Managing Creativity MBA dissertation

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I recently gave a presentation at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design on a topic entitled "Is creativity management an oxymoron?"

The essential confusion to people resistant to the idea of "creativity management" was the word "management." Replace it with the word "optimization" and the resistance disappears; all we're really trying to do is optimize the quality of the idea pool and optimize the implementation process.

Then you can suggest that most people already implicitly accept the idea of creativity management: if you ask them to solve a problem or engage in a particular endeavour, one of the things they're likely to do is herd people into a room with a flip chart and conduct some sort of brainstorming session and implicit in that action is the acceptance that certain methods, processes and procedures enhance creative output.

Then you can begin discussing how to improve the enormous amount of creative output people generate, from problem solving in everyday business life right up to the level or art.

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TIP OF THE DAY: Short term goal setting

The value of short-term goal setting on creative output should not be underestimated:

a) Short term goals break a task into smaller more manageable parts. What at first seems unfeasible becomes feasible when incremental goals are set. Feasibility is one of the requirements of motivation.

b) Short term goals produce far more output than a "do your best" approach. Write five pages a day and you have a screenplay in a month (first draft only). Do not implement that routing and it will remain unfinished under your bed until your kids grow up. Maybe they can take over the project.

c) Short term goals split the larger task into smaller sets of problems solving exercises. At each stage a problem is identified and the mind begins working on it, usually on various cognitive levels.

d) Awareness of the task is given priority in terms of mind space and actions.

e) Short term goals help build task experience. Task experience is required for making radical leaps or creative leaps.

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If you haven't already done so, you can buy the MBA Research Project on Managing Creativity and Innovation, DIY Audit, Good Idea Generator software and the 50 slide Powerpoint Presentation from http://www.managing-creativity.com

Best

http://www.managing-creativity.com

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