Creative Intelligence and Their Influence

¶ … Creative Intelligence and their Influence on Organizational Decision Making

Creative intelligence has a significant and lasting impact on decision making in organizations. Leading theorists in transformational leadership contend there is a correlation between the ability to motivate and creative intelligence

(Boyatzis, 24). In fact leadership traits of transformational leaders indicate they have the ability to move between transactional and transformational leadership approaches depending on the specific situational requirements in their organizations (Baum, et.al). Creative intelligence then is critical for any organization to attain those strategic objectives that require intensive process integration, cross-functional support, and continued focus on a common, often difficult objective.

Assessing the Impact of Creative Intelligence on Decisions Making

The four types of creative intelligence including intuitive, innovative, imaginative and inspirational and each has a specific impact on organizational decision making. Entire organizational cultures in fact can be based on the predominant creative intelligence within the organization for example (Baum, et.al). In organizations that resist change and rely on the assumption or knowledge base of the company in making decisions, intuition dominates the decision making process (Rowe). It is easy to see based on this fact how quickly in a more complacent or slower-moving culture how intuition could dominate over the other forms of creative intelligence. Organizations tend to resist change and in fact design change out of their structures over time. Intuition is a byproduct of organizational stability yet if relied on too much as part of any organizational culture and its decision making processes, it can become a path to complacency as well.

Innovative organizations in general rely on data to guide their decisions and often create various initiatives and programs internally to nurture and reward innovative concepts and ideas. Google is an example of a corporate culture that has a very high degree of innovativeness. The company has instituted since its founding the Rule of 20% which states that any engineer or developer can spend 20% of their time on projects of interest to them (Gawer, Cusumano,28). Products and services designed using the Rule of 20% now contribute over 50% of revenue to Google, and this includes AdWords, AdSense and others (Gawer, Cusumano,28). The innovative aspect of creative intelligence is the catalyst for economic growth over the long-term for Google and has become engrained in the company culture as a result.

The imaginative aspect of creative intelligence impacts organizational decisions by concentrating on nontraditional solutions to problems or the development of entirely new types of products or services. Apple's culture is one that is strongly influenced by imaginative leaderships and a valuing of this aspect of creative intelligence, especially in new product development. Imaginative aspects of decision making in organizations are also pervasively found in advertising and marketing, where the competition for attention of specific messages can be exceptionally high. Using this aspect of creative intelligence to compete more effectively, organizations choose to define their brands more imaginatively on social networks for example than has been the case in the past. The imaginative aspects of creative intelligence also are aligned with transformational leadership, in that both of them combined can redefine an organization over time (Rowe).

The last facet of creative intelligence is inspiration. This is at the center of the intersection of transformational leadership, organizational structure and creative intelligence (Boyatzis, 22). When decisions are influenced by inspiration, transformational leadership values of accountability, authenticity and transparency all become motivators towards the attainment of exceptionally challenging goals. Decision making that includes inspiration as a creative intelligence often is based on a fundamental shift in strategy and product direction, as was the case with Apple re-hiring Steve Jobs and the launch of the iPhone for example. Now they dominate the market of smartphones as a result of the success of combining inspiration and transformational leadership.