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: FORCED INNOVATION
Whilst there is a lot of lip service given to innovation, the reality is that it often results from competitors making significant gains – competitors who themselves have had to be innovative to challenge existing market leaders. Good examples include:
a) New Coke, forced into action when it lost market share to Pepsi
b) IBM forced to change as a result of Microsoft.
An irony is that once innovative companies become less so when they have found their Golden Fleece.
Finding a killer product forces a firm to concentrate on marketing and improving that product and results in a degree of parochialism and path dependency.
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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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