1.5 - About University

6.7 C REATIVITY AND I NNOVATION:T HE L EADER’ S R OLEInspired by Edward de Bono, Gerald Nadler, Shozo Hibino, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and Roger Von Oech.In the world of Fast Company, “more of the same” or even “getting better at the same” rarelyworks. Would you want to fly with an airline whose motto was, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”?One of Jack Welch’s famous one-liners is, “If it ain’t broke, break it.” Writing about the neweconomy, Lester Thurow is blunt: “Businesses must be willing to destroy the old while it is stillsuccessful if they wish to build the new that will become successful. … Both creation anddestruction are essential to driving the economy forward.” In other words, no creativity, nosurvival!This tool will give you an overview of some typical creativity tools and their implementation.We use a distinction made by some creativity gurus:Creativity is the process of generating new ideas.Innovation is creating the conditions for creativity and for implementing the best ideas.Many books and workshops rightfully focus on creativity (generation of new ideas); yet inmost organizations the bottleneck is actually innovation (getting a new idea accepted and producingresults). Most organizations are designed to continue on the path they have set (implicitlyor explicitly). Your role as leader is crucial in encouraging a culture that can generate ideas;high-grading and selling those ideas; and ensuring successful implementation and results.C REATIVITY TECHNIQUESCreativity experts have designed and promoted thousands of techniques. Here is a sample list.Technique What is it? Some how to’s:Lateral ThinkingBrainstorming orMental PopcornReframingExploring many differentways of looking at an issue,rather than accepting the firstlogical definition andsolution.Assigning a defined period tono-evaluation thinking, whennovel or unusual contributionsare encouraged.Exploring a set ofassumptions about the scopeof an issue and the range ofsolutions available.✔ Encourage low-probability thinking, rather than what de Bonocalls high-probability but uncreative (vertical) thinking.✔ Always ask for the second right answer.✔ Probably the most used (some would say abused) technique ingroups and teams.✔ A step in a process in which “mental popcorn” is used for thepurpose of increasing the scope of thought.[☛ 6.9 Brainstorming]✔ Make it acceptable to challenge the often narrow assumptionsthat are embedded in a problem definition.✔ Ask questions that broaden or narrow the scope of the issue.[☛ 7.1 Problem Framing]SECTION 6 TOOLS FOR CRITICAL THINKING AND INNOVATION 189