The Heart of Innovation - Managing Apparent Paradoxes

By Dimis Michaelides

The Heart of Innovation – Managing Apparent Paradoxes © is a mini-book on how to manage opposing forces when leading innovation in an organization. Readers will discover why all these forces are all vital to the life of an organization. Through a series of expert tips they will learn how to actively facilitate the co-existence of four paradoxes that matter: a top-down and a bottom-up innovation process, the mobilization of individuals and teams, the balance of change and continuity, and the conscious juxtaposition of imagination and reason.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Performa Productions
• Release date: May 26, 2019
• ISBN: 9789925757015

Dimis Michaelides

Dimis Michaelides is a speaker, author and consultant on leadership, creativity and innovation, and a performer of magic, music and improvisational theater. Ros Taylor is a psychologist, author of eight books, international presenter and CEO of RTC Leadership and Coaching. Through the creative efforts of others, she aims to make herself redundant.  Ümit Inatci is an artist, poet, writer, designer, film maker, academic and art critic, and a chronically anachronistic primitive of the future, a modern shaman.

Book preview

Dimis Michaelides

Introduction by Ros Taylor

By the same author

The Art of Innovation – Integrating Creativity in Organizations ©

Art by Ümit Inatci

Published by Performa Productions, 2007, 2011

Y2.200K – a chronicle ©

Artwork by Ümit Inatci

Published by Armida Books, 2018

ISBN (e-book) 978-9925-7570-1-5 

Copyright Dimis Michaelides

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without permission of the author.

First edition May 2019

Contact [e-mail]

Website www.dimis.org

Cover painting by Ümit Inatci  

CONTENTS

Introduction

Apparent Paradoxes 

Top-down and Bottom-up

Individuals and Teams 

Change and Continuity 

Imagination and Reason 

Apparent Resolution

About the author    

INTRODUCTION

Creativity and innovation go hand in hand. One cannot exist without the other or what you get is a rearrangement of furniture. But how can business and its leaders be creative and innovative is the question that lies at the heart of this book. There are many myths surrounding creativity and innovation, for example, that creative people are eccentric personalities who are different from the rest of us, that creativity is really about the arts and has no place in business life, or indeed, that the greatest creativity comes from the lone genius: witness Archimedes and Sir Isaac Newton. Also, many business owners can be heard to say, It might be OK for the Googles of this world who have money to throw at creativity but not me in my small business.

These myths have been challenged by a robust body of research, spearheaded by Professor Teresa Amabile of