Creativity, innovation and implementation: Management experience, venture size, life cycle stage, race and gender as moderators

Abstract

SMME (small, medium and micro-enterprise) development has been identified by the South African government as a priority in creating jobs. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor reports low entrepreneurial activity and suggests entrepreneurial education as paramount for improvement. Entrepreneurial skills depend on creativity and innovation as it distinguishes the entrepreneur from the small venture owner. This study empirically investigated the perceptions of small venture owners about their own creativity, their ventures’ innovativeness as well as their implementation orientation. While levels of self-evaluation for own creativity and venture innovativeness were high, implementation orientation was low and correlations between them were weak and not significant. Notwithstanding the expectation that high creativity will lead to high innovation and implementation, this article reports otherwise.It was found that number of years management experience, life cycle phase of the venture and race (cultural heritage) but not venture size and gender moderate perception of own creativity. Perception of venture innovativeness was significantly influenced by the life cycle phase of the venture only. Implementation orientation was significantly influenced by the number of years management experience, life cycle phase of the venture, venture size and race but not by gender.

An Exploratory Study of Entrepreneurial Creativity: Its Antecedents and Mediators in the Context of UAE Firms

“…If the impact of resource‐related and individual‐related factors on entrepreneurial creativity can be clarified, it can open up alternative methods for entrepreneurial training, particularly in developing more creative and innovative individuals, in addition to helping us understand how public policy may encourage or promote entrepreneurial creativity, which is a major component of economic growth and development (Pretorius, Millard & Kruger, ). In particular, the individual factor creative self‐efficacy can be used to identify reasons individuals avoid entrepreneurial creativity.…”

“…Entrepreneurs rely on their creative abilities to design novel solutions to economic opportunities, to alleviate or overcome constraints of limited resources and to commercialize and grow their new venture. Thus, creativity plays an important role in the entrepreneurial process, enabling entrepreneurs to compete in a competitive dynamic environment (Mambula & Sawyer, ; Pretorius, Millard & Kruger, ; Zhou, ).…”

“…Because it is an inherent characteristic of individuals as they interact within varying situations, creativity is not easily described (Sternberg, ; Lee, Florida & Acs, ). It is also not easy to train for creativity due to its subjective nature (Pretorius, Millard & Kruger, ). Notwithstanding these challenges, Sternberg (), an often cited scholar in the field, defines creativity as ‘the ability to produce work that is both novel, i.e., original and unexpected, and appropriate, i.e., useful’.…”

“…Our emphasis in this research is whether the creative behaviour of individual enterprise owners is influenced by resources‐related and individual‐related factors, and whether alertness to opportunity and intrinsic motivation may serve as mechanisms by which these factors are linked to entrepreneurial creativity. As such, creative behaviour of the entrepreneur can be seen as impacting the entrepreneurial process in producing innovation solutions that meet the changing needs of the market and leads to the entrepreneurial event (Morris & Kuratko, ; Pretorius, Millard & Kruger, ). The entrepreneurial event may include launching of a new enterprise as well as improvements to existing product or service offerings or processes and practices within an established organization.…”

“…Expertise requires domain‐relevant skills and includes all skills relevant to the general domain, which covers everything that a person knows and can do (Pretorius, Millard & Kruger, ). It includes memory for factual knowledge, technical proficiency and special talents in the target work domain (Amabile, ).…”