Today’s organizations – both in business, in education and public sector in general – call for innovation and creativity. Creativity and innovation are vital in school, at the workplace, in research and in the arts. Research has shown that among thirty-three possible characteristics, organizational leaders chose creativity as most important characteristic for leaders. The need for organizations to become more innovative has probably never been greater. Creativity is closely linked to learning, and continuous learning is one of our most important tasks.

Organizational innovativeness, on the other hand, is linked to the very existence of them. In today’s turbulent environment educational organizations need creativity and innovation to meet new challenges: to achieve continuous improvement through renewal, rapid development, and excellent educational service.

After reviewing over two hundred recent studies on innovation and creativity, we can conclude that there is no single answer for creativity and innovation in an organization. The latest research emphasizes a wide and holistic understanding of creativity and innovation. Drawing from the vast body of research, we argue that we need to explore all the major areas of innovativeness in order to fully understand creativity and innovation in the organization, seeing it as a result of the interplay among the person, the task, and the organizational context. The challenge for us is to manage each of these elements. Therefore, the topics in this course include results from all the characteristics and dimensions presented in the latest studies and applications. Managing the person means understanding his or her unique talent, creativity skills, and relationship with the manager. Managing the task involves framing or structuring the problem and alternating between divergent and convergent thinking. Managing the organizational context means engineering the organization's design, communications, physical work environment, organizational culture, and social relations.

We examine creativity and innovation by grouping the various multiple interpretations into five categories:

• Individual innovativeness
• Leadership for innovativeness
• Innovative work environment
• Innovative organizational culture
• Team innovation