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: Status Games
One of the dynamics leaders should be looking out for is the propensity of certain personality types to be more interested in maintaining a high status within the group as opposed to working to arrive at good decisions.
Status interest and deference is a major cause of conflict, competition and blocking in group activities and leads to a restriction of information flow and a consequent reduction in the number and quality of ideas.
Status dynamics cause:
a) People to be more interested in maintaining high status at the expense of good results.
b) People to defer to higher status individuals at the expense of their own ideas.
c) People to value the ideas of higher status people more than their own.
d) High status individuals to consciously block the ideas of lower status individuals.
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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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