AUTHOR
Sener, Pinar; Stockman, Kristina

DATE
2004-06-04

DEPARTMENT
Business Administration and Social Sciences / Industrial marketing and e-commerce

SUMMARY
The business environment is becoming more and more competitive today, since the global competition forces companies to seek ways of improving their products/services. Therefore practicing creativity contributes to a competitive advantages for organizations. By discovering the factors that influence creativity, companies can enhance and improve the environment, climate and culture in the organization. Improvements on the employees’ way of thinking, chaining from conventional thinking to a more creative way of thinking can be achieved by using creative problem solving (CPS).

This thesis covers the interesting and innovative area concerning the utilization of CPS in Swedish organizations, which is also the purpose of this thesis. The focus is on factors influencing creativity, and how the CPS processes and the techniques utilized in these processes can be described. In order to reach this purpose and answer our research questions, we have conducted an embedded case study by interviewing two advertising agencies in Sweden.

Our contributions shows that time is an important factor, along with the climate and surrounding environment, are dynamics that influences the employees’ creative work. Our research shows that there is a CPS process, which regularly involves brainstorming sessions, can be described in most companies, even though the lack of awareness is at presence.

ISSN 1404-5508 / ISRN LTU-SHU-EX--04/192--SE / NR 2004:192