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 VALUE OF PROLIFIC PRODUCTIVITY
When asked his secret to success, the author Graham Green said that it was down to his always writing 500 words a day. There are real reasons why this philosophy rings true:
a) The single best creative product tends to appear at that point in the career when the creator is being most prolific – quality of output is closely related to quantity.
b) In the early stages, relative lack of experience, knowledge and refined methodology limits performance to sub-optimal levels. With time these factors improve and productivity increases exponentially. The experience curve implies that creativity should get easier and faster the more it is engaged in.
c) The major part of learning takes place subliminally and unconsciously. When we are strongly motivated by an endeavour, we will become good at it by working on it at various cognitive levels.
d) Many skilled actions are initially learnt with much conscious effort then, with practice, they come easily and smoothly (subliminal perception and learning). After complete automisation, paying complete attention can actually be detrimental.
e) Incremental targets produce more output than a "do your best" approach. If a leader asks participants in an idea generating session to address a problem and think of at least 5 ideas every half an hour, then 80 ideas are produced by one individual and 1600 are produced by 20 individuals at the end of an average working day. This level of output is conscious and would not be produced normally.
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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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