Research Data 

A 2000 telephone poll of 291 owners of small businesses by the American Express Small Business Services unit in the USA showed that ¾ of small business owners acknowledge that creative thinking is ‘very important’ (54%) or even ‘crucial’ (20%) to the success of their firm. 24% of respondents say they make no room in their calendars for generating new ideas. Of those that do allocate time for creative thinking, 20% fit in one hour or less per week, 23% devote one hour a day, 16% mark half a day a week in their calendars, and 17% commit at least one day a week to idea generation.

When asked, who usually comes up with the best ideas, nearly half of the survey respondents (46%) gave credit to their employees, with 37% stating it was themselves, 8% from clients and customers, 4% from friends and family, 3% from business advisors and 2% from competitors.

When asked if the best ideas were ever implemented, 2/3 (66%) admitted to only using half or less of the company’s creative thinking. 19% of respondents execute 51-75% of ideas and 4% implement all ideas. The reasons cited for not getting ideas implemented included:

• Budget constraints- 35%;

• Lack of time - 18%;

• Short staffing - 5%; and

• More pressing issues arise - 9%.

In 1999 an interview-based survey of 18 UK companies from 4 different industry sectors was carried out, the majority of the companies had more than 1000 employees. The individual companies were chosen because they were actively pursuing continuous improvement via self-assessment techniques or by other quality improvement mechanisms. The survey was carried out to try to identify factors that influenced the success of continuous improvement programs. Findings from the survey showed that in 72% of companies there was a perception of the encouragement by management of innovation among staff, 50% of these respondents indicated that idea and suggestion schemes were the main mechanisms for achieving this and 28% indicated the use of focus groups and workshops.

A study involving CEOs and 4202 employees from 89 Midwestern USA organisations (each employing between 25 and 250 staff) was conducted to examine relationships between organisational culture, ownership structure, the type of customer, and innovation. Following face-to-face interviews with CEOs and examination of responses from employees, the findings included:

• Initiation and implementation of innovation were significantly enhanced when organisations were family-owned - family businesses initiated and implemented more new ideas than non-family businesses;

• Initiation and implementation of innovation were significantly enhanced where organisations empowered employees to take action and support was provided to them;

• Organisational support was more important for implementation than it was for initiation of innovation;

In a 1995 study of survey results from 294 manufacturers across New Zealand on innovation and research practices and policies, results showed that 41% of respondent companies had formal technology strategies and 51% had procedures in place to improve innovation skills. In 1997 a survey of 350 people from 47 New Zealand manufacturing companies of more than 50 employees was carried out. Results showed that for the exposure of innovation ideas only 8% of companies made use of suggestion boxes, 23% held team meetings, and 12% used quality circles.

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