The relationship between implementation, creativity and innovation in small business ventures

Abstract

This exploratory study investigated venture managers' creativity, the innovativeness of their ventures, and their implementation orientation. The study is important in view of South Africa's poor global ranking in Total Entrepreneurship Activity (TEA), reported by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. Creativity is closely related to entrepreneurial activity as an entrepreneurial skill, and therefore the levels of and relationships between creativity, innovation and implementation need to be assessed to create a basis for investigation and to explore possible reasons for the low entrepreneurial activity in South Africa. The literature on entrepreneurship theory concerning creativity, innovation, implementation and the entrepreneurial process is combined into a conceptual model and precedes the results of a survey among small-venture managers. Firstly, the analysis confirmed the existence of perceptions of own creativity, perceptions of venture innovativeness and implementation orientation of small-venture managers as measurable factors. Secondly, it was found that venture managers do perceive themselves as creative and their ventures as innovative but, contrary to expectations, it was found that implementation orientation was lacking. Thirdly, the absence of expected correlations between creativity, innovation and implementation raised several interesting challenges for creativity development and education in the entrepreneurship domain.

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