Knowledge creation and idea generation: A critical quality perspective

Organisations, from all sectors, are facing a continual need to develop sustainable creativity and innovation as a result of increasingly rapid market, technology and people-based change. The aim of this paper is to briefly critique both knowledge creation (KC) and idea generation as key elements of creativity and innovation. The resultant objectives include the possible use of critically reflexive total quality management constructs as key enablers in this area. Furthermore, the determination of research directions and the enhancement of organisational approaches to creativity and innovation in the area of KC and idea generation. The concepts of distributed cognition and social constructionism are used to develop a taxonomy of KC that draws from different sources and philosophies. Critical total quality management (TQM) constructs and methods are used to illustrate how these forms of KC can be achieved in practice. It is contended that the idea generation literature and practice must address the underlying sources of KC before methods and techniques are devised.