Creativity is a vital proficiency in business, from marketing and communications to product development to HR. Creative problem solving have much more impact on an organisations sustainable innovation. Where as, Leadership is systematic and orderly. Creativity is hectic and unrestrained. So why is combining the two so important for success of an organisation?

Creativity is an intellectual thought process of generating ideas that are new and potentially useful. All innovation begins with creative ideas. Successful implementation of new programs, new product introductions, or new services depends on a person or a team having a good idea-and developing that idea beyond its initial state. For organizations in the public, nonprofit and the private sector, it is therefore important to foster creativity of their employees. For private organizations, creative employees can help organizations stay competitive, such as by proposing new market areas to explore and new business partnerships to initiate Also for public and nonprofit organizations, creative employees can be beneficial. They can envision new ways to work together with citizens, how to deal with media  pressures and how to give citizens ‘more bang for their buck’ in a dwindling economy). Creativity is needed to make decisions fast and good. On the other hand, only creative leaders have the ability to re-think their business models and come up with ideas to drastically change their enterprise. Creative leaders have to be open-minded and inventive. They have to encourage creativity inside the organisation in any way.

The most successful organisations co-create products and services with customers, and integrate customers into core processes. Two years ago, IBM’s 2010 Global CEO Study , which surveyed more than 1,500 chief executive officers from 60 countries and 33 industries worldwide, concluded that creativity is now the most important leadership quality for success in business, outweighing competencies such as integrity and global thinking. Today’s business environment is volatile, uncertain and increasingly complex. Because of this, the ability to create something that’s both novel and appropriate is top of mind. Without creative thinking, organizations miss out on breakthrough ideas that can become innovations. But in order for creativity to become a global leadership competence, individuals in leadership positions must first recognize the fact that creativity and creative problem solving are 21st century leadership skills.

But according to survey results released earlier this month by AMA Enterprise and the Institute for Corporate Productivity,  creativity is one of the hardest leadership competencies to master. Exceptional leaders can demystify the business challenges and clarify the inevitable ambiguity associated with innovation and change, thus enabling the employees to move forward with as little anxiety and fear as possible as they transform the business together. The keys to making change stick are knowledge and consistency — having a strong understanding of the creative process, tools and techniques to facilitate progress within that process, and using the process whenever solving a problem, like evolution, creativity can happen by chance, but also like evolution, creativity can be deliberately guided. Just as scientists selectively develop particular genetic lines of animals and plants, leaders are able to take control of their own creativity and deliberately bring about breakthrough outcomes and products when they understand the universal creative process.

Trained leaders who are consistent in the application of creative process and creative tools will make all the difference in building a strong creative competence throughout the organization. Leaders know in their gut that creativity and innovation are the lifeblood of their organization. New ideas can lead to programs that are superior to those that are already going on or planned in the organization and which would have been divested or never initiated had a better idea or program come along. So, the mission of every leader should be to search continually for ideas and programs that are superior to the ones the organization is currently committed to. In a word, it’s called PROGRESS. The basic condition for a creative act is to combine known elements into new combinations or perspectives that have never before been considered. Creativity is much more likely to emerge when a person considers many options and invests the time and effort to keep searching rather than settling for mediocre solutions.

If we do not employ creativity as a core cultural imperative in business, we will be stuck in yesterday’s success and actively resist change. The most efficient framework for chief learning offers to promote innovation is to create a culture that rewards creative thinking. Build a professional platform that engages and ignites new ideas. Let go of old perceptions of how social networking works for our kids and create the framework that channels success strategies throughout your learning organization in a viral, fun and strategic way.