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.

***

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.

***

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

_________

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.

***

TIP OF THE DAY: INCREMENTAL CHANGE LEADS TO RADICAL CHANGE

All too often the concept of innovation is intricately linked with radical change. In fact, the opposite is true:

a) Most successful innovations take advantage of existing technology, are moderately new to market (not radically new), support existing behaviours, support customer needs and save money.

b) Radical innovation is the result of compounded incremental change. An example of this is looking at an old photo – very minute changes make big differences over long periods. The Internet resulted from the connectivity of the PC, which developed out of the mainframe, which owes its existence to the solid state transistor, which evolved from the earliest cathode ray tubes and so forth.

***

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

_________

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.

***

TIP OF THE DAY: INCREMENTAL CHANGE LEADS TO RADICAL CHANGE

All too often the concept of innovation is intricately linked with radical change. In fact, the opposite is true:

a) Most successful innovations take advantage of existing technology, are moderately new to market (not radically new), support existing behaviours, support customer needs and save money.

b) Radical innovation is the result of compounded incremental change. An example of this is looking at an old photo – very minute changes make big differences over long periods. The Internet resulted from the connectivity of the PC, which developed out of the mainframe, which owes its existence to the solid state transistor, which evolved from the earliest cathode ray tubes and so forth.

***

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

_________

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Go to http://www.managing-creativity.com for more info....

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Managing Creativity: THE VALUE OF STRUCTURE

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.

THE VALUE OF STRUCTURE

The common belief is that lack of structure and randomness enhances creative output, whereas in truth, creativity is enhanced when it is organised, systematic and based on highly structured processes.

But what do we mean by structure:

a) Structure includes frameworks. Frameworks reduce complex problems to smaller, more manageable parts. The number of ideas generated by examining each smaller part is greater than the number produced by examining the larger, more complex problem as a whole.

b) Structure includes process. If you analyse the behaviour of people in the creative state, they all exhibit the same process. This process includes identifying problems, intensely investigating, seeking stimuli, forcing ideas and encouraging incubation.

c) Structure includes sustained, and even repetitive, activity. Simply being prolific - consistently generating ideas - increases the probability of generating good ideas.