'Ring Leaders' and 'Idea Monkeys' are important roles in a successful business, but they must each play their part.

While the Idea Monkey should be allowed to run free with their creative process to come up with innovative solutions, the Ring Leader must restrict their scope, so that their ideas do not become a distraction to their colleagues in permanent and interim executive jobs.

This is the view of Michael Maddock and Raphael Louis Viton in a column for Bloomberg Businessweek. They are the chief executive and president of innovation consultancy Maddock Douglas respectively.

"The best teams and best companies respect and find balance between the Idea Monkey's ability to create and inspire with big ideas and the Ring Leader's ability to channel those ideas so they have the biggest possible impact," they said.

Mr Maddock and Mr Viton stressed that it can be commercially dangerous to let a creative person's imagination run wild, but they are also undeniably pivotal in terms of innovation.

While there is a need for creativity in every industry, some chief executives value it more than others. In an interview with The Guardian, David Karp, founder of blogging website Tumblr, described how he sees a great deal of worth in creativity among users.

When discussing the various social technologies on the market at the moment, he said he loves Twitter, is not sure about Google+ and is critical of the way YouTube is put together, suggesting that the latter two struggle to inspire him.

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