Manuel Rodenes Adam

Editorial-Creativity and innovation

This special issue shows that creativity and innovation are complex, broad, multiform concepts that can apply to any sector, in accordance with the means used for the communicating the firm’s values in terms of the ways of managing work, the desirability or otherwise of receiving from professional consultants, alliances, retail distribution or innovations in teaching. The articles we go on to describe highlight the creativity and/ or innovation inherent in some of these aspects. The first article is entitled ‘The importance of management innovation and consultant services on ERP implementation success’ by Rafael Lapiedra, Joaquin Alegre and Ricardo Chiva. The article shows that enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation has been an important activity for improving efficiency (Umble, Haft, & Umble, 2003). However, an ERP system is a critical investment that can significantly affect the future performance of a firm. Many ERP projects report an unusually high failure rate. This study empirically investigates the involvement of management consultants on ERP implementation success. The results from this field survey to 134 ERP end users in Spanish ceramic tile companies show that ERP implementation success significantly depends on the quality of consulting services. The second article is entitled ‘Incremental innovation in services through continuous improvement’ by David B. Audretsch, Clara Martı́nez-Fuentes and Manuela Pardo-del-Val. Focusing on employee contribution to the process of innovation, the article reviews the main features of continuous improvement and examines the results derived from its implementation what are the most common procedures and what problems arise during the operation of these programmes (Fuglsang & Sørensen, 2010; Toivonen & Tuominen, 2009). In the empirical analysis, these authors analyse how a high-tech service of a large public centenarian university faces the challenges of innovation through continuous improvement and how its organizational design variables generate a barrier to successful implementation. The third article entitled ‘Innovation and creativity in the automobile industry: environmental proposal and initiatives’ is written by Colin C. Williams, Amadeo Fuenmayor and Sonia Dası́, on innovation in the automobile industry; it highlights the changes that are occurring in this industry as a result of the interest on the part of governments in avoiding pollution and the deterioration of the environment. Fundamentally, via fuel and registration taxes on vehicles that cause more pollution (European Commission, 2005), governments are modifying the conduct of consumers (or their demand), while motivating automobile manufacturers to innovate by looking for less environmentally harmful products.