firms to respond to challenges from new competitors, new partners, new products and new technologies at an ever increasing pace” (Reddy and Reddy, 2002). Today’s organisations are faced with the challenge of providing a wide variety of products at reduced prices, whilst still remaining competitive. This can result in ‘whole markets appearing, disappearing and mutating at an alarming rate’ (McCarthy and Tsinopoulos, 2003). Organi- sations need to constantly improve their competitive advantage and respond faster to changing markets by reducing costs, improving quality, becoming customer- driven, increasing productivity and/or innovating. However, the changes introduced by most organisations more often than not address the first four of these factors and less often the last (Roffe, 1999). In this paper, we firstly codify our analysis of creativity theory under seven core groupings and then identify areas of potential concern where organisations may need to focus in order to support their creative process. Based on this analysis and the organisational requirements distilled from the theoretical analysis, a framework for enhancing networked creativity is proposed. The goals of this frame- work are: (1) to achieve effective knowledge management within an organisational context with respect to creativity and (2) to enhance the level of creativity occurring within organisations. Thus, this framework may assist an organis- ations’ management in their efforts to enhance and manage creativity through offering a potential infrastructure for the conversion of creativity theory and models into practice. 2. Importance of creativity ‘Creativity is a combination of flexibility, originality and sensitivity to ideas which enable(s) the thinker to break Technovation 25 (2005) 1388–1399 www.elsevier.com/locate/technovation 0166-4972/$ - see front matter q 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.technovation.2004.08.001 * Corresponding author. Tel.: C353 21 4903027; fax: C353 21 4903377. E-mail address: l.dooley@ucc.ie (L. Dooley).