Category: Ideas

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Promoting Creativity

Creativity is recognised as a cornerstone to ongoing, successful innovation. It doesn’t just happen.

How can a manager foster creativity?

Gleeson et.al. (1999) propose five principles for promoting creativity in R&D.  As they point out, these “are simple principles, indeed stunningly so, given the complexity of the creative process and of the institutional cultures within which R&D operates”.  The five principles are:

  • Goals:  Creativity is fostered by setting both creativity and productivity goals but not by prescribing R&D processes to attain them.
  • Bounded Freedom:  Creativity is affected by the psychic balance experienced by the researcher or field participant between what she/he seeks to achieve and what the organisation or group desires her/him to achieve.
  • Recognition:  Creativity is enhanced by reward and recognition, as long as it is experienced as an appreciative and/or informational event and not as a means to control or manipulate.
  • Social Interaction:  Appropriate peer and social interaction is an essential prerequisite to creativity.
  • Leadership:  The development and communication of insightful organisational visions and leadership help foster creativity.

Gleeson, T., Russell, G. and Woods, E. (1999), Creative Research Environments.  Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation: Canberra, Australia Report No. 99/128

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The Dynamics of Discovery

From Archimedes to Edison, attempts to improve quality of life have dictated a need for advances in science and technology. These advances are now widely understood as the key enablers of increasingly prosperous societies.

Despite this long history, the process of managing the expanding frontiers of new knowledge in a way that will benefit society is a work in progress. This is largely due to the unpredictable nature of scientific discovery most famously illustrated by Archimedes, when, upon stepping into the bath, he suddenly realised that the volume of water displaced was equal to the volume of the submerged portion of his body.

His discovery provided the solution to the previously intractable problem of measuring the volume of irregular objects and led to further advances in assessing the density and purity of precious metals among other things.

In the modern world little has changed in how new knowledge is acquired. However, in an attempt to get the best value for their limited investments, governments have devised processes to manage its discovery, often with sub-optimal effect.

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Finding great ideas (2): Boundaries of Time and Space

We don’t know where our ideas come from.

Can’t get a job finished? Or even started? Finding you thinking or writing blocked? Overwhelmed by the little things that get in the way of what you really want to do?

A solution is to create some boundaries of time and space to be creative and to get the big jobs done.

John Cleese, the British actor, often talks about creativity. Here is an excerpt from a presentation he gave in Belgium some years ago on creativity and where our ideas come from. If you only ever watch one video on management, then this should be it.

View John Cleese on where ideas come from
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Ideas have Power

But I shall let the little I know or have learnt go forth into the day in order that someone better than I may guess the truth, and in his work may prove and rebuke my error. At this I shall rejoice that I was yet the means whereby this truth has come to light. Albrecht Durer