Stimulating Creativity Methods and Innovative Performance in European Countries

A widely debated topic during the last decades focuses on the companies’ opportunities to acquire corporate competitiveness due to research, innovation and development. Thus, in the context of increased competition and current global challenges, fostering creativity and innovation is a way to boost economic growth and welfare of European countries. New and original ideas, skills, competencies and innovations they all could enable to achieve competitive advantages. Creative ideas and innovative solutions are crucial for the European countries in order to overcome the current economic crisis. This paper aims to study the impact of stimulating creativity methods used by companies on innovative performance of the country. The study is based on identifying correlations between using stimulating creativity methods – such as brainstorming sessions, financial incentives for employees to develop new ideas, job rotation of staff, multidisciplinary or cross-functional work teams, non-financial incentives for employees and training employees on how to develop new ideas or creativity – and, by the other hand, innovative performance of European countries, synthetically expressed by Summary Innovation Index. It also quantifies and scales the intensity of influence using each stimulating creativity method. The results of this study can be a real help for companies to identify the most appropriate stimulating creativity methods in order to increase the innovative performance. Thereby, the main output of the study consists in the fact that using the most effective methods of stimulating creativity the companies will be able to increase their innovative potential and they could obtain long-term competitive advantages.