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Introduction Creativity and innovations are needed because of fierce business competitions within an organisations specific market. In recent years, products produced by any companies in any sector of markets has seen a comparably short product life cycle. As technologies are more advanced nowadays and customers being more demanding, this implies that companies require special or unique products to have the competitive edge to rival against competitors in order for a chance to survive in the competitive market. An organisation will become successful is because of its abilities in nurturing creativity and promoting innovation within the organisation. Henry (2006) suggested that creativity is the process of thinking and it is the driving force that motivates employee to generate one of a kind and useful ideas. Creativity and innovation are both very crucial to an organisations business development in the provision of new services and products and it is central to the repositioning of an organisation in the market. This essay will analyse the role of professional networks, how it improves in fostering creativity and innovation and what lessons can be learnt by managers from network analysis. It is believed that fully utilise all the resources within professional networks can help to foster creativity and innovation to its employees and the expansion of an organisation.

What is Creativity and Innovation In a traditional culture of any given organisation, creativity was only linked to employees that are specially gifted in a particular area and often they would be working in an isolation. Today, creativity exists in a wider range of people and professions and it is no longer an individuals work. It has slowly drifted from creative personalities to creative process in recent years. According to Boden (1996), creativity can be found by exploring and mapping structured conceptual spaces that are have various dimensions and ideas can be found by indepth explorations within those conceptual dimensions. There is a growing scepticism towards individual, trait-base model and often behaviourist models are criticised for not taking surrounding factors into consideration. Todays theories of creativity are based on processes and systems that converge with theories of working in teams, innovation and organisational learning. An example of this is the employment relationship after Fordism, post-Fordism shifted from individual competences to the social and organisational framework.

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There are three components to creativity: Expertise, Creative-Thinking Skills and Motivation. Figure 1 shows how three components are combine together for creativity.

Figure 1 The Three Components (Amabile, 1998)

An employee has creative-thinking skills is important, but having the expertise in relevant field and motivation from the surroundings are also essential (Serrat, 2009). Managers can easily influence creative-thinking skills and expertise, but this is potentially a costly and time consuming process. That is because managers have to hire the right person in order to fit the organisation profile, and it can be considered as one biggest and important decision that an organisation have to make. Given that the organisation have picked the right employee, motivation from managers becomes crucial at this stage.

On the other hand, innovation can be defined as the successful exploitation of new ideas (Besant and Tidd, 2007). Innovations can take place in many forms but it can be broken down into four dimensions: Production, Process, Position and Paradigm; and into 3 forms: Product, Service and Process. It can also happen in small increments or in large scale radical change such as steam and mode of transportation over the years. The work of Joseph Schumpeter in 1934 and 1939 gave a revolutionary perspective that innovation was identify as the golden
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key to any economic development (Andriopolos and Dawson, 2009). In order for an organisation to advance its position within its market, open innovations is very important as it allows new ideas to flow into the organisation, whereas closed innovations would stops its advancement. Table 1 will show the comparison between open and closed innovations (Serrat, 2009).

Closed Innovation Principles

Only smart people in our area work for us

Open Innovation Principles

We work with smart people inside and out the organisation

For research and develop, we do it ourselves in order to make profit

We make use of external research and development in our internal research and development to claim a portion of that value

We will get our discoveries into the market first

The origin of the research does not matter, we can still profit from it

We will win if we get an innovation into the market first We will win if we have the most and best ideas in the industry Competitors will not profit from our innovation process as we have full control over it.

Building a business model is more important

If we make use of existing internal and external ideas, we will win We exchange intellectual property to advance our own business model

Table 1 A Comparison Between Closed and Open Innovation Principles

Adaptation-Innovation theory stresses the roles of adaptors and innovators. Adaptors produce ideas based on exiting definitions of problems and likely solutions, with the use of existing theories, policies and code of practices of organisations. They improve and make things better. On the other hand, innovators breakdown the existing problems from accepted paradigms and produce less expected or anomalies results. They are more concerned with doing things in a modernised way and differently. However, combining adaptors and innovators together, there will be a more successful solutions. That being innovators come up with new concepts and ideas and adaptors could use existing techniques to develop these new concepts and ideas into new models. If they were to act on their own, innovators would struggle to develop their new concepts and ideas as they were unable to progress and adaptors would lack the initial inputs for initiation. By the same analogy, employees that are creative are the adaptors and employees that are innovative are the innovators. In any organisations,
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creative employees are needed to provide the impetus and contents in order for the innovative employees to provide any forms of innovations (Andriopolos and Dawson, 2009).

In order to manage creativity and innovations in a way that keeps everyone (partners and clients) satisfied, there are five levers (Serrat, 2009): 1. Let employees feel challenged about their work to stimulate minds 2. Allow certain amount of freedom about procedures and process 3. Allow them to design their own workgroups to gather ideas from all employees 4. Encouragement and incentives 5. Support from the organisation It is important that the workforce has its own autonomy yet an organisation must maintain and monitor its professional networks both inside and outside the organisation to avoid segregation between workgroups, otherwise the organisation will face difficulties fostering creativity and innovation. in

Importance of Networking and How It Helps to Foster Creativity and Innovation Many people would agree that professional networks help to foster collaboration, cooperation and trust. These professional networks ultimately lead to economic advantage in the labour market on a personal level. It has been found that maintaining and forming social and professional contacts is crucial in recruitment and selection. For an individuals career development and knowledge sharing, networking is also seen as important. Having networks within an organisation can counterbalance the segregation and fragmented structures, therefore it can create a sense of security for employees and foster cooperation. On the other hand, networking is used as job search behaviour, an example of this would be the popularities in joining fraternity groups in the United States universities. Students would join fraternity groups to expand its social network for their future job seeking purpose, giving them an earlier start in planning their career as they might have contacts in the sectors that they would like to work in.

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Networks can be valued in terms of social capital, social capital is a product of aggregated resources held within durable networks of a groups relations (Vershinina et al, 2011). Putnam (2000) sub-divided social capital into two sub groups: y y Bonding capital (with like-minded people) Bridging capital (with people who shares different values)

In his work, he was more in favour of the negative sides of networks, he commented that people who has strong-ties within are network will receive more social capital, mutuality and reciprocity, that is because everyone is like-minded. However, it restricts individuals social network as it reduces the ability of them to make new contacts, creating an inertia for themselves. On the other hand, Coleman (1988) sees social capital has both economical and non-economical outcomes and can be taken place in 3 forms. In a study conducted by Granovetter (1973), supported by Ruefs research (2003), interconnectedness amongst a social network is of high importance and he emphasised on the importance of weak-ties in individuals advantage. Strong ties can lead to alienation and fragmentation within an organisation as there could be different social circles co-exiting in the same working environment. He suggests that weak contacts can assist an individual more in job seeking process in comparison with having strong ties to the industry. Strong ties are developed for people who are like-minded, giving similar output and opinions to work, however, weak ties can lead to innovation and diversity in work output, because of differences in opinions within the network and compromisation is needed, leading to the expansion of the network. It supports Metcalfes Law that quantity is more important that quality, when mutual relationships lock in, the circle of acquaintances shrink. Employees that are at the boarder of the circle have greater access to unexpected connections than those employees that are at the core of the circle. Those peripheral employees are more likely to cross the boundary and are likely to be more creative.

Furthermore, it is believed that the use of both internal and external social networks can increase team effectiveness and innovation performance, contacts with heterogeneous social circles can help to foster innovations as they are likely to facilitate cognitive processes related to creativity and innovation such as flexible thinking, workforce autonomy and diversity in the organisation (Patternson et al, 2009). In a journal title Panorama Inforegio published by European Union Regional Policy (2009), roughly 86 billion was contributed to
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research and development and innovation in order to foster creativity and innovation in European, national and regional levels and much of this money was invested in fostering networks cooperation and clusters. Moreover, it is more than just about the finance in fostering creativity and innovation. European Cohesion Policy (ECP) actively promote cooperation, encourage regions to exchange experience and best practices to develop new opportunities. To put it into an organisational context, organisations should incorporate similar polices as ECP, to invest money into improving its existing professional network and foster creativity and innovation. Burns and Stalker (1961, cited in Lam, 2004) explains that there are Mechanistic and Organic Structures exist in an organisation. In a mechanistic organisation, knowledge of the whole organisation exist at the top of the hierarchy, at the same time, interactions between employees tends to be vertical (answer to superiors). On the other hand, in an organic organisation, knowledge may be located anywhere within the network, the communication tends to be laterally rather than vertical. Thus these factors can lead to a more innovative responses. For example, Japanese firms have gained the competitive advantage in industries such as automobiles over the United States by integrating shop-floor workers and enterprise network, this allows them to plan and utilise organisations work-floor resources in planning and coordinating labour in specialised division and making innovative investment strategies.

Lessons can be Learnt by Managers from Network Analysis Sometimes, organisation did not fully utilise existing resources inside the organisations circle. An example of this would be where excessive resources are not being used by the organisation or suppressing employees talent by not allowing them to voice their opinions. What managers should do is to learn the lesson from Japanese automobile industries, where they integrate shop-floor workers with the enterprise network, so that they can suggest creative ideas and making innovative investment strategies. At the same time, managers should encourage socialisation within the network so that there will not be fragmentations of social circles within the organisation. One would argue that a loosely tied network is unlikely to produce practical outputs because the organisation would receive a lot of opinions expressed by the workforce, therefore, the decision making process will be time consuming. However, a closely tied network consist of employees that are like-minded, they are able to similar and productive output, but in comparison with a loosely tied network, it lacks the

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inputs of creativity and innovation. Employee that are nearer to the boarder to the circle are more likely to gain access to other circles and brings in innovation and creativity.

Moreover, managers should make use of statistical analysis to analyse the efficiency and output of the professional network, through the use of graphs and charts. So they can effectively identify areas that require immediate attentions to make any necessary adjustment. For example, if a particular in a production line has a sudden drop in production rate on a statistical report, managers should investigate the cause of the decrease in rate. These often can often be because of the lack of challenges or lack of encouragement and incentives to employees in that network. Managers can use the five levers mentioned about as an approach to problem arises from network analysis, in order to foster creativity and innovation.

Conclusion Without a doubt, the role of professional networks has play an important part for organisations in fostering creativity and innovation as knowledge and process can be shared amongst employees within networks, both internally and externally. There are advantages and disadvantage to both strong and weak ties within the network, however managers should encourage employees to have weak ties in the professional network so that they is a diversity in the organisation and in order to foster creativity and innovation. Managers should also fully utilise all the resources within professional networks can help to foster creativity and innovation to its employees and the expansion of an organisation.

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References
Amabile, T. (1998) How to Kill Creativity. Harvard Business Review. SeptemberOctober: 7687. Andriopoulos, C. and Dawson, P. (2009) Managing Change, Creativity & Innovation. London: Sage. Bessant, J. and Tidd, J. (2007) Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Chichester: John Wiley. Boden, M A. (1996) Dimensions of Creativity, USA: MIT press. Burns, T. and Stalker, G.M. (1961) The Management of Innovation. London: Tavistock. Coleman, J.S. (1988) Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 94, Supplement: Organizations and Institutions: Sociological and Economic Approaches to the Analysis of Social Structure, pp. S95-S120. Granovetter, M. (1973) The Strength of Weak Ties, American Journal of Sociology, 78 (6) pp. 1360-1380. Henry, J. (2006) Creative Management and Development, London: Sage/OUP. Lam, A. (2004) Organisational Innovation, Handbook of Innovation. Oxford University Press, 2004. Patterson, F., Kerrin, M. and Gatto-Roissard, G. (2009) Characteristics & Behaviours of Innovative People in Organisations Ruef, M. (2003) Innovators Navigate Around Cliques, Stanford Business Magazine. Retrieved 10 January 2012, from http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/bmag/sbsm0305/idea_ruef_networking.shtml Serrat, O. (2009) Harnessing Creativity and Innovation in the Workplace. Knowledge Solutions, 61. Vershinina, N., Barrett, R. and Meyer, M. (2011) Forms of Capital, Intra-Ethnic Variation and Polish Entrepreneurs. Leicester Work, Employment and Society, 25 (1), pp. 101117.