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 PROCESS OF CREATIVITY
It seems incongruous that good idea generation can be a process or that a process may lead to insight. However, if you examine the behaviour of people who regularly generate good ideas – such as creatives in advertising - you will find that common patterns of behaviour do emerge and it is possible to make insight more likely.
Below are just some elements of the good idea generation process:
a) Creativity is often triggered by the need to solve a problem. People who generate good ideas tend to clearly identify the problem through a tangible process. They will look at a problem from various perspectives, create multiple definitions of it and ask many others to contribute to the precise nature and basic qualities of the problem as they see it.
b) Problems require intense investigation. People who generate good ideas intensely investigate the problem using various knowledge bases and information sources. This allows frame breaking, reduces path dependency and parochialism and allows the intellectual cross-pollination that gets people thinking in new directions.
c) Forced productivity. People who come up with good ideas force themselves to produce ideas without evaluating those ideas. They will separate creative from critical thinking and simply bash out ideas using a variety of techniques. Common methods involve linking to diverse objects and concepts, vertical and lateral thinking techniques. They will regularly maximise the size and quality of their idea pool. This patterns the mind into seeking answers and triggers cognitive activity at multiple levels.
d) Seek stimuli. People who think of good ideas seek out stimuli from novel, diverse and numerous sources. The range of stimuli is infinite and this tends to suit people who have or benefit from a life long interest and curiosity in many subjects.
e) Constant conscious thought. People who generate good ideas constantly think about the problem at all times. Often they describe themselves as incapable of thinking of anything else, no matter what distractions may be present. Hence the common occurrence of descriptions such as "obsessed," "single-minded," "preoccupied," "compulsive," "consumed," "captivated," "infatuated," "absorbed", "immersed," "possessed," "hooked" and so forth.
f) Engagement in rest and unrelated activities. People who generate good ideas will allow for rest and engagement in unrelated activities, which allows unconscious processes to take over. It is at this point that insight is common. Having progressed past the previous stages numerous times, the solution presents itself when engaging in something completely unrelated.
g) Incubation. Following intense cognitive activity, it may be that the problem is set aside. A solution may present itself at any point thereafter.
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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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