What's So Serious About Creativity in Business?

Whitepaper published by Grant Todd Summer 2002

Just look at the number of big-name companies that plaster the words creative and innovation all over their annual reports and magazine ads. They either assume that these words are compelling to the reader to place a higher value on a brand, or they actually depend on breakthrough ideas to make better products and greater sales. Either way, talking about innovation or actually depending on creativity is recognized by companies today as being vital.

But we know that saying it does not make it so. There is an existing notion that ideas have always happened and will always continue to happen and there is nothing that can be done or need be done to bring them to light. Some consider creativity as a semi-mystical talent, available to a unique few, but not all.

So 3M hit the mark with Post-it notes, a happenstance invention because one of its innovative employees had a need to mark his place in his choir practice book. We occasionally hear about these bright idea success stories. They just happen, right? Hey, I have thought up some pretty interesting things in my lifetime, too! Haven't you? Just how serious can you get about ideas that can't seem to be generated when they're needed most?

Resonate with you? It's understandable, as this is the way most people look at natural creativity. To some degree, this potential is inherent in all of us, available to be developed through personal choice and practice. I know. I have on a number of occasions either picked up a pencil, watercolor brush, stone chisel or handful of clay to explore the modest artistic expression within me. It comes and goes, and I find that more often than not it is serendipity more than focus that spawns an artistic idea.

Three types of thinking can be identified: critical, constructive and creative. While each is important in its proper context, critical and constructive thinking are limited because they focus predominately on what is already in existence, so in that thinking mode we are looking backward as opposed to forward. And I personally feel that the word critical is inherently loaded with emotional triggers and baggage, including rejection.

On the other hand, creative thinking focuses on what does not yet exist, or can exist. Creative thinking is the process of generating new thoughts and ideas, and is the main thrust of the balance of this paper.

Just what is an idea worth?

David Tanner, former Director of the Center for Creativity and Innovation at the DuPont Company, tells in his book "Total Creativity" how DuPont saved 30 million dollars as a result of just one idea applied to a fiber manufacturing process. Another innovative company, StatOil of Norway, a global oil producer, saved millions from ideas generated to solve a dry hole problem on one of their drilling platforms. That's serious by anyone's measure!

So ideas just happen, right? Yes and No! Ideas, like information, can just happen, but that does not make the idea meaningful or timely as in the DuPont and StatOil cases. In other words, information and logic do not guarantee the best or most appropriate solutions. The same goes for the quality of thought that is supposed to spawn a great idea, especially in an eleventh hour situation such as on an incredibly expensive oil platform in the middle of the North Sea.

More importantly, business situations like the aforementioned come at high velocity everyday and cannot wait for serendipity or "eureka" solutions or responses to just sort of happen. The generation of ideas and solutions needs to stay ahead of problems and, better yet, create opportunities.

Demand and supply. . . faster, better, cheaper!

Serious Business is in the now economy … an on-demand, full speed reality. Customers demand. Management demands. Associates demand. And in turn, business makes demands of its vendors. Demand can offer the opportunity for an improved response, but it's the quality, quantity and speed of thought behind the response that makes the serious difference.

As author Stone Payton suggests in his new book on the key disciplines of High Velocity Leadership:

"Speed may be measured relative to the marketplace, but the velocity of any organization (the magnitude of increase or decrease in speed) is governed solely by the choices we make. As leaders, we are the ones who will create and sustain momentum, or cause our people to fall victim to stagnation. We will set and sell strategic direction, or let the market determine the organization's path. We will decide if the organization is to remain content with the status quo, or travel confidently, and competently, in the fast lane. We determine the organization's velocity. We decide: 'Quick or Dead?' And the choices we make will dictate the pace and intensity of the culture's response to the marketplace."

Ideas on demand!

We are talking here about the unnatural act of creative thinking which your brain is most likely not prepared to address. The brain's traditional role is limited to establishing and developing new concepts and ideas. That's right, you read it here. The brain is a well-designed, self-organizing memory surface for information, experiences, and the development of resulting patterns. It is not designed to be logical, as we perceive logic.

Herbert Simon identifies the human being as "...a basically serial information processor endowed with multiple needs (who usually) behaves adaptively and survives in an environment that presents unpredictable threats and opportunities."

Hence, the brain's process organizes information it receives into convenient and somewhat familiar patterns, archives it and draws upon this filed information in a relational way when recognizing or confronting new information. In other words, it's not just how you see something with your eyes, but how the brain records the information.

"Let's brainstorm our way through this!"

Therefore, brainstorming (the operative word is storming), while a common on-demand exercise usually provoked by immediate needs or problems, is generally inadequate because each participant, regardless of intentions, is held hostage by his or her own personal cognitive reference patterns. We call these patterns perceptions, and they are very instrumental in our personal behavior when responding to sensing opportunities, i.e. what we hear, see, taste, smell.

Hence, when addressing challenges or problems, we either await the serendipitous Ah ha! or we capture the best thinkers available into a brainstorming circle and exhort everyone to "get out of the box". Either way, the results are less than serious quality, everytime!

So, how can we affect the quality and scope of thinking when we are so influenced by the brain's self-organizing process? First, what we don't do is confront our (or anyone else's) behavior as being wrong and demanding change. Our behavior is very integral to our individual ego, referred to here as the most intimate life-partner we have.

• Ego is a guardian sentinel for our well-being and key to our self-image.
• Ego thrives on consistency and predictability.
• Lack of predictability produces stress and raises resistance (fearful response) to change.

To address change, nurture an atmosphere of idea generation, or just do our best thinking requires a deliberate, systematic process of temporarily exchanging the ego-driven benefits for performance benefits. Albeit structured, an effective Serious Creativity process does not elicit a fight-or-flight response from the brain responding to a win-lose scenario. Serious Creativity facilitates a win-win scenario, i.e., collaboration: "You're still you. I'm still me." But look at the positive difference we have created together.

An effective Serious Creativity process stimulates the brain's capacity. It interrupts the regular 'archive and access' chores of the brain by presenting it with asymmetrical provocations. Such unexpected stimuli produce new focus and ultimately new, uncharted, genuinely creative responses in a way that maximizes the outcome. The productivity of such thinking from all participants can then be harvested (evaluated and prioritized for subsequent action) in higher volume and greater quality of thought in a shorter period of time. The yield is high velocity, better, lower cost, and serious!

Anyone willing can participate in a creative process if it's based on a good, deliberate, systematic design. The most conservative thinker teamed with the most far-out dreamer can be a very productive combination when they collaborate to generate breakthrough ideas and solutions.

The reasons for innovation are apparent, and the resources are right under your nose.

Organizations have needs, they feel pain, and most are in a race to meet and exceed the demands of their customers and stakeholders.

Organizations unfortunately turn just about every direction but inside to find those resources that can help them survive the velocity of changes coming at them.

Too often they look outside first to expedite some existing (hopeful) solution while the learned intellectual capacity of the organization remains leashed to less consequential things. What a waste. The knowledge base that can really, quickly address any challenge is already on the payroll.

Another real pain in organizations is losing hardworking, experienced people. If you could listen in on the exit interviews (some enlightened companies have them), you would most likely hear a chorus of "I just did not feel that I could make a difference," or "I don't think anybody here cared what I thought."

Indiscriminate downsizing drills meant to cut overhead costs are booting knowledge out the door. Knowledge that could be addressing serious issues like helping design ways around the predicament they now face, or better, to eliminate them and design a prevention process.

So how does Serious Creativity get started?

Like R&D (research and development), E&D (exploring and designing) new and better ways to function as an organization is the foundation for innovation, and a critical survival technique for now and the future.

• Establish an organization-wide climate of trust that makes it safe and imperative to offer up ideas by the carloads.
• Establish a shared language for idea exchange and development among all levels of the organization's hierarchy.
• Implement and utilize established and proven systematic processes and procedures for creating, gathering and sharing all that the organization knows.
• Invest in continuous learning across the organization, and utilize the growing capacity for fresh thinking to address anything and everything.
• Commit the bottom-line to attaining one-third of its productivity from ideas generated in the last 12 or 18 months, or less.

Have innovative groups share five critical characteristics and specific disciplines proven to foster creative thinking and produce practical solutions, fast.

• Implement new ideas
• Develop and harvest new ideas
• Earmark high-priority challenges/opportunities for innovation
• Assess new ideas and their root concepts
• Skill practice

If you are interested in measuring the perception and practices of innovation within your organization, learn more about the Innovation Index by contacting Prevail through this website. This comprehensive polling tool can provide a means to compare and contrast the views and practices of departments or management levels within a company, and pave the way for effective innovation.

Get Serious!

Serious Creativity has tremendous power - the power to challenge, the power to influence, and the power to change. Success will come through understanding how and where ideas come from, and how to attain them on demand. It's about knowing the best solutions are closer than you think! It's about commitment to an innovative culture-serious commitment to creativity!

About the Author:

Grant Todd is founder of The Prevail Organization and has had direct experience in the court system serving as presiding juror. Mr. Todd is also a seasoned corporate executive with experience in innovative business design and high performance team process. For more information contact The Prevail Organization at: (828) 626-3222, or visit the company Web site, www.prevail.org.