Creativity in firms : the oriental approach

Abstract

Everybody talks about creativity, we know it is a personality trait and that it seems to be what companies look for the most, yet what it entails and how it emerges or how culture sculpts it is still unknown to the majority of us. Regardless of the sector or industry, innovation is needed to be flexible and survive. However, creative industries are particularly bounded to look for uncommon projects and procedures. In light of the upraising demand for new products and competitive performance we come across different methods to promote creativity, criteria to evaluate and monitor it, workplaces “atmosphere” and so on. In this project we have proposed focusing on a particular creativity approach which is the Oriental one, to be more exact the East Asian one whose representative is going to be Japan. The main aim of the project will be analyzing Japanese´s current system and way of proceeding in every organization according to their pillars. To do so we will set a theoretical framework first to know what to pay attention to in the Japanese approach, and then we will dig into the Japanese history, economic history, their most popular religions, educational system, ethics, paradigms, safety and the Yakuza band, the company culture and its basic principles, relationships, etiquette, structure, hierarchy, philosophy, and methodology (which englobes three now internationally known models) to argument how they deal with creativity. Lastly, we will display the conclusions drawn from this project besides the limitations in this case-study and potential improvement proposals.