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"Creativity"
The possible choices and the strength of the connections
To observe how people react to different stimuli to which they are exposed and understand these reactions should be the first step to consider in resolving the issues that arise in front of us.
Different lenses to observe and different backgrounds to understand help us to find richer solutions, i.e. solutions applicable to a greater number of people with the same or similar problems.
The human experience cannot be analyzed and understood exclusively through a discipline or reduced to a perspective.
In our lives we face problems of multiple dimensions that require differentiated levels and solutions and often at home or in the organizations we are faced with problems whose solution requires the participation of multiple disciplines.
Not everything around us needs interdisciplinary methodologies or very elaborate solutions but we do not learn anything from someone who sees the problems in exactly the same way we see them.
Our behavior is subject to multiple levels of influence and consequently to a variety of perspectives and the way we build our cognitive map will influence our ability to solve problems or create value.
Our world of solutions and value creation is not restricted to verifiable metrics: On the contrary it extends to infinity, to the world of possibilities where we must include the solutions resulting from combinations, connections and contributions. This world of possibilities is a curious world where there is room for different feelings about things and that gives place to passions.
Each of us is a frame of reference for everything that happens in our lives and so we build the future through the options that we created in environments of complexity where we operate.
But if, generally speaking, our way is summarized to choose among the proposed to us we’re not building the future, we are tacitly accepting the choices of others.
“As individuals we relate to our complex, uncertain and foggy world not only through our senses, but also through ways of making sense of what our senses sense. These ‘ways of seeing’ can be thought of as ‘mental models’, and our minds are filled with them, whether we are aware of it or not. In today’s complex environment, the most successful thinkers can quickly and effectively abstract the best qualities of radically different ways of seeing from others and apply them to the situation at hand. In doing so, these thinkers develop an ‘adaptive lens’ on the bewildering phenomenon we call the world. – Mihnea Moldoveanu and Roger Martin
The world in which we live is a complex world where many of the solutions presented to us are not built on the basis of our needs.
For this reason we need to create adaptability, that is, we need to explore the art of possibilities to achieve the maximum breadth and depth of knowledge. This holding necessarily passes by our network of contacts and by developing new connections.
The more diverse are our connections the most comprehensive will be our field of exploration which causes our ability to explain a lot with little and our ability to see and observe increase significantly.
When we highlight the connections between the various disciplines represented in our networks, we can explore creative ways to achieve value and meaning and to share our vision of the world.
That is, create things of more value by establishing connections, deeply understanding the needs of people also means a new way of thinking.
This involves thinking about what we think, so we can create a set of skills that will enable us to embrace the complexity without becoming dependent on who provides.
From the observation of connections in a particular context we can sense what information is relevant, decide where it is important to reduce or cut out, understand the causal relations of the connections, and make the final choices.
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A flow of joy
“Creativity flourishes when things are done for enjoyment. When children learn a creative form, preserving the joy matters as much—if not more—than “getting it right.” What matters is the pleasure, not perfection.”
Creativity often leads to joy, both for the creator and for the viewer, be it an active role or not in the shared good.
But the creativity or the purposes toward its direction also generate conflict when (and almost always is so) our action is shaped by the constraints of reality.
“Creativity” in organizations is often faced with two questions:
To what extent should I sacrifice my creativity in favor of business?
To what extent should I sacrifice sales for my creativity?
When we created it is necessary that we are familiar with the walk towards the unknown and we cannot lose in future uncertainty or feel fear if confronted with the “sacrifice” of creation.
“In the creative act, the artist goes from intention to realization through a chain of totally subjective reactions. His struggle toward the realization is a series of efforts, pains, satisfaction, refusals, decisions, which also cannot and must not be fully self-conscious, at least on the esthetic plane.” – Marcel Duchamp
The sacrifices in creativity are often placed both the designers of Web pages as by the painters of portraits of illustrious people or the creators of toothbrushes and vacuum cleaners.
A creative person gives his/her personal slant on things that a consumer or user so much like, but will it be important to know what the weight of that mark in the final result?
What we need to know is to what extent the creative act in its process of mutation from the intention to the realization destroy the intentions to meet the needs or desires of the consumer.
“Operating a business in the global arena demands innovative ways of understanding and responding to the needs of people. Business people who know how to listen to their customers rather than just study figures and statistics will have a splendid future, and those who are able to draw on their intuition will emerge as natural leaders in this new business environment.”
A creative act is not carried out by one person alone. The recipient of created things is at least in the mental construction made by the creator, because he represents the outside world that is necessary to decipher.
It seems to be a fact that, increasingly, the aesthetic qualities of consumer products influence the behavior and preferences of consumers.
Consumers or users of products are consumers of beauty and creativity and these two attributes, sometimes are going hand in hand and sometimes are not, although the two represented positive charges when there is a decision to buy or to acquire.
Beauty can be seen as part of creativity, although many people refer to as fundamental factors of creativity novelty and usability. Like elegance and attractiveness beauty is also an important factor in the results of creative activity.
“Creativity: the ability to form or formulate something that no one else has done before, and that feels as if it has the proper conformity of the parts to the whole, i.e., the ability to formulate something that feels beautiful.”
There is however those who defend that beauty and creativity cannot coexist because beauty fits into an area of familiarity that is opposed to originality.
Is this dilemma, the ultimate sacrifice of those who defend creativity as fundamental lever for the success of organizations?
“There is no doubt that lessons can be learnt from the arts (and the artistic process) that could nurture creativity in business.” – The Guardian
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This article is a review of an earlier published on this blog.
Value and desire
Innovate in an organization, through their products or services, can produce very significant benefits if we innovate in the business model.
Innovation can enable new opportunities in expanding markets, increase margins through new ways of doing business and improve operational efficiency through a more efficient and effective use of existing resources.
Innovation emerges from the base to the top, in teams that are formed by sympathies or natural synergies and interact without having to ask for permission to do so.
Organizations need leaders that increase the power of collaboration or managers who facilitate the unpredictable and promote the creative work of all.
Each organization is a collection of unique features and capabilities that provide the basis of its strategy and the main source of their returns.
But innovation is not only to create new products and services. It is also about developing creative processes and new ways of thinking.
Innovation is, thinking about the people, about things, about the relationships between them and solves problems in new ways. It is to build a better world by managing resources and talents!
The effective use of potential resources in innovation is not only by the inventory of available resources but also in the assessment of these resources.
The development of new features and greater productivity of technology may be the answer that organizations need to obtain and thus a correct evaluation of the physical and human resources can change the value of the existing potential in the organization.
This means that it can be important not to say just what our availabilities are but also evaluate the potential of them.
The evaluation of internal resources, allows a balanced demand for external resources without wastage of financial resources and to recognize the adequacy of resources is important in the development of an innovation strategy.
“Technology, or knowledge, that exceeds what the market is willing to pay for ceases to be a competitive advantage.” - Clayton Christensen
But what resources (people, time, resources and information should) be available to support the efforts of innovation?
It is curious to note that both excess and lack of available resources can inhibit innovation. This is because on the one hand, the organizations where there are abundant resources have a conservative culture where creativity is taboo and on the other hand, in companies with resource scarcity cost compression inhibits innovative perspectives.
However, to do evaluations, not just stating their availability enables companies with scarce financial resources to increase their chances of developing innovative products and services.
The evaluation of resources can enable, feeding the kind of approach to develop in innovation, the continuous redraw and its adaptation to market requests.
For example, “the main objective of lean design is to use existing components and make sure that the final drawings are compatible with existing processes, so that the resources of the company can be leveraged as much as possible.”
The capacity for innovation, or the ability to provide resources to implement innovations in processes, technologies or other, quickly, effectively and efficiently, but without creating major additional costs, relies heavily on the knowledge obtained in the evaluation of existing resources in the organization.
But so that this knowledge is not only information and can therefore be integrated into the framework of the Organization we must take into account:
- What is that determines what are the components that promote and those that inhibit the adaptation to new realities.
- What is the innovative capacity of the Organization as a system.
Change and adaptation require innovation and this means constantly making things different and better. We know that not everything that is different is better, but what is better is always different than there were before.
Innovation is the creation of something new with a value extremely desired, but either the value or desire, are determined by the intervention of users or consumers.
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Looking for a balance
What we consider to be our views are in fact the result of years paying attention to information that confirms what we believe and ignoring the information that challenge our preconceived notions.
We are, some more than others, the fruits of an education and learning based on choices between Yes and No and because of that we tend to fall in some traps in decision making when there is risk and reward..
Our brain deceives us with what he guards. He feels attracted to long distances when they mean big rewards.
Who makes decisions in organizations must be aware of the importance of some psychological traps when is time to decide, especially when we evaluate new ideas or the opportunity to implement them.
We know that today, fear and pessimism are two strong allies, but we also know that excessive optimism leads to precipitation often extremely expensive.
Although we live in an age in which happiness is the most desired achievement, and nobody admire people who are afraid, it is not easy to keep an open mind to the possibility of the risk inherent in the adoption of new ideas.
While it is easy to ridicule anyone who points to the dangers ahead and sort them from pessimists, on the other hand, to imagine a future without obstacles or adversity is an excessive optimism and dangerous.
Is the balance between the fear of change and the courage to take the risk that develops the life of our good ideas, that is, our solutions.
To achieve this balance, we must, however, give some attention to ourselves, challenging our assumptions, reframing our problems, imagining the opposite of what we find good and telling stories to convince other people and not just us.
People over the centuries developed a biological capacity of fear, because it helped them survive, but at the same time keeps them resistant to change and on alert to many dangers that might confront.
If on the one hand this ability to be alert is good, on the other hand, it prevents us often to give wider steps and promising.
In these times when embarking to a future that we hope will be promising, many of us underestimate the difficulties facing and overestimates the ability to respond to these difficulties.
“While being optimistic is generally believe to be a benefit for living a high quality and perhaps longer life, too much optimism can be a problem, especially in regards to financial matters..”- Rick Nauert Phd
It is important that all stakeholders in innovation within organizations are alert to the possibility that they might be subject to these deviations. They must rely on the risks and the obstacles they will face to lead a project.
Most of the time, the victories of optimism resulting in a speculative bubble and the victories of pessimism result in great losses of opportunity.
It is the balance between the various forces that is the path to success!
To be able to not confuse impulsivity with intuition is an inherent jurisdiction to the conquerors and to the winners.
Intuition is not more than a response as a result of experience and where the “why” of our decisions are not easy to explain.
Impulsiveness is an absolute necessity to get immediate answers and that needs to be managed with critical thinking.
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This post was originally published at bbvaopenmind
Two different but similar views of the dream
Often we feel discomfort and even chest tightness when we couldn’t print action at our ideas or when our dreams seem to undo themselves as a small sand dune along the surf of the sea waves.
These are the dreams of long duration which serve as food to purposes and are therefore constant energy at our disposal.
The others are our dreams that are emotional and social functions to adapt to our ever-evolving life, and relate to our desires or needs to resolve conflicts.
Dreams allow, each of us put together some pieces of life, to give meant to a whole.
“Dreams are highly visual and often illogical in nature, which makes them ripe for the type of “out-of-the-box” thinking that some problem-solving requires”
Dreams are a road map for the “journeys” that we have designed and are used in a masterly by those who want to ‘sell’ an idea. An idea that contains a combination of an emotional appeal with our own characteristics but which also has us as a promoter, consumer or subconscious user in power.
To be a promoter, in a certain point of the journey, or consumer, another point, of a new idea or their embodiment implies a process of change which contains in it three related things:
The first is the feeling which refers to the process of experiencing our environment.
The second is perception, that is, the way we interpret these feelings and, therefore, to make sense of everything that surrounds us.
The third, the environment or the community, that is filled with diverse emotions and sources of information, sources that may create some uncertainty in us in defining the path to our ideas or dreams.
In these times we need to discover relevant information with the aid of meaning refiners filters.
Both organizations (environment) as the individual level, the large and important disability that involves our action is the lack of relevant information. The role of all that surround us is trying to enlighten the scattered data and turns them into something relevant, such as information, knowledge and understanding.
We only will be wise if there is understanding, if there is empathy.
We only will have, or will accept brilliant ideas, to illuminate our path if they meet our needs and those of our community.
What we seek is that, all those who interact with us, be part of this lens that amplifies the reading and sets our problems by highlighting our needs.
Share a dream, means to reconcile the points of view.
“I think that dreams and REM sleep have probably further evolved to be useful for really as many of the things that our thinking is useful for…,
It’s just extra thinking time, so potentially any problem can get solved during it, but it’s thinking time in the state that’s very visual and looser in associations, so we’ve evolved to use it especially to work on those kinds of problems.”
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Fear or lack of trust
In several projects where I have participated as a team member or as a facilitator, I notice that people, when they are asked to validate their hypothesis of solution, inside the communities where they are working (real life and not online), invent a series of excuses to not confront face to face, (fitted with their prototypes), with potential users.
This happens at a time when economic growth and “renaissance” (after the crisis) of contemporary cities, depends crucially on creative activities of their population.
The environment we live is constantly changing, with high levels of uncertainty and where the tacit knowledge overlaps the explicit knowledge and pushes us to constant interactions.
When we try to be creative and share our ideas, this is, when we want our new idea is a solution to the problems of someone, we must interact (also in real life) with the environment where we want to be inserted.
“Studies on different cultural industries have shown that face-to-face communication performs several functions. First, cultural workers spend time, money and energy in face-to-face interaction because they need to build relationships conducive to trust and to mutually renew and confirm that trust over time. Trustworthy relations are necessary because of the nature of knowledge involved in their work, which entails individual ability, sensibility, taste and lifestyle that can be communicated and transferred only through a personal relationship based on mutual trust. Trust thus makes easier the sharing of different cultural assets and skills necessary for collective projects. Because more and more cultural products are the result of the coming together of different special skills and distinct forms of human capital, trust is a prerequisite for successful collaboration.”
Returning to the fear that we have to face the evaluators of the assumptions embedded in our prototypes, we can think that what is at stake in these times are two different types of trust.
On the one hand, I create resistance because the trust i have in my abilities to work out a solution is very low and, on the other hand, still there is no mutual trust with the “target” people that would allow me to get the negative feedback that eventually may arise.
Trust is crucial not only in moments of co-creation with the members of teams where we operate but also with future consumers and users that participation in such creative acts.
In any of these moments it is essential that a climate of collaboration is a constant, so trust is a prerequisite for success.
If in fact we are committed to the success of our achievements, we can see that this success is in part derived from relationships with other people, through which we have access to knowledge and skills beyond ourselves, beyond our assumptions.
The resistance that many teams, or members of these teams, show when they need to go in the ground and face reality in the perspective of real needs and wants of end-users is a fear based on lack of trust that can drag serious consequences.
Not to test or validate our assumptions or hypotheses in real environments and not seek a true feedback leads us to construct false proposals and high costs in the search for solutions.
We must not forget that we have built prototypes to learn and not to test a supposedly finished product. There are the “clients” who have more to teach us so build trust is the right to a safe learning and a suggested solution with less risk.
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Good habits and motivation
The pressure that the time is upon us in the course of some activities seems to really have an important impact especially when we talk about creativity, even though at first glance may seem otherwise.
For many people this means that, although there is a sense of greater creativity in these moments, our creative result, when we are under pressure of time constraints, is negligible.
In fact, what we feel may not match what we do because motivation is one of the factors that interacts with our creative services.
“In the end, it’s level, form, and meaning of the motivator that makes for that perfect balance. Being told to do a tough job in a particular way, with no tolerance of failure, little expectation of recognition for success, and extreme, arbitrary time pressure, can kill anyone’s creativity motivation. But being given the same job, in a positive atmosphere where false starts are examined constructively and success is recognized, can drive creativity — and innovation — forward.” – Teresa Amabile and Steve Kramer
When, in an organization, employees are focused and protected and have a feeling of being doing important work their intrinsic motivation develops and although there is time pressure creativity emerges.
But if the developers don’t have a focus, are distracted, are busy with small activities and spend their time in meetings looking for inspiration, the result is stress and there is no creative thinking.
At other times without time constraints creative thinking can flourish but enjoying the exploitation of environments rather than troubleshooting because motivation is not directed to right goal.
Time constraints can be real or the product of our own ambition and imagination so we must be attentive to how we manage our resources and competencies.
“Time is the resource on which we’ve relied to get more accomplished. When there’s more to do, we invest more hours. But time is finite, and many of us feel we’re running out, that we’re investing as many hours as we can while trying to retain some semblance of a life outside work.”
It is not very useful we deceive ourselves with “time management” without accepting with sincerity the need for discipline in our work and family life.
We do not need to have a system of rigid discipline to feel the time to give the desired output, but some habits can help in this quest.
We can consider the creative habit as being a state of mind that is built to give a response to the need to solve problems in our daily lives whether at home, at work and in society or an activity that results in the creation of something new (a product, a work of art, a novel, a joke, etc.).
A creative habit is not a routine (bad habit) or monotonous repetition of the same things without interest in the progress. For example, get up early, scoring goals or be disciplined helps create a habit and develops creative interest for good results.
Creativity results from the habit of acting, of thinking, to question and be curious, but above all to be persistent in the pursuit of a dream.
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Clash of generations
Some people at some point in their lives thought and felt that many things were possible without necessarily having to prove in advance that things work.
But a lot of us when were able to reach the level of achievement of something that was possible, accommodated and failed to adopt more changes than those caused by society in general.
Now, imagine that a new showgirl in our lives, typically dressed in “Let be everything as it is”, or to put it another way, “I like this state of things”, which we would call “status quo”.
Today, while the “status quo” works constantly to keep the achievements of Baby Boomers, the younger generations, not so worried about these achievements, try to take advantage of what they call the possibility of having fun, doing what they like and in a different way from older.
A good result is not necessarily a result o a serious face focused on yesterday’s values because the values do not have to be acquired by inheritance. They are the fruit of experience and the relentless pursuit of truth that all generations should seek to converge.
It begins to be a dominant word for me, talk of “convergence” as a way to bring two kinds of interests and different motivations eventually with a tendency to deepen the “divergence”.
What I, by my story, give so much meaning or seek to perform as a purpose in the future, it is after all, what is seen by younger generations as something that must exist as a right of those who work.
The companies, mostly directed by older generations, are beginning to feel the need to find a balance between these two forces. One with the wisdom and the experience lived in completely different scenarios of current and the other with the scenarios of today asking for a change.
For the younger generations is important:
-A flexible working environment and working hours, enabling the reconciliation of working life and life outside of work.
-Work in a team and in a culture of collaboration.
-Always have updated technology.
-Have thought headed for the future, be responsible and work in companies open to creativity.
“Cisco recently published its Connected World Report, the results of which are quite shocking. Out of 2,800 college students and young professionals under the age of 30 and hailing from 14 countries, approximately one in three said he/she would prioritize social media freedom, device flexibility and work mobility over salary in accepting a job offer. 64% of college students asks about social media usage policies during job interviews and approximately 24% says it would be a key factor in accepting the offer. There is also a high expectation of the employee for the employer to offer a flexible schedule and freedom to work remotely.”
What these younger generations want to is after all what many of us (older generations) understand to be correct, but still do not know how to integrate into our way of life.
And why?
-Collaborating can mean calling into question our status as an “experienced person” and has consequence to open the silos of our wisdom.
-A flexible work environment can call into question our routines and our comfort and this means an additional effort so that we are not prepared.
-Think ahead means thinking in rest and be recognized for what we did.
-Because the simple business are not safe. There is always need for secrecy.
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A good example: Co-creation
The usefulness of things should be a privileged destination of creation but those things often satisfy the wants of the people and not always satisfy their needs.
Being creative means having an open mind to encompass all condiments of a good creation. An open mind is not limited to create desired things or come up with concepts that they like.
An open mind seeks to create something with meaning and purpose.
Traditionally the innovation arises in developed countries and then is “exported” to “least developed countries”. This route does not bring the true meaning that innovation should carry and only serves mostly to satisfy the desire of more fortunate people or to satisfy the vanity of owning the latest news.
This hierarchical approach to innovation, directed by conductors of large companies where top talent make vibrate the technical and creative skills is increasingly destined to be called into question.
Today create far from home (corporate headquarters) is a possible path that uses the art of improvisation to find solutions that later by a reverse process, are adapted to the needs of the populations of developed countries.
Create outside the context of R&D orchestras is like to compose with local and rudimentary instruments, doing more with less and then make arrangements to play with traditional and universal instruments.
Procter & Gamble, GE and PepsiCo, among many others have already experienced success with these new approaches and others experience yet new paths:
“Emerging markets like Africa, India and China offer Western engineers a great training ground to practice frugal simplicity. For example, Siemens, the German industrial giant, is using its R&D teams in India and China to develop minimalist solutions that deliver higher value to customers. In one instance, Siemens’ engineers in India — working closely with their German colleagues — developed a Fetal Heart Monitor that uses inexpensive microphone technology rather than the costlier ultrasound technology. This “good enough” medical device promises to make quality healthcare affordable and accessible to more people — not only in emerging markets but also in developed economies. “
We still feel the times of crisis, although not with as much intensity as a few years ago, and so the way we see innovation and their destinations should be reconsidered as an “incremental revolution” which will solidify ways of thinking and acting.
Innovation should mean generate more business and more social value, significantly reducing the use of resources that are considered scarce.
Innovation should mean completely rethinking the way to achieve a goal and, in some cases, this may mean redefining the goal we pursue.
Innovate should mean adapting the environments where we live to new demands and needs from younger to older.
“Living longer is great, but it is also a formidable challenge for both public and private budgets, for public services and for older people and their families. New approaches and solutions are needed urgently and you should be aware of them. Start today with ‘Active and Healthy Ageing’ and care for your health.”
Innovation means coming up with a new idea capable of creating a better world and create better children in a changing world.
Innovating means being able to create solutions for the errors that my and other previous generations committed and also be able to avoid that other generations share the same mistakes.
Innovation means creating positive learning environments, applying the present to a new context.
I think as we are moving forward in our journey of life, we are thinking of leaving something, as a testimony of our presence, which can serve to tell a story later so people can learn with our experience.
Let us be innovative without a deadline to do it!
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Reconciliation of generations
In this 21st century we live in, we are deepening differences between the various generations who cohabit the planet, instead of the schedule a meeting for a common good.
Although this “deepening” come up with relevant differences imposed by different cultures and communities, the four or five generations that mix or combine themselves have much to learn from each other.
For example, older people need to learn to use new technologies intuitively and the younger ones need to hear stories of experiences with success and disastrous experiences to learne the importance of context and relevance.
“Children in this century are too different from us. So we really have to give them all the opportunities, to have the skills so that when they reach our age, they will be equipped in doing what is positive, appropriate for the world…
The 21st century child is a combination of the three things — creative, cognitive, and learning and he is also a child with a champion mind. He or she can really say ‘I can do my best in any situation that I’m given in and if I’m not good in this, that doesn’t mean I can’t do anything’,”- De Ocampo
We do not need to think much to see that these kids are the future generations to create business or to take our places in organizations where we work.
The explosive combination of creativity, cognition and learning sheathed in a spirit of champion is an excellent model to embed for all generations and serves as a source of reflection for the status quo in many of us as stakeholders in organizations, but is also a starting point for new achievements.
Let us leave our comfort zones and come closer to this model through the activities that we develop in organizations.
It is expected that faced with this combination, the attempts to innovate and to be entrepreneur, comes drastically and sometimes uncoordinated, not inserted in contexts or with unclear meanings, which does not facilitates the growth and sustainability of businesses.
But if, to those children and all the others that there is within us, it is necessary to create a favorable environment for their growth, guiding it in such a way that produces positive results, it is also vital that our creative and innovation ability be developed in a balanced and healthy environment within organizations.
Critical thinking, curiosity and enthusiasm that is necessary in solving problems, are relevant aspects of creative thinking that we’ve seen over the years being repressed by the school and other educational and learning environments.
Being creative is to be able to be different and such like they did with us a few years ago, now we encourage or support our children or students to be all equal, with equal clothes, using the same technology and eating or drinking coffee at the same places.
Then when they reach the “adult age” will follow our example, what model out of fashion, and we will see that many of their ideas, which eventually were already released on a platform either for analysis and selection, are nothing more than intentions.
Many of these intentions are representations of to act through the creation of new procedures, processes and promising products, services or business models, but willingness is not enough.
Such as in a laboratory, our team or organization we need to work in good environmental conditions, comparable to the best hospital facilities, the right studio of a sculptor or a kindergarten.
I think we can say that creativity, cognition and learning are the angles of the triangle of success.
And likewise there is a screwed up too big to say that fun, curiosity and experimentation are levers for innovative behavior.
Tell me what do you think?
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