Toward the development of multi-dimensional index for creative management

Creative management, as the new paradigm of business innovation for achieving sustainable competitive advantages, is a management discipline that focuses on the provision of new values to customers by creating new products, services and business models. Despite the emerging importance of creative management, few studies have investigated how to measure the quality of creative management. This study proposes a theoretical framework for Creative Management Index (CMI) that is designed to measure the degree of creativity of management. The unit of analysis is a company or independent business unit that attempts to develop new products, services and business models. Two theoretical backgrounds have been employed to develop our framework. One is the Balanced Score Card (BSC), which provides the conceptual background of management index. The other is psychological theories of creativity, which provides theoretical backgrounds of cognitive and affective creativity. As a management index, the CMI framework consists of four components: person, process, place, and product. Through the synergetic combination of the four components we expect to be able to measure the multidimensional characteristics of creative management faithfully.