The vital role of knowledge management and creativity for performance

It is common opinion that knowledge management practices and creativity are very important factors for firms facing a turbulent and dynamic environment. Knowledge and creativity in fact are a helpful support for managers that have to make decisions under uncertain and complex conditions. Knowledge generates economic value when it is utilized to solve problems and making decisions and so problem solving becomes the way thanks to which it is possible to link firm knowledge to firm performance. But when facing new problems, people and organizations will have to go beyond their knowledge maps and find a new path that will allow them to find new solutions. That is why PS involves a great deal of creativity. They are not only complementary but also synergic in the problem solving process. This paper aims to shed light on the benefits that knowledge and creativity are able to produce for the problem solving process and how this, in turn, impacts on firms’ performance. We collected survey data from January to March 2015 from a sample of 1525 leading Italian industrial companies. Findings confirm that work design, organizational culture and structure increase organizational creativity and, more generally, the firm’s ability to solve problems (efficacy in finding and implementing new and useful solutions). Results also suggest that in order to successfully win challenges and arrive where nobody else has been before people need to rely on both their knowledge and creativity. Furthermore it seems very clear that creativity deploys its greatest potential when it rests on strong epistemic bases. It can be gathered that for a better understanding of the potential benefits deriving from knowledge and creativity it is necessary to consider the synergy they could activate. One of the main limitations of the present paper is that it has not been possible to stratify problem solving skills by hierarchical levels (i.e., strategic, tactical, operational) nor split them in to functional areas (i.e., marketing, finance, R&D, etc.). Another limitation is the generalizability of results given that the data was collected from one single European country