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But does this work for business?
The
creative path in business is by no means limited to the creative
artist. The act of scientific discovery is a creative act
of the highest order. Even bureaucracy may be approached creatively.
Adam Roe, a research scientist friend who changed fields described
the importance and feasibility of being creative in an administrative
position this way, "If you go into administration, you must
believe that this is a creative activity in itself and that
your purpose is something more than keeping your desk clean.
You are a moderator and arbiter, and you try to deal equitably
with a lot of different people, but you've got to have ideas,
and you've got to persuade people that your ideas are important
and to them into reality...This is part of the excitement
of it. In, research and administration, the excitement and
the elation are in the creative power. It's bringing things
to pass."
I
like that, so I'm going to repeat it again, "It's bringing
things to pass."
Creativity
is adding something valuable to life. It is a gift. Take it,
unwrap it, appreciate it, use it and enjoy it. Innovation,
on the other hand, brings these gifts to life. In business
(and arguably in all of our lives) creativity and innovation
go hand in hand. The trouble is that the more you try to separate
one from the other, the sticker they both get. One reason
for the confusion is that both words have become interchangeable,
and thus, meaningless.
If
you read the product literature from the firms selling innovation
carefully, there is one word I bet you won't find: creativity.
People from the big firms talk about almost everything else
- from charts to forces, from brands to states, time lines
to bottom lines. Rarely, if ever, will you hear someone talk
about the art of creativity and its place in the science of
innovation.
Look
around. See how many firms are now preying (spelling intended)
at the altar of innovation - accounting firms, process re-engineering
firms, risk management firms are all talking about innovation.
Every planner, management consultant, ad-agency jock is doing
it. They've all decided to become our bungee-jumping innovation
buddies.
The
Cooks Table
Several
years ago, I enrolled in a cooking class taught by a master
chef from the Cordon Blue School in France. English was his
"third language" and my only language, so communication wasn't
easy. He taught by demonstration, I watched (and diligently
tried to quantify his recipes - a quarter teaspoon of this,
a half of teaspoon of that. I wrote down everything.) As he
prepared an array of marvelous main and side dishes, and exotic
sauces and soups. But my recipes were imperfect. As hard as
I could, I could not duplicate his creations. "What was it,"
I wondered, "that made his cooking so special?"
The
answer eluded me until one day, when I paying particular attention
to the supporting cast of characters who assisted our teacher,
I saw him, with great dignity and deliberation, prepare a
dish. He handed it to a second chief who, without a word,
carried it to the oven, and without breaking stride, threw
in a handful of assorted spices and condiments.
Eureka!
His secret revealed. Convinced that those surreptitious "throw-ins"
made all the difference, I pounded the table, laughed out
loud, closed my notebook, and made friends with the second
chef.
That
cooking class comes to mind when I think about innovation.
Especially, when I think about the critical ingredients of
successful innovation. Formal texts, business school case
studies, journal articles, and lectures at "innovation conferences"
portray it as precise and systematic, with carefully delineated
stages, methodical development, analysis of object data, and
careful, rational programs of insight-offering interpretations.
Yet I believe deeply that, when no one is looking, the successful
innovation company throws in the "real thing:" C-r-e-a-t-i-v-i-t-y.
Who's
on first?
Here's
my take: If the act of innovation precedes the art of creativity
then order reigns supreme, and everything is predictable.
Just as deadly, and even more confounding, is this: when the
art of creativity is not closely followed by the act of innovation
then chaos reigns supreme. Ideas have no place to go, except
on the wall, floor...wastes basket.
The
heart of innovation is about taking ideas to the people who
value, and fervently believe in them. Chances are, if you
have more "doers" on your team than "critical thinkers" you
may be doing things that are not terribly valuable to your
customers. Dig down even further, you may find that you're
do more "talking" than anything else, creating a lot of BLAH-BLAH
and not a lot of AH-HAH!
Do
the math: if you spend 7/8th's of your time "doing" and 1/8th
of your time thinking, you may be leaning in the wrong direction...I-LEAN!
What would happen if you reversed the order? What would happen
if you did things differently for a day, week, and month?
Here's
the deal: Innovation follows creativity as closely as love
follows attraction; night follow day and order (in the best
of cases) follows chaos. Call it Your Success Factors - CREATIVITY
+ INNOVATION = SUCCESS. "Can't have one without the other."
This is not just another song and dance: no matter how big
you are, or how important you've become, one principle never
changes: Creativity is the soul of innovation. It leads it.
It supports it. It is the currency of the new economy.
James
Champy wrote, "People like to think that businesses are built
of numbers (as in the "bottom line"), or forces (as in "market
forces"), or things ("the product"), or even flesh and blood
("our people". But this is wrong. Businesses are made of ideas
- ideas expressed in words."
I
like that, so let me repeat it. "Businesses are made of ideas."
So
who gets this? Whose B-I-G I-D-E-A-S are winning these days?
Don't
pass over the passion.
Consider
some Internet publishers. Some have millions of dollars to
spend and some merely have a life-consuming passion. My bet:
never bet against the fellow with a fire in his belly.
Take
the case of Time Warner. Recently they announced they would
shut down Pathfinder, its ambitious effort to establish a
great Internet portal. Time Warner began
publishing
Pathfinder in 1994, when hardly anybody else was thinking
about such a venture. And the company spent $15 million a
year in an effort to build an audience.
How
can the publishers of Time and People and Sports Illustrated
fail to attract web users? By burying its most valuable properties
at the Pathfinder site, Time Warner failed to capitalize on
the appeal of its biggest brands.
Implementation,
the need to make something happen, without regard to where
it is happening, can bankrupt the best efforts of mice and
men.
It
is not a mistake made by my favorite Web-zines. These low-budget
startups create their own brands through the sheer fervent
love of technology and good writing.
Consider
the case of Bob Downey.
He lives in Milton, MA. A couple of years ago, while taking
a shower, Downey had an idea for a personal Web site celebrating
his passion for technology.
Downey
has little hope of becoming a web celebrity. After all, gearhead
Web sites abound, from amateur efforts like his own to major
tech sites developed by major companies. Besides Downey had
only one computer to write about - his own. After all, he
was only a 16-year old junior in high school.
Still
Downey took a month to design the site and write a review
of a new computer he'd bought, "It was kind of flawed," Downey
recalls.
But
Downey's site was good enough to attract a stream of visitors.
Soon the site was truly worth visiting, crammed with dozens
of up-to-date reviews, most of them written by Downey at night,
on weekends, and after school.
"You
don't need to be a rocket scientist to do this," says Downey.
"All you have to be, I think, is creative and dedicated to
doing it."
Easy
for him to say - he's attending RIT. Then again, maybe he's
right. There are hundreds of sites out there, assembled by
dedicated amateurs with brains and attitudes, and with a balanced
dose of creativity and the talent to implement. They're entering
the game a lot later than their well oiled competitors and
with a lot less money to burn - just talent and passion. The
soul of creativity. The heart of innovation. And that's just
plenty.
The
greatest mistake companies make when developing new innovations
and products is to focus on perfect quality over exciting
ideas. Excellent quality in products and services has become
almost universal. In the old days you could buy a product
that was bad. Now it's almost impossible to find anything
that's of real poor quality. There are so many excellent brands
that unless you do something exciting...something creative
to
make
your product stand out; it will simply go unnoticed. Even
products that exhibit minor differences in appearance, branding,
or packaging can assume a large dose of attention.
Products
need to have character. They need to have presence. Products
that are common are usually technologically sound but are
so sanitized that no one notices them.
Creativity
entails risk, no doubt about it. It can result in products
that succeed or really fail. The alternative is to go that
safe, secure road where you produce something that doesn't
stick out and doesn't engender any great enthusiasm, but is
probably guaranteed not to be a huge flop.
Think
about it. Most large, multinational, multi-product line companies
tend to be run by a lot of analytic folks who believe that
the truth can be found in a number. One of the most populated
homelands for these gifted and bright people is product planning.
Here, endless hours are spent sifting through reams and reams
of data to which an elaborate numerical model of the market
takes on a semblance of reality. Armed with data, products
are produced that are bland, run absolutely counter to common
sense, and almost always turn out to be disasters.
Numbers
are poor surrogates for imagination, intuition, judgment,
critical thinking, creativity, and leaps of faith.
I
think it was Tom Peters who said the greatest breakthrough
products are the ones that inventors created out of the sheer
joy of creating them for themselves. I believe that whatever
type of product or service you offer, you have to start with
joy. If you're trying to create a great running shoe, wristwatch,
or paper clip and you're not passionate about creating something
great, you'll never do better than OK - you won't be a winner.
F.
Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that the test of first-rate intelligence
is the ability to hold two opposing thoughts or ideas in the
mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
Creativity and order are in sense opposites, but you need
both of them. If you have nothing but order, it's going to
feel very good to management because every thing will seem
predictable. But you're going to end up with complete stasis.
On the other hand, if you're all creativity, there will be
nothing but constant renewal and churning, and the result
will be chaos. Stasis and chaos are ditches on either side
of the road, and a good company will try to steer down the
middle, occasionally veering one way or the other as course
corrections is necessary.
If
you had to err one way or the other...It's much more difficult
to make an orderly company behave more creatively than it
is to take a creative company and make it more orderly.
You
don't want to be the only person with passion.
If
you're smart, you'll work with a company (hopefully ours!)
that surrounds you with people who are as caught up in the
magic of your ideas as you are. But if you're really smart,
you'll pick a company (again, ours) who says, "Wait a minute,
not so fast." Why is that important? They'll help keep you
from letting all that passion and excitement carry you off
into trouble.
I've
seen a lot of great companies stumble because they lacked
pause and focus. Some companies (albeit too few) get so enamored
of the act of creation that they can't organize themselves
to actually produce anything. It's a case of the content driving
the process. While passion is critical, you need to advocate
a tension between that burning desire and a more disciplined
controlled approach.
Know
this (memorize it - they'll be a test on Friday): never be
satisfied. Always be curious. Absolutely remember it's dangerous
to believe that you're the best. It's better to feel you're
constantly striving to be the best. You don't have to be perfect;
you just have to have better ideas than the other person does.
If you produce better ideas and don't screw up as much as
the other person, you win.
The
moral of the story is this: In an effort to be more innovative,
more efficient, more orderly, don't forget that you'll go
further and faster if you put the horse before the cart. Be
creative first, second and always, and your ideas will help
create innovations that make raving fans out of you customers.
Which by the way, might just help you win. And isn't that
why you started to play the game in the first place?
Written
by Robert Taraschi
For
More Information:
Sherman, Howard and Schultz, Ron, Open Boundaries, Perseus
1999
May, Rollo, The Meaning of Anxiety, Norton, 1977
Petzinger, Jr., Thomas, The New Pioneers, Simon & Schuster
1999
Christensen, Clayton, The Innovators Dilemma, Harvard Business
School, 1997
Reiman, Joey, Thinking for Living, Longstreet, 1998
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