Corporate Creativity: Developing an Innovative Organization

Corporate Creativity

SECTION 1

CREATE

This first section looks into the basic notion of developing our personal creativity. This may sound like a daunting task to some, but it need not be so. To most of us, imagination, creativity, and an open mind come naturally; some of the most creative people in the world are still in preschool and early elementary school. The trick is to keep our creative faculties alive as we become adults and join the workforce.

We have organized this section to guide the reader along the path from developing his or her personal creativity to developing creative discipline, primarily based on design. The premise of Jeff Mauzy’s seminal chapter is this: If you want a more creative organization—and who doesn’t?—develop more creative employees. Mauzy offers a number of techniques and methods that can be applied to unleash and increase personal creativity. Where the workplace is concerned, fostering the kind of environment in which this can occur means putting key elements in place to foster creativity, including understanding the process of creative thinking, removing blocks, using specific methods to get fresh ideas, and allowing employees to exercise their natural creative abilities. This doesn’t mean a major reorganization; what it does mean is allowing employees to take risks without fear of failure. Mauzy also discusses four critical dynamics of creativity: motivation, curiosity and fear, breaking and making connections, and evaluation. Stefik and Stefik remind us that those wonderful Aha moments emerge when creativity is permitted to run deeply and broadly, breaking through constraints and putting us in new mindsets. Robert Rasmussen discusses how creative individuals can work best by working in creative teams, which begins to set the stage for another key imperative in corporate creativity, and that is corporate culture.

Anne Archer and Doris Walczyk remind us that corporate culture is a complex mixture of beliefs, attitudes, values, rituals, and behaviors, all of which influence the playing field for corporate creativity. One of the main ways corporate creativity is demonstrated is by innovation, and one of the main ways innovation is demonstrated is by design. To that end, co-editor Thomas Lockwood shares insights about integrating design into corporate culture and identifies the key drivers, based in part on his PhD thesis about integrated design management. Lastly, Mark Barngrover explores some interesting processes about developing creative teams and making design champions at Procter & Gamble. The key ideas are to build a climate that supports constant creativity and to encourage employees to exercise creativity in all aspects of their work. This involves developing a foundation to transform ideas into innovations.

This section leads us to three important conclusions about individual creativity:

Aha moments: Catch them when you can. A core competency of the act of invention is transforming subconscious eureka moments of into actionable ideas. After all, the whole notion of creativity stems from developing ideas. Some ideas are better than others, and some are really good—the trick is to recognize which is which. Sometimes our own experiences can get in the way. We think, Oh, that won’t work, or, We tried that already. But the real Aha moments come when we lay down our defenses and let our imaginations be free. Rasmussen refers to this as tipping the sacred cows—and allowing yourself to take risks with good intent. Sometimes the ideas just happen, but you have to be able to recognize them. Many people keep a blank journal handy as often as possible, jot ideas most anywhere and anytime, and are then amazed at how many good ideas emerge. As Albert Szent-Gyorgyi has written, Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different. Ideation is a bit like sailing: you have to tack from side to side to catch the wind. So allow yourself this room to think, and be ready to catch those ideas when you can!

Creative processes are about finding the right degree of framework. Creative ideas can be encouraged by putting a framework in place. As mentioned, this can be as simple as keeping a journal handy to record your moments of brilliance. It can also include techniques such as changing your perspective, changing your activities, looking at opposites, breaking assumptions, and allowing yourself to fail—in fact, to fail quickly. (One of the core principles at Pixar Animation Studios is to fail often and fail quickly.) That way, you can sort out the not-so-hot ideas from the great ones and move to build on the best more quickly. It’s also important to look at your problem from multiple perspectives and to involve other people in doing so. The goal is to build a climate that supports creativity and to develop a foundation to transform ideas into innovations. There are many frameworks presented in this section that do just that.

Tell stories, visualize broad ideas, and sketch concepts, in that order. It seems that all too often people are in a hurry to get to designing. After all, that is often seen as the end goal for many creative endeavors. Every business uses (or should be using) design to differentiate products, create meaningful experiences, and develop services that actually serve, but when creativity is applied at a broader level, we find more effective processes—or frameworks—by moving a bit differently through the process. These are the thinking tools of imagination and creativity. Communication begins with storytelling, and this is a great way to set the stage for any problem that needs a creative solution. Start with a story—a strategic conversation, not a project brief. Set the framework in conversational terms. This often requires an adaptive culture, and a work environment that allows people to feel vested in the projects. There is a great deal to be said about corporate culture and creativity, and it starts with simply allowing time to have strategic conversations, often supported by storytelling and visualizations of ideas. One of the challenges of business is having too many ideas and not knowing which of them might lead to success. Having strategic conversations, telling stories, and visualizing broad concepts help us to sort through those ideas.

Chapter 1

Managing Personal creativity

by Jeffrey H. Mauzy, Innovation Consultant,

Strategy Planner, Synectics, Inc.

To improve corporate creativity, Jeffrey Mauzy advocates improving the creative abilities of individual employees. Elaborating on this theme, he probes the process of creative thinking and the factors that limit these opportunities, he details several interesting exercises for generating more and fresher ideas, and he outlines steps managers should take to leverage the creative output of their staffs.

WALK INTO ANY preschool, and you’ll find some of the best creative thinking anywhere: finger paintings with purple people and polka-dot skies, fanciful tales of magical, far-away places. There are lessons for the corporate world in the day care center downstairs.

Young children are naturally creative. They must create ways to learn and construct a world view from a collection of initially disconnected events and colors and movement and sound. So what happens between the open, effortless experimentation of our childhood and the blocks in creative thinking experienced by many adults? Sociological, psychological, physical, and behavioral factors conspire to stifle our natural ability for original thought. And overcoming those barriers is one key to recapturing our creativity.

This is not news to corporations. Many organizations have responded to competitive and economic pressures with the conviction that creativity and innovation are the keys to success. In fact, a June 1995 study commissioned by the US Department of Labor and conducted by Ernst & Young with the Harvard and Wharton business schools found that 85 percent of US companies are currently involved in workplace innovation programs. Such programs usually include training managers in effective group processes, as well as coaching teams on how to generate ideas and implement the most promising ones.

The success of such group-oriented programs varies widely. Many companies have been extraordinarily successful at bringing innovative products and services to market through the effective use of teamwork. Others flounder because of such factors as inadequate training or a lack of organizational commitment to the programs. But there is one approach that can help both successful and unsuccessful companies achieve their goals for innovation: developing the personal creativity skills of individual members of an organization. If you want a more creative organization, develop more creative employees.

Personal creativity, as defined here, means the ability of an individual to create new, relevant ideas and perspectives. Today, very little attention is given to developing the creative thinking skills of individuals within organizations. But in our work with clients in a wide array of industries—nearly half the Fortune 500 companies and thousands of individuals—my colleagues and I at Synectics have observed and tested techniques that can help people strengthen their innate creative abilities and problem-solving capacities and bring new ideas about products, processes, and policies back to the organization. The techniques and exercises presented in this article were identified and tested at Synectics on a variety of clients over many years. Many were used by creative people long before Synectics noticed them. Synectics’s role was to isolate and experiment with the techniques, altering them as needed to produce reliable, quick results.

Developing creativity involves the following four elements:

1. Understanding the process of creative thinking

2. Identifying blocks to creative thinking and the skills individuals can use—and managers can foster—to increase creative responses

3. Using methods to get fresher ideas and solutions more often

4. Allowing a personal creative drive and lifelong creative vision that will help individuals, including managers, to achieve their personal and professional goals

We have assembled these elements in a flow that makes sense to most of our clients. Start with a model of the creative thinking process (as a mental guide for what and how we learn). Address the things that block creative thinking. Understand and exercise the underused mental functions that can encourage creative thought (because they will become invaluable in later techniques, as in life). Show ways to get new thoughts on demand (using our newly exercised creative capacities). And discuss the role of evaluation (because we all link evaluation to ideas, but often do a poor job of evaluating those ideas, in employees and even in ourselves).

Each step in the process of developing creativity can be viewed independently, and every exercise has been found to have some positive effect on a person’s level of creative response. Used collectively, however, the steps and exercises produce better results. Space limitations dictate that we can display only a few exercises here.

A MODEL OF THE CREATIVE THINKING PROCESS

Synectics developed a model of the creative thinking process for the purposes of training clients (see Figure 1). It depicts the dynamics most critical to generating new thought: Where do thoughts come from? How does a person get new thoughts? What interferes with the process of getting new thoughts? What sort of thoughts should you be looking

Figure 1. Framework for Creative Thinking and Problem-Solving

for? How do you work with these thoughts—in particular, how do you negotiate between interesting, new, but seemingly impossible, ideas and less original, but safe, ones that can be implemented easily?

Where ideas come from. Moving from left to right along the where-ideas-come-from spectrum, shown in the top row of the model, we progress from the sources of the most conventional types of thinking to the sources of the most original thought. The left half of the spectrum—thinking governed by conditioning and by rationale—represents the types of thinking practiced by most people most of the time. We depend on these kinds of thought patterns, and for good reason. They have given us cars that go and planes that stay in the air. But we depend on them so much that we don’t question them when they no longer work for us (when we are confronted by a problem and just can’t seem to find a new solution).

Beware of an automatic response toward safe ideas. Encourage risk among employees and respond in ways that reward that risk.

Creative people have conscious and unconscious strategies and ways of thinking that help them access fresh ideas. The right half of the spectrum—strategic creativity and ungoverned thinking—represents those ways in which people can more readily access original thought. In the strategically creative mode of thought, people let their minds wander. They walk away from the problem, sleep on it, turn it upside down, think in metaphors—all of these are patterns of thought that do not come naturally to those accustomed to working in results-oriented business environments. The ungoverned end of the spectrum works well for some, but only the boldest feel comfortable exploring this domain where chance and accident reign. Whether one explores the farthest reaches of the spectrum or not, the more the mind can range across the entire spectrum of thinking, the more fresh ideas will spring forth.

Allow time for reflection.

Don’t overload employees.

Teach methods for creative thought to teams and to individuals.

Blocks to creative thinking. What prevents the mind from ranging across the spectrum? From the time we are young, parents, peers, supervisors, school, and society all teach us that experimentation can be harmful to ourselves and to others: Don’t play in the street. That’s gross. Do you have permission to do that? Better clear the idea with your boss first. Statements like these emerge from both external and internal blocks to creative thinking, depicted in the second row of the model.

Reliance on rational thinking. Certain forms of thought have historically proven to describe the way things are and to predict the results of events reliably. Teachers, scientists, and most bosses reward us for using these established thinking patterns, and they discourage us, sometimes in almost unnoticeable ways, from varying from those patterns. Eventually, this reward/punishment behavior becomes internalized.

Self-censoring. Our experience in the world affects our ideas and how we come up with them. Good behavior is expected and so goes unnoticed and unrewarded, whereas bad behavior is the exception and is punished. New ideas have a higher potential for danger, so we learn to be suspicious of them. Eventually, our self-censoring mechanisms become so internalized that many of our ideas and potential ideas become inaccessible to our conscious minds.

Internal climate. A punishing or hostile climate can kill creativity faster than any other factor. And such a climate is hard to patch back up. Leaders, as well as everyone, must pay attention to the climate and talk openly about how to improve it.

Work to build a safe environment, where people can take risks without fear.

Encourage, and reward, experimentation.

Set aside money for experiments.

Self-punishment. Have you ever said to yourself, That was a stupid idea, or you dummy? Have you ever hit yourself when you made a mistake? Imagine how few risks you would take if your boss or your friend upbraided you in this way every time they thought you were mistaken. Self-punishment can extinguish the risk-taking behavior that is critical to creativity. It sets up the same fear-avoidance patterns discussed in the self-censoring section earlier; these internal mechanisms can begin to act on ideas before we even have them.

Be aware of how you respond to ideas and proposals. Do you see it from the presenter’s side? What are the benefits of the idea? If you don’t care for the idea, do you let the presenter know you see the benefits? Are you clear about why you have problems with the idea? Does the presenter leave feeling good even if the idea is rejected? Is there room for push-back?

Ideas that form in the mind. The third row of the model, labeled ideas that form in the mind, concerns thoughts that we still have not expressed but now recognize as ideas or possible solutions to the task at hand. Moving from left to right along the spectrum, we progress from predictable ideas to those that surprise us. Because each of us is unique, much of what we consider to be predictable in our own thinking can appear fresh to others. But predictable ideas are the result of thinking according to our habitual patterns of thought. They are usually very specific, very doable—and very safe. They are the path of least resistance (a form of bad habit, really), and by consciously opting for a different path, we are doing our creative selves a favor.

To increase our creativity, we need to move to the right on the spectrum and come up with ideas that surprise us. Surprising ideas may tend to be more directional than specific in nature, and they can appear as fuzzy, vague, or semi-formed thoughts—thoughts we are conditioned to devalue. But many innovations in the world have resulted from someone holding on to a vague notion—a direction in thinking—and working in that direction until the idea crystallized and then became an innovation. Edwin Land’s daughter launched him in a new direction when she said, I wish I could see the picture you just took. . . now. That direction led to the research that eventually produced the Polaroid camera.

Surprising ideas are not easy to come by. Accessing them requires confronting and overcoming self-censoring blocks and venturing into the strategically creative and un-governed end of the where ideas come from spectrum. It takes hard work; it often takes courage, as well.

Whenever possible, allow time for employees and teams to solve tricky or creative problems.

Ideas that are acted on. The final row of the model, ideas that are expressed or acted on, represents when we actually articulate a thought or act on it. It is here that the potential threat to our ideas escalates. We can become subject to ridicule; we can fail. Acting on ideas is a subject for another article, but it is important to point out in this context that anticipating potential threats can dissuade us from ever forming or recognizing those ideas in the first place.

Understand the level of radicalism you are looking for. Does the idea you are acting on reach that level?

ELEVATING CREATIVE RESPONSE

As we grow and negotiate the world around us, we latch onto certain patterns of thinking. Soon those patterns become such automatic, unconscious habits that we are no longer able to question their efficacy. At Synectics, we have observed that certain patterns of thought are in use more often in creative work than in everyday business-as-usual thinking. In our research with participants in our courses, we have created exercises to strengthen these creative patterns. When you go to a gym and exercise unused muscles, you find your entire body functions better over time. Similarly, we find that when people use these exercises, they reclaim parts of their ability to think creatively, and their minds begin to work more effectively over time.

Creativity exercises. The thinking skills involved in the following exercises underlie the idea-generation techniques we use with clients. These exercises tend to increase the creative acuity of our clients. They have also been shown to have a positive impact on individuals’ creativity scores in research studies.¹ We have room to include only a few examples in this article.

Imagery. This exercise uses a complex of thinking patterns—excursion, improvisation, analogy, and metaphor—but it relies primarily on imagery. You can bring this technique to any personal or professional dilemma you face. Imagine the problem as a scene in a movie. Picture the entire scene in your mind. Who are the main actors? Who are the secondary ones? What are their relationships? What is the main plot? The subplots? Now play with the scene. Imagine new plot twists, different roles for the characters. Do you gain any new insights or perspectives on your problem?

Wishing. Recall how extravagant your wishes were as a child. As we mature, we learn to wish increasingly within the limits of the possible. People become accustomed to judging ideas, not wishes. Re-instituting the act of wishing brings us back to our childhoods, when more things seemed possible. In this exercise, consider a problem you are confronting. Set aside ten minutes to wish for the seemingly impossible. Come up with at least twenty-five wishes; stretch for a few. Can you think of any new approaches to the problem on the basis of those wishes?² Wish yourself. Ask employees what they wish for, too. Don’t throw out intriguing but so-called impossible ideas. Put them on the back burner, but leave the flame on.

Excursion. By following this pattern, individuals can strengthen their connection-making mechanisms and force new ideas into being. The pattern is fivefold:

1. Put the problem out of mind

2. Allow new, seemingly irrelevant information to occupy your attention (if you get stuck, just look around you and pick something that intrigues you)

3. Consider the object for a couple of minutes (What’s its use? If it were alive, what would it say to you? How was it formed? Imagine the factory or environmental forces that made it)

4. Find ways in which the new information connects to the problem

5. Work on the connections to build a new idea for a solution to the problem.

The examples in the table show the idea-generating mechanism at work (see Figure 2, on next page). Using analogy, metaphor, and absurdity allows the mind to forge new connections. You can apply the same structure directly to issues you are considering in order to come up with new ideas.

Reframing evaluation. Learning how to come up with new ideas is critical to developing creativity, but it is also important to examine how ideas, once gotten, are treated. As we have acquired our habits and patterns of thought, we have also acquired a pattern for evaluation to help us negotiate life. We are taught to evaluate ideas for relevance and feasibility, and the more rapidly and sensitively we do that, the more efficient we become at making the hundreds of decisions we need to make daily. This pattern, like the other unconscious thinking patterns, has to be adjusted when creativity is our goal.

When it comes to evaluating ideas, we fall into a pattern of fault-finding, which is rooted in the scientific method: Build a hypothesis, attack it with vigor, and repeat until a hypothesis can stand all attacks. Any new idea can be considered a hypothesis. Imagine the effect on our self-censor and self-image when our ideas are under constant attack. No wonder we give up the fight to be original. If we wish to become more creative, we need to learn to treat our new ideas in a friendlier way.

One way we can do just that is by deferring decisions. In a study of art students, Getzels and Csikszentmihalyi³ identified a pattern of behavior, which they termed problem-finding behavior, that correlated strongly with the students’ tested levels of creativity and with professional success later in their careers. The students that tested high for creativity and success were more likely to change directions, to go wherever a new idea took them. Final decisions were put off. A work was seldom, if ever, considered finished; rather, it was just put aside for the moment.

Figure 2. Example: Find a way to match our company’s brainstorming software to the right audience.

Deferring closure on a solution allows more time to be spent exploring a variety of approaches. It promotes creativity by leaving the issue open to increasing connections and a greater degree of richly unresolved ambiguity. Still, the benefits of exploration and discovery have to be weighed against costs in terms of the budget and the production schedule. There is a tension. Deferring closure contradicts common management practice. Decisions are made and frozen in order to implement those decisions throughout the organization and coordinate multi-functional tasks.⁴

Two exercises can help individuals think creatively about a problem while forcing them to defer deciding on a solution. The first is the forced-plus exercise. Write down two potential solutions to a problem, each at the top of a sheet of paper. List four pluses, or benefits, for each idea. Think again about each solution. Do you see them in a more positive light?

The second is the next-step exercise. Write the two solutions for the same problem, each at the top of a sheet of paper. List the next steps you would take to execute the solutions. Think again about the solutions. Do you see either of them in a more positive light?

These are good exercises for managers who must approve or disapprove proposals and ideas.

THE DRIVE AND VISION TO CREATE

Creating new things is inherently fun and, for some, necessary. But any new way of thinking requires continual practice, and some clients who complete our program in creativity lose their skills in a matter of months because they stop flexing their creative muscles. In much of the world—and the business world, too—there exists considerable hostility to creative ideas and efforts. One firm we worked with even had the terms career-limiting idea and career-terminating idea in its lexicon. A 1991 study by P.A. Holland and colleagues⁵ shows that groups of new employees, hired to be more creative than existing ones, eventually stop using their creative abilities and come to resemble their less creative counterparts. Why? Our hypothesis is that a complex set of expectations and