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 Enhancing Creativity at Work Problem: Creativity and innovation are the lifeblood of a growing organization or business. A number of other businesses are trying to do what you do&emdash;except better, faster, and cheaper. To keep up, you must be committed to innovation, that is, bringing forth new ideas and from them generating new products and services. Otherwise, your business may not survive. How can we be more creative and innovative in our daily work? What do we need to know and to do to be more competitive? Solution: Creativity at work is a large topic. In this issue of Practical Strategies I will recommend some good books, with selected examples, that will get you thinking about the topic in a new way: John Kao recommends a creativity audit in his book Jamming. His questions include: What proportion of your revenues comes from products less than one year old? What percentage of your recent creativity initiatives has turned into actual products and services? Who are your most creative people and how do you reward them? Creativity has been described as a four stage process: • Exploration. Define the problem and immerse yourself in what is known about it Good books on this topic include: A Whack on the Side of the Head by Roger van Oech and How to Get Ideas by Jack Foster. One of the main creative outlets in business is writing. Two good books, Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg and Bird by Bird, by Ann Lamott recommend ten minutes a day of non-stop writing without censoring yourself. This brings discipline and commitment and gets the inner critic out of the way. Finally, The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley, the General Manager of IDEO, the world's leading design firm, has many practical ideas about group creativity. For example, he suggests that a good brainstorming session should produce 100 ideas per hour. He also supports a creative work environment and encourages his people to make their workspace look however they want. Example: I was working with a high tech engineer about a problem he was trying to solve at work. After listening to him, I realized he had carefully defined the problem but hadn't been able to come up with a solution. I explained the four stage process and suggested he get away from the work for a real weekend so he could incubate the solution Results: After the weekend, he reported he felt refreshed and had solved the problem. Getting away from the pressure of his daily job allowed him the opportunity to be creative. Summary: Let's face it; you got to be more creative. Reading these books and exploring the techniques will make the creative process more accessible to you and your people. |
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