Does Emotion Trigger Innovation?

There is a whole spectrum of emotions that are associated with innovation life cycle. 

Innovation is the light every organization is pursuing, and creativity is a puzzle many people intend to decode. What’s correlation between emotion and creativity? And what emotions are involved in innovation life cycle, to put simply, how does emotion trigger innovation?

Creativity comes from within. Creativity is infused with an inner cohesion and comes from a vision of uniqueness. Creativity represents internal cognizance, but emotionally undermined psychological process facilitates (not determines) to behave innovatively. And what is proved till now in psychology - creativity tolerates maximum medium level of emotional intensity (stress) and quality of emotion that the heart feeling or nature response in the 'innovator' varies with the context.

Innovation is the process. It divides what is the issue of psychology (creativity ) and what is the issue of management (innovation). Innovation is the process to transform novel idea and achieve its commercial value. Innovation is to improve a state (process, person, product etc), improvement itself and the desire to improve. The kind of emotions within a person or organization that triggers an improvement/ innovation process can be numerous and most likely will be a combination of emotions! Certainly when you think that every rational thought is linked to emotions and creates feeling, this is an ongoing process just like the feeling to improve and to create

Innovation leads us to an understanding of wholeness. The interaction between what is within us (the Self) and how we project to the exterior world is the bridge to achieving wholeness. Innovation leads us to the understanding of wholeness, since innovation (the practical application of creativity) is essentially about problem-solving at various levels, and to solve a problem implies a wish to make something, or everything, better. That, in itself, seems to lead to a wish for understanding the wholeness. 

Different kinds of emotions are involved to truly become innovative. An emotion lifecycle is in an innovation process! There is a new energy that gets created in teams engaged in innovation -- both at an individual and a group level. Maslow's hierarchy places 'self-actualization' at the highest level of needs -- participation in innovation somehow leads to a certain level of self-awareness and actualization...it makes people believe they can bring in a lot more to their work than they thought they were capable of. There are more situation related feelings (like conflict) that have an impact on you as a person or on your team. The certain level of conflict can spark innovation. The conflict can come from an internal conflict or a conflict with outside world. The most difficult part is to transform the conflict from within to a productive lifecycle. If you have a stable internal process and you can even help others then innovation with the outside world will be the next challenge. 

Tenacity, Patience, Trust, Happiness, etc, are all good emotional ingredients to trigger innovation. Tenacity which could help leads to following your dreams… staying on track etc. Patience relates to tolerance and tolerance gives one the ability to understand  theother points of view, so patience is a key ingredient for innovation, until fulfillment or satisfaction of the inner self. Stamina might be a physical requirement to maintain this tenacity. However, innovation for the sake of innovating is exhaustive because what would be the purpose? It is a do-loop with no real goal at the center to drive it. The need to solve a problem might lead to innovation but a need to innovate isn’t addressing the problem. What about trust? Or what about happiness? 

If emotions trigger innovation, but what triggers emotion? So your emotional well being has impacted on innovation but what is triggering your emotions? What from the outside world has the impact? What about the right innovation climate? Your personal climate, your team climate or your organizational climate?  To have curiosity in finding the "truth" requires some analysis to understand multiple opinions and emotions which in many cases are among differing views and distorted facts. The inner and outer self is the struggle between what we know as reality and what we feel as our connection to the universe (wholeness within). The reality is the environment. The inner wholeness is a constant which relates to universal knowledge but each of us has to find this constant for ourselves. We can help each other as it is the same truths for all of us but to consume truths requires letting go of reality or setting aside the climate while we deliberate.

There is no single emotional impact associated with innovation -- it's a whole spectrum of emotion - from the depths of hunting internal self to the passion for solving problems; from the right dose of conflict to the camaraderie within a good team; from the constant negation between inner essences to the exhilaration of a self-actualization, from trial to trust; from curiosity to tenacity, and a whole set in between. 

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