Managing Creativity and Innovation, Part 1 of 2
Leaders, consultants, and managers need to be proficient in at least thirteen domains to even begin to effectively manage creativity and innovation. Part 1 of Managing Creativity and Innovation covers the first seven of these domains.
a) The difference between creativity and innovation. Often used interchangeably, the two should be considered separate and distinct. One definition of creativity is that it is about problem identification and idea generation, while innovation is best described as the selection, development and commercialization of ideas. These definitions alone imply at least six competencies (including a holistic one). At the very least, the differences mean that, at each stage, different skills, processes, and structures are required.
b) The size and wealth of idea banks. Initially, creative thinking is used to generate a group of ideas and then critical thinking reduces those ideas to doable. To maximize the quantity and quality of the pool of ideas, a conscious application of processes and techniques must be applied. Some of these include:
1) Use a variety of stimuli and frameworks to lead the way.
2) Not stopping when a good idea seems to present itself.
3) Consciously stimulate the change of direction.
4) Distinguish between the number of ideas produced, their novelty, diversity and frequency of production.
c) Creative types. There is a common belief that some people are simply more creative, and certain theorists advocate characteristics of creativity such as tolerance of ambiguity and intolerance of conformity. However, traits are notoriously difficult to spot and are not stable or transferable between situations. Also, motivation is believed to be more important than traits, this is similar to possessing high intelligence, one must be motivated to improve and apply it.
d) Learning versus talent. Can creativity be learned and developed or is it a natural talent or gift? The best way to answer this question is to investigate whether creativity improves with practice. The experience curve, automation, learning theories, and practitioners’ experiences suggest that people get better at generating more, better, diverse, and novel ideas, but there are caveats, such as increased path dependency and peaks and valleys. in motivation.
e) Motivation. Someone with natural ability or placed in the right environment cannot take advantage of it unless motivated. Intrinsically motivated people tend to expend more effort and create more results, and synergistic extrinsic motivation allows a person to complete an effort. On the other hand, non-synergistic extrinsic motivation makes a person feel controlled and manipulated and is incompatible with intrinsic motivation. Specific motivators, such as material reward, progress toward the ideal self, self-determination, self-evaluation, feedback, enjoyment, skill expansion, recognition, and viability, can be quantitatively measured and monitored.
f) Organizational Culture. We can all be more creative, so what’s stopping us? Often, people complain of a degree of apprehension about evaluation; This manifests itself in many ways, but two of the most common are the fear of appearing unintelligent or unoriginal. Some cultures are more risk averse than others, others do not handle competition well, and still others create friction by misallocating resources.
g) Organizational structure. Many theories argue that certain structures, such as hierarchical and mechanistic structures, hinder creativity and innovation. While these theories generally tend to be valid, there are many reasons why a company has a particular organizational structure (history, logistics, market segmentation, product line, strategy, etc.), so it is not reasonable to ask a company that changes it. Ultimately, what managers need is an understanding of the properties of a host structure so that they can incorporate those elements into the existing one.
This field returns a lot of interesting data. For example, many respondents argued that all structures, even so-called flat structures, are actually hierarchical.
Some very simple changes can be implemented. These include:
1) Direct communication links with decision makers.
2) Flow of information between divisions.
3) Tangible progress of ideas.
Managing Creativity and Innovation Part 2 will cover group structure, knowledge, networking and collaboration, radical and incremental creativity and innovation, structure and goals, process and valuation.