Marla Capozzi suggests four ways for greater creativity:
Immerse yourself. To free ourselves of our pre-existing views we should look for evidence to the contrary. If you think your organisation is successful visit those organisations that are excellent and learn about the detail of what they do and don't do. Make it a personal experience. Use your competitors' products and services. Look outside your sector for innovative practices that might trigger new ideas.
Overcome orthodoxies. Warren Buffett said "conventional wisdom is long on convention and short on wisdom". What are the dominant beliefs that underpin your model of business success? Be prepared to question their validity for the future.
Use analogies. Clayton Christensen and his colleagues - link - identified the five key discovery skills for innovation, and highlighted the most powerful driver: "making connections across seemingly unrelated questions, problems or ideas." When we make use of analogies we spot new associations that trigger our powers of imagination. A good example is to take an organisational exemplar and ask how would they deal with the problems we face (e.g. how would Disney engage with our customers, or how would Google manage our data?)
Create constraints. Impose artificial constraints on your business model. Counter-intuitive at first sight (after all, doesn't innovation require freedom?), this tactic focuses us to leave our intellectual comfort zone. Here we ask "what if" questions along the lines of: we can only interact with our customers on line, or we have to cut our product costs in half.
"The heart of the matter is that group creativity is not the sum of the individuals' creativity within the group." Eleanor Glor
A summary of the research indicating the dynamics of team innovation:
Positive emotions to open up horizons. Creativity is enhanced when team members feel personally positive and enthusiastic, and are also committed to the task and its overall purpose. The negative moods of anxiety and fear trigger the kind of vigilant and analytical thinking that over-examines situations, becomes bogged down in unnecessary detail and leads to narrow and rigid thinking.
Balance of challenge and support. This is the Goldilocks theory of creativity. Too much challenge is overwhelming and the work group is intimidated by the scale of the task. Too much support and a comfortable life becomes the lethargy of creative decline.
Trust to elicit tacit knowledge. Much important information within the work group is implicit and unspoken. And if this knowledge remains within team members' heads, the creative exchange of different perspectives to build on others' ideas is constrained. Trust within the team is the dynamic that encourages individuals to disclose ideas, and collaboration to access the "insights, intuitions and hunches" of others. This is more than trust as an expectation of others' knowledge and competence to get the job done. This is trust as emotional closeness and the extent to which team members feel comfortable with each other.
Autonomy and freedom. "Just be creative" is an appeal likely to result in confusion. Innovation is enhanced when there is clarity of purpose about long-term goals, but sufficient freedom is allowed to be flexible about the means. Groups are at their most creative when they have enough "degrees of freedom" to apply their initiative. Give creative individuals the "what" that is important, and let them surprise you with the "how".
Space to breathe with the discipline of time Creativity is infinite. There are always more avenues to explore, ideas to build on and options to review. Team innovation needs space to think without the knock on the door of "are we done yet?" Although fake or impossibly tight deadlines create distrust that is damaging, creativity also needs the discipline of closure. The trick seems to be to set "generous but strict deadlines".
Maturity of conflict resolution. Conflict is intrinsic to creativity. Team innovation arises out of the battle of ideas and the challenge of competing perspectives. But conflict is difficult and must be managed to avoid destructive interpersonal dynamics. Innovative teams negotiate ways of resolving any interpersonal and task conflict.
Leadership direction. This is team innovation reinforced by line managers who in turn are supported by leaders at senior levels who value innovation. Team creativity requires leaders to accept the realities of risk and recognise that failure is part of the innovation process.
Organisational support. At one level, this is about the nuts and bolts of resource to ensure groups have the tools to work productively together. At another level this is about physical work-place design and organisational structures to create opportunities for interaction and to facilitate information flows up, down and across work units. Rigid hierarchies, structured around functional silos and political fiefdoms provide a significant drag on innovation.
Tom Kelley, General Manager at Ideo, outlines how Ideo responds to the words: "Let me play devil's advocate for a minute."
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/99/faces-of-innovation.html?page=0%2C1
Kelley argues that the only sustainable path to innovation is through people, and about the roles they play, the hats they put on, and the personas they adopt. And by adopting different roles we can help teams express different perspectives and create a broader range of innovative solutions.
The Anthropologist brings new learning and insights into the organization by observing behavior and developing an understanding of how people interact with products, services. The Experimenter prototypes new ideas continuously, learning by a process of enlightened trial and error. The Cross-Pollinator explores other industries and cultures, then translates those findings to fit the unique needs of your enterprise. The Hurdler knows that the path to innovation has obstacles and finds ways to overcome the blockages. The Collaborator helps bring different groups together to create new combinations and multidisciplinary solutions. The Director not only gathers together a talented cast and crew but also helps to spark their creative talents. The Experience Architect designs compelling experiences that go beyond mere functionality to connect at a deeper level with customers' latent or expressed needs. The Set Designer creates a stage on which innovation team members can do their best work, transforming physical environments into powerful tools to influence behavior and attitude. The Caregiver wants to deliver customer care in a way that goes beyond mere service. The Storyteller builds both internal morale and external awareness through compelling narra-tives that communicate a fundamental human value or reinforce a specific cultural trait.
Encourage your team members to adapt a persona to "be innovative" rather than simply "do innovation".
"Rather than telling the plants to grow, we need to tend to the soil in which they can."
How creative is your team? Creativity isn't simply about the presence of a few highly original thinkers and innovative problem solvers, important though these individuals are. Look at the culture and climate of your work area to determine if it encourages or discourages innovation.
Introduce creativity techniques to stimulate imagination and innovation. But also look at the "soil" in which plants are expected to be creative.
Goran Ekvall identified nine dimensions that identify a climate that helps or hinders innovation:
Idea Time; do we have time to think things through before having to act?
Idea Support; do we have a few resources to give new ideas a try?
Challenge; how challenged, emotionally involved and committed am I to do the work?
Risk-Taking; is it OK to fail when trying new things?
Debates; to what degree do people engage in lively debates about the issues?
Freedom; how free am I to decide how to do my job?
Trust & Openness; do people feel safe in speaking their minds and openly offering different points of view?
Playfulness and Humour; how relaxed is our workplace - is it OK to have fun?
Absence of Conflicts; to what degree do people engage in interpersonal conflict or "warfare?"
Rate your own work environment and check if it is a climate that is supportive of innovation