Managing creativity: synthesis and issues at stake in scientific research

Even though there is no consensus as to the definition of the stages that make up the innovative process, most researchers distinguish two main principles: initiation and implementation. Creativity corresponds to the initiation stage, the perception of problems, collecting information, mobilising resources that lead to the creation of ideas. In its wake, innovation is the implementation stage, the generalised distribution. As opposed to creativity, innovation is “the entire process of the appropriation of ideas, their initial regular use to their institutionalisation”. So, innovation and creativity do not have the same function: one enables the creation of ideas, while the other implements and spreads them6.