Creativity by Rote and Mechanism
Peter de Jager is a provocative Speaker, Writer and Consultant. His primary focus in on how we manage change, technology and the future.
In addition to speaking at conferences worldwide, he's also writen monthly columns for CIO Magazine and Computerworld Canada.
His goal is always to question what we think is so, and in so doing perhaps open up new opportunities.
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There isn’t an organization on the planet which couldn’t prosper from an increase in creative thought by both their employees and their clients. A customer who asks for a new product to solve a problem is offering you an entire new market. An employee who finds a new way of doing things might reduce your costs a hundred fold, or create a new industry. Creativity is an asset.
When beset by problems and challenges, all organizations seek innovative solutions. When we think of ‘Creativity techniques’ we usually think of attributes like “Spontaneous” and “Inspired”, not “Rote” or “Mechanistic”. The very notion that repeatable, mundane processes can deliver creativity is blasphemy.
What is the source of Creativity? If we believe the ability to create a new idea is a gift received at birth by a select few, then regardless of the techniques we use to
instill creativity in the masses, we are doomed to failure. For what can mere mortals do, for those whom the Gods pass over?
On the other hand, if we believe that creativity resides in all of us, then the problem becomes one of encouraging, and releasing it, and not of instilling or teaching it.
It doesn’t take much effort to prove we’re all incredibly creative. All we need do is pay attention to what happens in the darkness of the night. Regardless of how uncreative you might consider yourself during the day, at night, when you relax and shut your eyes, your creativity blossoms into fantastic dreams. Things you could never imagine in your waking moments carry you on wild adventures, making the best Spielberg movies pale in comparison.
Our challenge is to unlock that ‘ability to create’ in our waking hours. To channel our midnight dreams into the daylight where they can do us greater benefit.
Creativity is doing that which hasn’t been done before. To ‘create’ is to produce the new, to bring into being for the first time a new idea, product or service.
Those definitions suggest part of the obstacle facing creativity. Doing something new requires courage. Courage to protect us from ridicule as people around the meeting table, scoff, laugh, or smile condescendingly when we offer a new idea for consideration.
It’s been pointed out before, it needs to be pointed out again, the surest way to kill a new idea is to laugh at
it. It is difficult enough to drum up the courage to voice a new idea; add laughter and ridicule to the challenge and soon, nobody dares to be creative.
Here’s a rote behaviour which is guaranteed (or your money back) to increase creativity in your organization is: Give all new ideas respect… even when at first glance, they don’t seem to deserve it.
While this almost trivial strategy makes Creativity easier to voice, it still does little to generate new ideas. So… let’s go back to one of those definitions;
Creativity is doing that which hasn’t been done before. Depending on how you look at this, this is either an incredibly difficult, or an almost trivial exercise. For most people it is the former. Their question is “How do we think of something that hasn’t been done before?”
Here’s a mechanistic response to that question which requires little thought, never mind any ‘Creative’ thinking.
Attribute Manipulation: Take your product/service and list every attribute it possesses – then manipulate that list of attributes.
e.g. Product: Radio
a) Delivers broadcast sound to the listener
Why not capture sound as well?
Why not deliver pictures as well?
Could it deliver smells?
Could it tell the listener the temperature?
Their Pulse rate? Blood Pressure? Sugar content?
Phone calls?
Text information about what they’re hearing?
Why not pre-recorded sounds?
b) Receives radio waves from radio stations
Why not TV stations?
Satellite stations? GPS Information
Why not Wi-Fi?
Why not the Internet?
If you notice a similarity between some of the ideas above, and products already on the market, then you
could say the method doesn’t work… or you could consider it proof
that it can generate different products from what you started with…sometimes they just happen to have been implemented already.
Which only means you have to twist the attributes some more, or seek other
attributes you might not have considered twisting. All Apple did was make
the colour of their computer boxes different and realized an increase in
sales.
Naturally, it takes some practice to think in ‘attributes’ of a product, but it’s not a difficult skill to acquire. Whether your results generate a useful new product, will depend on both luck and the number of new things you’ve managed to create.
© 2005,
Peter de Jager – Peter is passionate about change, how it affects both
individuals and organizations and allows them to grow and prosper. To contact him, and
host internal seminars on Change Management visit www.technobility.com
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