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: VALUATION ISSUES
One of the useful methods of valuing ideas is to analyse the practical impediments that may impede an ideas progress to commercial success.
One of the useful models is Utterback's (1994) S-curve, which describes how the performance and cost characteristics of a technology change with time and continued investments.
The performance of the established technology improves over time, at first rapidly, and then more slowly until maturity as years of improvement exhaust opportunities to better cost and performance (e.g. Windows in 2005, MS Office).
When the new technology first arrives (e.g. Linux, OpenOffice) it is crude compared to the existing, with many issues still unresolved. At this point it may be written off.
These problems are gradually resolved over time and ultimately the innovation is able to compete with the cost performance characteristics of other players. Then it is picked up by lead users who value it highly, and goes on to win market share through a variety of mechanisms.
By plotting an idea against the S-curve, it is possible to gauge how long before an idea is able to engage with rivals. Major barriers also include cultural and emotional objections. For example, condoms have a low take-up rate in Africa, despite the prevalence of Aids, because of cultural taboos.
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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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