Artists are creative. Engineers, accountants and other squares aren’t.- I can tell if the person in front of me is creative within seconds.
- There is no method to actually generate novel ideas. There cannot be such a method.
- Doing something truly creative means doing something that is unlike anything we know.
- If you just let go, and then allow your thoughts to incubate, valuable ideas will duly emerge.
- Laughter drives creativity, and it is always a good indicator of a creative process.
- The best way to get a group of people to come up with ideas is brainstorming.
- Being creative requires thinking out of the box. In fact, the two notions are equivalent.
- The most important factor in the success of an organizational innovation initiative is management commitment.
- “Our organization has plenty of good ideas, the problem is just implementing them.”
- By listening to your customers you will become aware of their needs, and thus be able to offer them the right new products.
- Innovating is expensive.
- Innovation is just about creating new products or services.
- Innovation and creativity are always fun.
- When we come up with a successful innovative idea, it will be immediately evident to us that it is indeed a great idea.
- It is less risky to launch a “me too” product, than an innovative one.
February 16, 2009
I would add:
17. “Practical & Effective” is the opposite of “creative”
Number 10 is a classic. “Our organization has plenty of good ideas, the problem is just implementing them.”
I hear this too often from companies, and it helps explain a lot of their frustration with innovation and growth.
My addition: there is no such thing as too many ideas
Special for ‘the situation’: “Let’s turn cost cutting mode ON, innovation can wait”
A comment to the comments of Orly, Fabian, and Michalee. I agree with all your examples of common fallacies. I would like to point out, though, that the criterion for including something in this list for me was not only that it was a) about innovation b) what i consider a fallacy, but also c) something i myself actually believed in, until my experience taught me otherwise.
I think it could be an interesting proejct - mayb ein this blog of ours - to create the Great Encyclopedia of Innovation Fallacies - in which i agree that your examples would have a poace of honor.
On creativity: I had a mentor once that told me to “ask myself a question early” and your subconscious will start to work on the answer for you. It really works for me.
Dear Sarah,
Thansk for your comment. First, i looked up your blog and found that you are “a Mom, a marketer and a mountain climber”. Three abilities that i admire, but only from afar, for physiological, sociological and psychological reasons respectively. So i automatically give much weight to your experience(:
I want to clarify - i still believe that subconcious incubation can deliver insights and creativity, I just stopped believing it can be trusted to do so in a reliable and consistent manner.
hope to talk more
Amnon
“Group creativity is more productive than individual creativity.”
I not only used to believe it - I used to teach it.
Two Dutch researchers discovered just the opposite. They write, “Most people believe that idea generation is best performed in groups… However, controlled research has consistently shown that people produce fewer ideas and ideas of lower quality when they work in a group as compared with when they work alone. Thus, contrary to popular belief, group interaction inhibits the ideation process.”
The full report is available (for a price) at http://psr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/10/3/186
hi Bernie,
Thanks for the comment. I dont know what is the “real” answer to the question whether individuals or groups produce more creativity, but it is an interesting point for me because i work almost exclusively with groups. The reason for working with groups, though, is not because they are expected by me to be more creative, but because in most issues in a company these days no single person can: a) have all the required knowledge and b) be able to push forward an initiative or a new idea that would come up in the session.
So if the Dutch researchers are right, and since we DO need to work in groups for the above mentioned reasons, it explains why our role as facilitators is so necessary (sorry for what may sound like a somewhat egocentric conclusion), and why the feeling is so often that the task is not at all easy. It is that we are putting people, for creativity-extraneous reasons, in a creativity-inhibiting context. The rest is just an attempt at compensation for the handycap.
Amnon
Hi Amnon,
I agree. There is a need and tremendous value to have people work in groups.
Some years ago I had a gut feeling along the same lines as the research. I discovered a relatively easy way to deal with it. Once the focus of the thinking has been clearly defined I have the group members first do some individual creative thinking. They then share the results and allow the group synergy to build on what they came up with on their own.
Bernie
Bernie
Hi Amnon,
Regarding working together versus working in groups. I would build on Bernie’s comment and agree it is a question of WHEN.
At the start of the project and at the end are the best times to work together. In the middle development stages it is probably best to work individually. Gamasutra have a lovely little graphic on their rapid prototyping feature to illustrate the concept.
Best
Ed
I love this post. I will file it away and refer to it whenever I run into a designer that tells me I don’t design because I’m not a designer.
A few weeks ago I ran into a lawyer that didn’t think he was creative, but he did work in a media, law, and juries - that just doesn’t get done without finding the whitespace and filling it, and gut-level intuition to bias an outcome towards a trial. Sure, it’s not putting paint on paper, but it’s still design.
Our media differ. Our decisions differ. Our outcomes differ. Our critical frameworks differ. Yet, in the face off all these differences, it’s still design. I’n tired of the chasm.
Thanks.