Managing Creativity MBA dissertation

FORWARD

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: Quality from Quantity

The most sure fire way to produce quality work is to follow the process of prolific production:

a) Simply being prolific increases the probability that quality will emerge. Some of the most well known creative productions have occurred when the creator was at his most prolific.

b) Prolific production engages the mind in the task. This results in the mind identifying problems and subconsciously producing answers. This is called insight. Thus prolific production increases the frequency of insight, also known as Eureka or Aha!

c) Prolific production helps refine methodology, enhance competencies and optimise process, resulting in higher eventual performance.

d) Prolific production requires incremental goals and incremental goals produce more output than a "simply do you r best approach."

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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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