Report 103

Your newsletter on applied creativity, imagination, ideas and innovation in business.

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Wednesday 1 August 2012
Issue 212

Hello and welcome to another issue of Report 103, your twice-monthly (or thereabouts) newsletter on creativity, imagination, ideas and innovation in business.

As always, if you have news about creativity, imagination, ideas, or innovation please feel free to forward it to me for potential inclusion in Report103. Your comments and feedback are also always welcome.

Information on unsubscribing, archives, reprinting articles, etc can be found at the end of this newsletter.


Note

Most articles in this issue of Report 103 can also be found in the archives together with dozens more articles, papers and thoughts.


 

In this issue of Report 103

  1. Creativity, Innovation and Cake
  2. Anticonventional Thinking Workshops for You
  3. Problem-Free, Idea-Free Creative Thinking
  4. Anticonventional Decisions

Also some self promotional stuff about anticonventional thinking....


 

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Creativity, Innovation and Cake

Back in 2009, I became concerned about a lack of consistent terminology in the field of innovation. One of the most commonplace errors I come across is people confusing the terms "creativity" and "innovation". Often, experts are talking about creativity, but they use the word “innovation” because they believe it is a sexier business term than “creativity”. This lack of consistent terminology continues today – and I am seeing a critical problem that is resulting from inconsistent terminology: actual innovation is not happening!

First, let’s revisit definitions. Creativity is combining two or more different ideas or concepts in order to create a novel, new idea. Innovation is about changing your world for the better (note: I have changed my definition of innovation recently: How Will You Change Your World?). In short, creativity is about the ideas. Innovation is about the implementation of those ideas in order to institute change. In a business context this would typically be through increasing value either in the form of increased revenue or reduced costs or both. But, there are other forms of value a business innovation can generate.

Creativity Exercises

However, many so-called innovation initiatives, such as brainstorming, ideas campaigns and even my anticonventional thinking (however, I am addressing this issue) are actually creativity exercises. They are about generating ideas rather than implementing solutions. Often there is a complete disconnect between the creativity exercise and the processes for implementing any ideas that arise during the exercise. I believe a part of the problem is that when people, who are participating in a creativity exercise, are told and believe that they are doing innovation, they become satisfied with the result of generating creative ideas which are so often labelled “innovative ideas”. As a result, they feel their work is done. But the truth is an unimplemented creative idea may be cool, but in business it is worthless.

Creative Cake

As an example, you could have a cake recipe writing competition in which you reward people who write the most creative cake recipes. Doubtless, you would get some really creative recipes that result from the competition. Moreover, you would have some happy and proud participants who are recognised and rewarded for writing truly creative cake recipes. However, one thing you would not have, no matter how many recipes are submitted, no matter how many people participate, no matter how creative the recipes. You would not have a single cake.

Now, let us assume you want to innovate. You intend to make the three most creative cake recipes from the competition. But, you have a relatively small oven, limited ingredients in your pantry and an even more limited budget for buying additional ingredients. Oh, and you only have access to the kitchen for two hours. Chances are, the most creative recipes cannot be made into cakes in view of these limitations. So what happens? Do nothing and simply be happy that some creative ideas were submitted? Do you modify the winning recipes to make them meet your limitations? Do you review the recipes again? Do you launch a new competition?

In most companies, the first choice holds true: nothing much happens. Getting back to the analogy, a far better approach, would have been a creative competition to bake cakes rather than submit recipes. Or, if that was not possible, make the limitations clear before people prepare recipes. The resulting cakes might not be so creative and exciting as the recipes from the open cake recipe competition. But there is one massive difference. At the end of the competition, you have cakes!

Innovative Cake

This needs to be a consideration in any innovation initiative: the actual innovation. Not the ideas. Not the creativity. But the implementation of the creative ideas in order to innovate. The resulting innovation may be less creative than the sexy ideas you have in a charged brainstorm. But there is a critical difference: you have cake at the end of the exercise!

 

Anticonventional Thinking (ACT) Workshops for You

Anticonventional thinking (ACT) is a new approach to individual and collaborative creative thinking that I have developed. It is based on...

  • How highly creative people such as writers, composers and artists collaborate.
  • The latest research on how the mind solves problems.
  • Overcoming proven weaknesses with brainstorming.

I have already delivered customised ACT workshops for companies and government bodies in Europe and North America and have more booked for the remainder of the year.

Moreover, based on my experiences with workshops and how participants have responded, I have tweaked and improved ACT, making it easier to understand and use. So, if you would like to provide your company, your division or your team with an effective creative thinking tool that is about achieving goals rather than generating lots of ideas you will never use, get in touch with me! I can custom-design an ACT workshop that not only trains you and your people how to use the method, but also involves actively generating creative solutions to solve your problems and achieve your strategic goals!

My schedule for the year is filling up -- and as a single father, I cannot be on the road all the time. To ensure I can work with you, contact me as soon as possible!

 

Problem-Free, Idea-Free Creative Thinking

Think in an Anticonventional Way: Stop Searching for the “Idea” and the “Problem” as the Backbones of Team Creative Thinking

By Fernando Cardoso de Sousa
President of the Portuguese Association for Creativity and Innovation - APGICO

As we know, almost all definitions of creativity stress the need for the “idea”, which must be considered original and valuable. As strong as these definitions is the statement that, when we talk about the process of creative thinking, we talk about defining the problem as the most important aspect. Here, we also see the importance of divergent thinking, even though it may be associated with a convergent phase. And when we talk about innovation, we learn that it means putting an idea in use. These are the main postulates that rule all creative methods of individual and team creative work, as well as creativity and innovation in organizations.

What would happen if we challenge these concepts a bit, and come up with other assumptions?

First, think about creativity simply as a motivated attempt to do something better than what is done now. By doing so, you stop worrying about the “idea” and even about the “problem”. Then, there is no need to separate divergent from convergent thinking. You just think, creatively or not, until you find something that pleases you. And, as you want that thing to be valuable for other people, you have to find some use for it and to communicate your findings, so that other people will know that you came up with something interesting. If you succeed, people will say that you have been creative and have brought about an innovation, even though it might happen only a hundred years later.

Now let us adapt this to team work.

First you need a problem. Consider this: if someone asked you to facilitate a team meeting, that person must have an idea about the purpose of the meeting. So, you can label this purpose as the problem. Your client did not ask you to make the team a creative one. Rather they want you to help them fulfill a certain objective (purpose). As a result, you do not need to search for the problem. Moreover, if you do not search for a problem there is no reason to search for an idea to solve it.

Nevertheless, let us be flexible. As you know, it is not easy to bring a member of a heterogeneous team to agree on the same purpose, accept other views on the same issue and resume long analyses in a simple sentence. So, just to discipline the team, you ask the members for obstacles they think that can be found while trying to attain the objective. When you have a sizable list, you ask each member to choose the obstacle they find the most important, and you give her the opportunity to justify the choice. When the last justification is made, take two to four obstacles out of the list and, add the sentence “What are the steps needed to…? (see "What if you change IWWMI into WASNT" ), and ask the client to choose one and justify it. That is it! In no more than one hour you have turned the group into a cohesive team, given it enough training on creative thinking, and provided the client (should be the boss) with an opportunity to be seen as a true creative leader by the team.

After the break, it is time to work: ask the team to designate the tasks (steps) that are needed in order to solve the problem (company people prefer to address it as a challenge). Once you have all of the tasks in sequence, ask for suggestions on how to execute each one. Then ask for volunteers and establish sub-teams for each task. Use some more strategies to finish the action plan, in no more than two hours, otherwise the team will be too exhausted to think.

There you have it: you had individuals giving contributions in order to make things better, accepted by the team as original and valuable, meaning everybody saw the aim an innovation but did not pursue innovation per se. Moreover, you did not have to worry about ideas, problems, divergent or convergent thinking; only about putting a lot of ideas in use in order to solve a problem.

Did the participants become creative in a couple of hours? The answer is both yes and no. No, because all of them are creative at some point in their field of expertise, otherwise they would not have been chosen as team members, and you cannot turn them more creative on the spot. Yes, because they learnt to accept each other’s views and felt pleased to reach a consensus. They are now more prepared than before to develop their creativity during the implementation of the project, during which they will learn more, interact more, define more problems and come up with more ideas.

It was a short session, so do not worry too much about its creativity level. What you must worry is about the implementation of the project but that will be a good topic for a next text.

Moral of the story: Do not forget to challenge your learning in an anti-conventional way, like Jeffrey suggests, from time to time.

 

Anticonventional Decisions

By Jeffrey Baumgartner

Whenever you are faced with a decision you are, by definition, facing multiple choices. Usually, one of those choices, or a small range of choices is the conventional option. It is the option you usually follow, the option that other people do. It is often perceived as the right option to take. On the surface, it seems risk free.

Anticonventional thinking (ACT), by definition, is about purposefully rejecting conventional ideas in favour of unconventional ideas throughout the creative thinking process. Decision making is often not considered a creative process. Nevertheless, if you want to get into the habit of being creative, then a powerful way to do that is to make anticonventional decisions. Rather than opt for the conventional choice, purposely do something unconventional.

But in order to do that, you need to do something more fundamental first. You need to question your decisions. This requires that you consciously think about your decisions, which is a good thing.

Example: Commuting Decisions
If you normally drive your car to work, stop and think. That’s a decision you probably do not even think about any more. But stop and think about it. Why do you drive to work? You might argue that it is more convenient or faster than the alternatives. But what if everyone in your company bicycled to work? In that case, you would probably take your bicycle too. Indeed, you might feel embarrassed to be the only person driving a polluting car to a parking area filled with bicycles!

So, why not be unconventional? Ride a bicycle to work. Take public transportation. Put on roller blades. There are sound logical reasons for doing this, besides being anticonventional. Almost any alternative to the car is healthier for you (exercise) and the environment (less pollution). Public transportation, though it may take longer than driving, will ironically add more time to your day. Instead of spending an hour in your car each day, sitting and staring at the traffic jam you are contributing to, you can spend 90 minutes reading a book, chatting with friends via mobile telephone or writing notes for that novel you have always intended to write.

Example: Meeting Decisions
When organising a meeting, you may think your choices are limited to Conference Room A, B or C. But those are merely the conventional choices. Be anticonventional! You could hold the meeting in the public park down the road, in a coffee shop or on the beach. If you want to encourage fresh thinking, any of those anticonventional options will surely bring new ideas to light. New stimuli will inspire the meeting participants. The very nature of going against conventions will encourage unconventional thoughts.

Example: Dinner Decisions
Want to organise a dinner with friends. Your choice is not limited to restaurants in the area or cooking something for your friends. Instead, you could make a game of it. Ask everyone to come to your house with their favourite ingredients and make a dinner together. Alternatively, you could make sandwiches and take them together with champagne to the beach. Or you could hire a Thai or Japanese or Mexican chef to do a cooking lesson in your kitchen and then enjoy the meal afterwards. Any of these less conventional options would make for a fun and memorable evening.

Better still, by making anticonventional decisions, you change the way you think, you experience new things and you change your day-to-day environment. All of these things are great for boosting creativity.

Moreover, I would argue that getting in the habit of questioning your decisions and making choices based on what is best, most interesting or most unconventional is simply a good intellectual habit to have. It is something I try to do regularly.

 

ARCHIVES

You can find this and every issue of Report 103 ever written at our archives.


Happy thinking!

Jeffrey Baumgartner


 

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Report 103 is edited by Jeffrey Baumgartner and is published on a monthly basis.

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Jeffrey Baumgartner
Bwiti bvba

Erps-Kwerps (near Leuven & Brussels) Belgium

 

 


 

My other web projects

My other web projects

CreativeJeffrey.com: 100s of articles, videos and cartoons on creativity   Jeffosophy.com - possibly useful things I have learned over the years.   Kwerps.com: reflections on international living and travel.   Ungodly.com - paintings, drawings, photographs and cartoons by Jeffrey