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: THE CREATIVE STATE

Often the creative state is described in almost "spiritual" terms. However, these analyses are misleading and do not help to make creativity tangible, measurable and useable.

The creative state is the result of a combination of factors:

a) The creative state is actually a problem solving state. It is identifying a problem and solving it. It is moving from an original state to a goal state.

b) The creative state is actually an idea generating state. This state is a creative thinking state as opposed to a critical thinking state. Ideas are expressed without evaluation. The number, diversity, novelty and frequency benchmarks are all maximized.

c) The creative state is actually an unblocked state. Most blocks are the result of some sort of evaluation apprehension – when these have been removed, the "feeling" of flow becomes more apparent.

d) Anyone can move from an original to a goal state at any time [ref a) above]. In the Journey of Psychology, businessmen rated low in creativity began to score high when asked to pretend they were happy-go-lucky hippies.

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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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