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All organizations on
the planet prosper from an increase
in creative thought. A customer who asks for a new product
to solve a problem is offering you an entire new market.
An employee who finds a new way of doing things might reduce
your costs a hundred fold, or create a new industry. Creativity
is an asset.
When beset by problems and challenges, all organizations
seek innovative solutions. To this end, we search for strategies
which might lead us to those new ideas. When we think of
creativity we're more likely to think of words like “spontaneous” and “inspired," not “rote” or “mechanistic." Repeatable,
mundane processes do not , and cannot, deliver creativity.
What is the source of creativity? If we believe that only
geniuses have it, then we are doomed to failure. On the other
hand, if we believe that creativity resides in all of us,
then the problem becomes one of encouraging and releasing
it, and not of instilling or teaching it.
Creativity is doing that which hasn’t been done before.
To ‘create’ is to produce the new, to bring into
being for the first time a new idea, product or service.
Those definitions suggest part of the obstacle facing creativity.
Doing something new requires courage. Courage to protect
us from ridicule as people around the meeting table scoff,
laugh, or smile condescendingly when we offer a new idea
for consideration.
It’s been pointed out before (and it needs to be pointed
out again): the surest way to kill a new idea is to laugh
at it. It is difficult enough to drum up the courage to voice
a new idea, but add laughter and ridicule to the challenge
and soon not very many will take the risk to be creative.
The most effective method to increase creativity in your
organization is this: Give all new ideas respect, even when
at first glance they don’t seem to deserve it.
While this almost trivial strategy makes creativity easier
to voice, it still does little to generate new ideas. So… let’s
go back to one of those definitions: Creativity is doing
that which hasn’t been done before. Depending on how
you look at this, this is either incredibly difficult or
an easy exercise.
For most people it is incredibly difficult. Their question
is: “How do we think of something that hasn’t
been done before?”
Brainstorming is the best way to start, particularly the
following method:
Attribute Manipulation: Take your product/service and list
every attribute it possesses – then manipulate that
list of attributes.
e.g. Product: Radio
a) Delivers broadcast sound to the listener
Why not capture sound as well?
Why not deliver pictures as well?
Could it deliver smells?
Could it tell the listener the temperature?
Their Pulse rate? Blood Pressure?
Phone calls?
Text information about what they’re hearing?
Why not pre-recorded sounds?
b) Receives radiowaves from radio stations
Why not TV stations?
Satellite stations?
Why not Wi-Fi?
Why not the Internet?
Naturally, it takes some practice to think in terms of a
product's attributes, but it’s not a difficult skill
to acquire. Whether your results generate a useful product
will depend
on luck, timing and the number of new things you’ve
managed to create.
© 2005, Peter de Jager – Peter is a speaker,
seminar leader and consultant on issues relating to Change
and Management. You can read more of his work at www.technobility.com
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