Creativity, Innovation and Business Practices in the Matter of Knowledge Management

This chapter addresses one question: do business practices in the matter of knowledge management determine creativity of manufacturing firms? Creativity is measured with a question concerning the extent to which product and process innovations are developed primarily by the firm, primarily by other organizations, or jointly by the firm and other organizations. To deal with this question, we review the literature on innovation in order to see why creativity and knowledge came to be added to the traditional explanatory variables of innovation. The literature suggests distinguishing codified from uncodified business practices of knowledge management. This chapter distinguishes five forms of uncodified practices of knowledge management: business network, information network, research network, participation, and relational assets. As for the forms of codified practices of knowledge management, we distinguish four forms: acquisition of knowledge embodied in advanced technologies, creation of knowledge through R&D activities, capacity of knowledge management through the ratio of scientists and engineers in firms, and structured mechanisms for sourcing knowledge. Barriers concerning the lack of cooperation with providers of knowledge, the number of employees and sales are also used as explanatory variables of the creativity of firms. The data used for this chapter come from an innovation survey administered from April to June 2000 to 440