Creativity and innovation performance at the industry level: An empirical study in Brazilian Firms

In a context of constant change and a competitive market, companies need to generate new ideas more often and faster in order to offer new and differentiated products. Creativity is an important feature that companies can use to face this situation. In this line of reasoning, this study tries to answer the following question: Which creativity factors in organizational settings are related to innovation performance? The population of this inquiry consisted of 343 industrial firms from the Southern Region of Brazil and the instrument for data collection was made available at Google Drive technology. As a result from this data collection procedure we obtained responses from 37 industries. The data analysis was based on a statistical descriptive and correlational analysis, using nonparametric techniques. The results of this inquiry allowed us to conclude that there are significant relationships of some factors of promotion, stimulus and support to creativity with innovation performance. Based on these results, we can conclude that although there are many variables that may be associated to the sustainable growth of industries, there is evidence that stimulus factors, especially good mood, should be considered as creativity inductors and should therefore be considered as part of the innovation management effort at the firm level. Considering the circumstances under which the study was conducted and its peculiarities, the conclusions and underlying recommendations should be viewed with limitation. In this sense, we recommend to expand the study to a larger number of industries.