It's a small point, but in the Oligopoly Watch article to which Harold refers, the concepts of 'innovation' and 'creativity' are used almost synonomously:
"...unless like the old Ma Bell, like Xerox PARC, of 3M, innovators have some protection from the Six Sigma menace. 3M is retreating from Six Sigma in the labs, and other companies are starting to realize that quality management can become an obsession, one that drives away creative people and forces others to play it safe."

Wikipedia defines Creativity as:
"...a mental process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations between existing ideas or concepts.

From a scientific point of view, the products of creative thought (sometimes referred to as divergent thought) are usually considered to have both originality and appropriateness. An alternative, more everyday conception of creativity is that it is simply the act of making something new."
whilst declaring that "The classic definitions of innovation include:

the process of making improvements by introducing something new
the act of introducing something new: something newly introduced
the introduction of something new.
a new idea, method or device.
the successful exploitation of new ideas
change that creates a new dimension of performance
A creative idea that is realized
"The capability of continuously realizing a desired future state"
"The staging of value and/or the conservation of value.""

Meanwhile, schoolofthinking.org offer, in a covering comment to the great TED talk on Creativity and Education by Sir Ken Robinson (http://www.schoolofthinking.org/2007/sir-ken-robinson-on-creativity-innovation/) that “Creativity is the process of having original ideas, but there are several steps. The first step is imagination, the capacity that we all have to see something in the mind’s eye. Creativity is then using that imagination to solve problems — call it applied imagination. Then innovation is putting that creativity into practice as applied creativity.â€

Is this the generally accepted way of describing the relationship between Innovation and Creativity? And how useful/necessary is it?
In a recent presentation (http://www.cognitive-edge.com/2007/05/a_travel_interlude.php) Dave Snowden put forward the notion that "creativity is a symptom of innovation not a cause, and that focusing on creativty programmes was a waste of time (so it was controversial)."

What's the opinion on all of this?