Purpose – The paper reports on a doctoral thesis at the professorship of Knowledge Architecture, an emerging scientific field at TU Dresden (Dresden University of Technology). This paper is going to focus on the meaning of creativity and its use in knowledge management. Problem description / Background – Today’s society and work transforms into “knowledge society” and “knowledge work”. Inventive developers and managers are required in each field in order to answer ever more complex tasks and to create innovation. Yet, there is not much knowledge application of scientific results on the relationship of the innovation process and the term creativity into manager’s daily life. Experiment / Approach – There is a vast body of literature dealing with the term creativity. Though a clear definition of creativity and its application in terms of knowledge- and innovation-management is still absent. This paper is focusing on the main aspects of creativity defined in the literature and is introducing an architectural perspective into the discussion. The found literature is contrasted with first-hand experiences from technology and science clusters, industry-university cooperation, and other work experiences. Investigations, experiences and experiments by researchers of Knowledge Architecture form the basis for hypotheses about creative processes. Findings / Practical implications – The process of generating ideas and innovation is complex and escapes simple description. Creativity is one of the most important variables in the innovation process, not only in its early stages. Creativity seems to be a significant success factor. Hence, future knowledge work has to be supported in two directions. Firstly: towards a theoretical discourse on the role of creativity due to knowledge- and idea-generation. Secondly: towards practical applications and translation of ideas, e.g. from architecture and design sciences towards management.
Keywords – Creativity, Knowledge, Ideas, Management, Idea-generation, Criteria