Creativity, an additional weapon for organizations

Creativity is a resource for solving problems since it facilitates adaptation to change to optimize the operation of the organization and improve the attitude of staff.

In (Creativity and innovation, strategic drivers for the organization) we have seen that creativity is a characteristic of human intelligence, a function among our most common abilities, as the association of ideas, memory, perception, analogical thinking, critical thinking, or the case.

Later from (How to stimulate creative solutions) we said that although creativity often seems like an irrational act, it can be learned and developed using tested techniques.
It’s possible to improve our creativity, training ourself in the construction of new relations between concepts or events that previously seemed unconnected, and that result in new knowledge entities.

Creativity is then finding new relationships between things.
There are several techniques aimed to stimulate creativity and apply to areas more dissimilar.

From a business point of view creativity techniques can be used in any functional area of:
strategic planning, business strategy, product development, service optimization, functional strategy, finance, human resources, marketing, information management, quality management

And creativity and innovation are the basis for problem solving, organizational drivers for strategic innovation.
Creativity and innovation go hand in hand, there’s no innovation without creative ideas.

Each type of innovation is important.

Let’s take from a strategical point of view.
Strategic innovation in the company may not necessarily come from the top management, but it is equally true that the leaders ahead of their time with their imaginative skills are indispensable to implement strategic innovation across the enterprise.
Many managers may find that:

1) Many of their employees (at any level) have ideas about every aspect of the organization;
2) How many of these ideas are well thought out;
3) that many of these ideas have an economic value to the organization.

R&D activities in particular are more than any other influenced by the creative processes.
Some of the benefits they offer creative techniques for R&D are:

- The innovation with new products and process ideas.
- Continuous improvement of products and services.
- Efficiency.
- Fast.
- Flexibility.
- Quality.
- High efficiency.

It can also be useful to train the intermediate levels of the company to stimulate creativity, and motivate involve them to the point that the impact of a work environment based on the use of these techniques is softer.

Creativity techniques can be used in organizations, public and private, dedicated to the processes, products or services;
in individual creativity as a support for researchers, product developers and very small businesses.

The application of creativity techniques is an ongoing process.

How to stimulate creative solutions

Following my previous post (Creativity and innovation, strategic drivers for the organization) I will present in this discussion the theme of creativity from the point of view of techniques and methodologies to stimulate it.

All of us are creative, creativity since childhood has led each of us in discovering the “new”.
Although creativity often seems like an irrational act, it can be learned and developed using tested techniques.
These techniques help people to get out of their usual style of analysis, facilitating the consideration of broad alternatives that allow us to improve the productivity and the quality of our work.

And it’s possible to improve our creativity, training ourself in the construction of new relations between concepts or events that previously seemed unconnected, and that result in new knowledge entities. Creativity is then finding new relationships between things.

The basic principle is that everything can relate to everything.
The data, and then the information from which knowledge flows are the basis of creativity.
Very often we are not fully aware of what we know or what we would be able to create.

Scientific research is oriented towards the development of creativity as an educational process, even within companies.
In a company, or more generally in any other organization, it is important to incorporate the creative potential of its employees organization of processes and strategies.

There are several techniques aimed to stimulate creativity and apply to areas more dissimilar: product development, strategic planning, marketing, quality control.
Technologies not only addressed to companies but also to educational institutions at all levels, government, etc..

These tools are used with the aim to promote and generate creativity, breaking the established schemes, stimulating the imagination and, regardless of the method, improving the conditions under which it produces the creative ideas.

The analytical techniques such as follow a linear format of thought or sequence of steps, such as HWWWWW (How, What, Who, Where, When, Why),
when trying to clarify a situation, are especially useful for very specific problems.
The result is usually a very detailed organization of information and multiple perspectives of the same goal.

Intuitive techniques are less structured and vice versa tend to offer “complete solution” (ideal) in a time and are most useful for problems or situations undefined or loosely defined.
Some of these techniques may be more appropriate to stimulate creativity in groups or individuals.

Individual techniques can stimulate the ability of the individual, without the fear of making mistakes.
At the group level, it requires a certain discipline and organization. Some of these techniques can be used either by groups or individual. It is true that creativity, like learning, is an attribute
(and construction) of the individual, but it gives its best fruit when it is developed in a specific group.

Certainly another way to categorize creative techniques is the orientation of thinking: divergent or convergent.
Divergent thinking is oriented to the free flow of ideas and requires discipline. Convergent thinking instead, has the function to filter ideas to identify a really innovative value to be
integrated into a real solution. Both ways are complementary.

Generally, these activities are common reference under the concept of brainstorming.

It is important to use all the creative techniques like:

- Avoid the feedback
- Use the “intermediate impossible” * (the conceptual challenge)
- Create analogies and metaphors
- Inventing the ideal solution, from imagination
- How can we implement the solution?
- Relate concepts or things that were not related before
- Generate multiple solutions to the problem.

Here some observations to stimulate creativity in an organization:

- Trust the group, do it for fun.
- Maintain communication.
- Use external sources of information.
- Each group member is independent in the production of ideas.
- Support the participation of all in decision-making, and their contributions to brainstorming.
- Experimenting with new ideas.

* Note: “The impossible intermediate” is an extension of divergent thinking (De Bono), often used in preparation for writing.
Although an idea may seem absurd or impossible, may show edges which you can build ideas that will have a
greater chance of success.

Creativity and innovation, strategic drivers for the organization

Creativity is a characteristic of human intelligence, is a function among our most common abilities, as the association of ideas, memory, perception, analogical thinking, critical thinking, or the case.
From imagination, which includes the generation of ideas that did not exist before, or the generation of different ways of seeing a situation, comes the birth of creative thinking, which is the basis for building other creative actions.

Creativity can be seen as recognizing new relationships between existing things or concepts, producing something new.
It’s clear that the emotional dimension plays a fundamental role in the creative act, and it changes depending on the subjectivity, the individual’s personality, cultural and behavioral factors.

Creativity is therefore about concepts and ideas, and can be classified into:

- combinatorial, integrating the attributes of known ideas;
- exploratory (investigative), generating new ideas from the structured concepts.
- transformational, that implies the transformation of some dimension of the conceptual framework, to create new structures.

Considering now these concepts from a business perspective, creativity and innovation are the basis for problem solving, organizational drivers for strategic innovation.

Creativity and innovation go hand in hand, there’s no innovation without creative ideas.
Creative organized thinking, although as already said creativity is a personal gift, is the result of creativity in an appropriate organizational culture.

And it is this corporate culture that stimulates and sustains, through creative techniques, the possibilities for development the creative abilities of individuals and groups.
The techniques for the generation of creativity need to be implemented in the organization.
In the modern organization, it becomes imperative to convert the organized practice of creativity into a standardized process.

If creativity is “innovation”, the creative thinking must take place beyond the known limits, outside the box.
It is necessary to develop curiosity, away from conventional ideas and formal procedures, depending only by the imagination, the divergence.

Business management, and its decisions and actions, is constantly changing due to the business environment, and needs to develop strategies and solutions to solve problems.
It’s creative thinking that leads to a better understanding of problematic situations, finding new alternatives.
In a changing world, it is an imperative need to think ahead, because there are no many other possibilities to expand the horizon of opportunities and competitive strength of organizations.