Thoughts on Creativity

Hey everyone! It is my second post this week but it is going to be completely different from the first. By the way, feel free to check out my previous post on visualizing insights and possibly obtain inspiration for your own work. As usual, you could use the current blog post as another opportunity to gain more insights about my personality, my thoughts and ideas. Today, I am going to guide you thorough my perceptions and experiences with creativity, both individual and organizational.

I would like to start my post by providing my definition of creativity, as it could answer some of your questions upfront and eliminate possible misunderstandings. I define creativity as an ability to see unusual solutions and opportunities even in the most common situations and traditional things. I believe that creativity is a skill and not a personal inherent trait. That means that a person working in practically every sphere can be creative. All he or she needs is unconventional but structured approach and environment that caters creativity and serendipity. In this definition, I agree with Jonah Lehrer (“How to be creative”) and Todd Henry (“Accidental Creative”) from the class readings.

Using the described definition of creativity, I believe that I have some experience of being especially creative. The creative process comes with hard work and is associated with ebbs and flows. I usually feel creative after I framed the problem and started to envision the possible solution. The ebbs of creativity come with implementation challenges. To overcome these challenges I pay great importance to relaxation and daydreaming. I used to be skeptical about the usefulness of such short breaks during the day. However, since the amount of information and number of tasks are constantly increasing, relaxation becomes crucial to generating creative ideas and protecting myself from burnout.

I will give you an example of my creative process. It seems to me that I was rather creative at the Iron Entrepreneur Case Challenge. The solution that I came up with was below the surface and required time and creative effort to find. The structured creative effort was extremely helpful. I spent nearly a third of the time allocated to the solution on framing the problem. It helped me to focus my efforts on finding and developing the optimal solution. I suggested that the technologies of artificial intelligence should be used for automation of call centers. At the time of Case Challenge that seemed to be quite an unconventional and feasible approach that was rewarded by the jury.

Now, I feel that it is time to discuss organizational creativity. To avoid misunderstandings, organizations are the groups of individuals and organizational creativity for me is the way to enhance the creativity of the individuals working in an organization.

I have worked and interned for several companies that tried to create a culture and environment that caters creativity and innovation. Most of them are high-tech companies meaning that innovation is the core component of their business activity and market positioning. I will outline the steps these companies have taken to enhance creativity and describe my personal experiences with creativity while working there.

Some companies did extremely good job in creating places within the offices where employees could come together, take a break and exchange ideas. Nowadays, unconventional office layouts could be considered to be a must-have in the high-tech industry. But even based on these tough standards, the described companies were perfect. Below I will present a couple of real pictures for you to get an idea of this office space.

I actually miss these pouffes where we sometimes used to develop new promotional strategies.

The next extremely important area that had direct influence on creativity is work schedule. One of the companies I worked for introduced a flexible schedule. You could work whenever you want if you deliver results. Since I was not an early bird, I really appreciated the opportunity to sleep an additional hour or two. I typically came around 10-11 am and was still one of the first in the office. This approach to work schedule enabled me to increase my productivity by providing me a certain degree of flexibility within the boundaries (as suggested in “Accidental Creative”).

Another best practice in inducing organizational creativity is a sense of community. I am talking not about a large community of all employees but rather of smaller subgroups based on interests. I like cycling and I was surprised to learn how many other cyclists worked in the company. We were spread all around the company’s departments but still managed to create strong network ties. The company even organized a bike trip for our sub-community. When working in such a community, you are eager to give back, work more and come up with creative ideas in a prolific way.

Unfortunately, I also had a bad example of an environment that impeded creativity. In my case, it was the way my ideas were treated within the organization. I really appreciate constructive feedback as I believe that it helps me refine the project and, hence, improve its quality and feasibility. I am definitely not a person with a “no critique” attitude. Therefore, I was disappointed by an organizational practice when ideas were disregarded or ended up undeveloped due to a bureaucratic organizational structure. At the beginning, this approach made me work harder to come up with better solutions. However, gradually, I started to lack incentives to deliver more than directly asked. I believe that this was an indication that the change was needed.

The next interesting aspect of creativity I would like to cover is the relationship between group and individual creativity. As mentioned earlier, I believe that every individual could be creative. It is just a matter of practice and environment. However, to ensure sustainable creativity output (just as sustainable competitive advantage) individuals need help, support and critique from others. In our world of specialized professionals, we are required to collaborate to enhance the output of our creativity efforts. In this aspect, I completely agree with the reading “Brainstorming does not work”.

However, not every group could be more productive than the sum of the individual creativity efforts. Having had numerous meetings discussing useless things, I feel skeptical about the group creativity and suggest an alternative approach to group creativity within an organization.

I believe that every member of the group should do a thorough preparation before the brainstorming or other group idea generation activity. This way, all team members could contribute the most out of their specialized area to the overall result. Discussions and debates will be more productive and team members will be less likely to sit back and let others do the work (as suggested in “The Rise of the New Groupthink”).

Then, during the idea generation session within a group, participants should be provided with basic boundaries (let’s say budget) and freedom in all other aspects. Preparation for the previous stage should result in well-thought, criticized and refined ideas. I am aware that the number of ideas under this method might be lower than by the traditional techniques. But I believe that organizations should look for quality and not quantity. Moreover, a careful framing of the problem and more efforts spent on this activity might result in better, more creative and unconventional outcomes.

The last point with regard to group creativity goes hand in hand with the topic of organizational creativity, discussed earlier. I believe that suggested approach depends heavily on the geographical proximity of people in the group. In the multinational corporations, this recommendation is extremely difficult to follow. However, telephone conferences utilized now as a primary source for group idea generation activities pose additional constraints on creativity. They do not include body language, non-verbal signs, and lack supporting material. Video-conferences might be an acceptable trade-off to capture the missing elements and advantages of a diverse group within an organization.

Different types of creative problem-solving approaches are another interesting subtopic within the bigger discussion on creativity. I do agree that creative problems are different and often require different approaches. Sometimes, the best way to start solving the problem is to think about it in solitude, whereas in other cases, group discussion is essential to a great solution.

There is no doubt that that the creative processes might be different and each individual should pick a process that best fits his or her perceptions. Intuition or general sense could guide one’s decision, which process to apply. However, I feel that the general framework to approach creative problems is a better guide for our decisions. In my understanding, this framework is quite universal in most cases. I feel that if we start with framing a problem, move on to considerable preparation and then discuss the initial findings in a diverse group in an innovation-friendly environment, the likelihood that our efforts are fruitful is higher. This way, we will take the best from every creative process.

In the end, I expect creativity just as any other skill to improve with practice. The more you practice a structured approach to generating creative ideas, the more skilled and experienced you become. This is definitely not a universal solution. There will always be geniuses who follow their own path. But for ordinary people, just like me, reliance on the sense and intuition in creative process is not always the best way to follow. Structure and effort are the two components that could help us succeed in generation of creative ideas.

That’s it for today. I would be glad if you would post comments, make suggestions and provide constructive feedback. Take care and see you next week in my blog or in person.