The Mohammed Bin Rashid School of Government (MBRSG) and The University of Manchester Middle East Centre in Dubai, have released the findings of a research programme into 'Creativity and Innovation in the Dubai Government: Exploring Underlying Factors at Individual, Team and Organisational Levels'. The research explored the level of creativity and innovation within government departments and posed questions to 979 people such as how to encourage greater creativity and innovation. The report identifies 25 recommendations in areas including policies, practices and other interventions that could help improve creativity and innovation, based on the research findings.
Lead researcher, Dr Mark Batey, creativity, innovation and leadership specialist at The University of Manchester's Alliance Manchester Business School, presented some of the initial findings at the recent 2nd UAE Public Policy Forum 2018, held at the Dubai World Trade Centre in January.
Dr. Mark Batey says: "Creativity is closely linked to business performance, growth and organisational success, including governments. Our new research with MBRSG examined creativity and innovation at the individual, team and organisational levels among the staff of Dubai government and it reveals strong and positive responses from staff about their overall levels of engagement with their work and how this positively impacts their creativity.
“Ultimately, the research findings lead to a set of policy recommendations to help staff do more and be more creative. This is critically important because creativity is the source of innovation and every improvement at work starts with an idea and every job requires creativity. Research studies show that creativity can be trained and that creativity training programmes produce improvements on everything from attitudes to improvements in job performance including creativity. This is vital because the actions of the employees of the government will help Dubai achieve its ambitious objectives, and the goals of the UAE National Innovation Strategy will be realised."
According to Dr. Batey, creativity is the capacity to develop ideas to solve problems and take advantage of opportunities and is something that everyone can learn to use more effectively. It allows people to develop ideas to solve problems in different ways and capture opportunities.
Innovation is the application of creativity to produce a new concept, product, service or process delivering something new and better to the world. When we innovate, we work with the creative ideas we have developed and put them into practice. Innovation can take different forms such as the design of new products but also new concepts, like how to lead and motivate people at work, as well as new services and processes.
“Innovation relies on creativity,” adds Dr. Batey. “You cannot innovate without first developing some ideas – so, creativity is the source of innovation. Every improvement we make in the workplace starts with a creative idea.”