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Leaders know in their gut that creativity and innovation are the life blood of their organization. New ideas can lead to programs that are superior to those that are already going on or planned in the organization and which would have been divested or never initiated had a better idea or program come along. So, the mission of every leader should be to search continually for ideas and programs that are superior to the ones the organization is currently committed to. In a word, it's called PROGRESS. But what can the leaders do to promote creativity and innovation? The most obvious answer, short of hiring a new work force, is to use management initiatives that create a work environment that stimulates the existing staff to be more creative and innovative.
Creativity CAN Be Stimulated by Leaders There are many who would challenge the implicit assumption that leaders can do anything to foster creativity. They would argue that creative people, like baseball hitters, are born, not made. Indeed, much of the anecdotal literature about creativity would suggest that creativity is some mystical power that only a chosen few possess. But, then, why are all children creative? Common Anecdotes about Creativity Are Wrong People who have looked carefully at the creative process have learned that everyone of ordinary intelligence has latent creative abilities that can be enhanced by training and by a favorable environment. One recent book that is dedicated to defending this proposition is by D.
N. Perkins, The Mind's Best Work. [ 1 ] He finds that after-the-fact anecdotes about well-known examples of great leaps of creative thought have generally received little or no close scrutiny of the mental processes that led to them. There are too many opportunities for the real mental correlates of creativity to be lost through excitement and distraction (as part of the "eureka" phenomenon), lack of need or desire to reconstruct the thought processes, and faulty skill and memory in reconstructing the process. Experiments where people have been asked to think aloud or report their thoughts during an episode of invention led Perkins to conclude that creativity arises naturally and comprehensibly from certain everyday abilities of perception, understanding, logic, memory, and thinking style. The Unconscious Is Not Magic Some people believe that creativity emerges from unconscious thinking. Even if that were true, it would not necessarily impart any special mystery to creativity, compared to other aspects of thought and behavior.
Unconscious thought appears to contribute to creativity no more or no less than to mundane activities. Most all thinking operates in the unconscious, including everything we do from taking out the garbage, to tying our shoestrings, to driving our car, to hundreds of other covert mental processes. Why Leaders Hesitate to Foster Creativity Listen to a typical commander as he thinks through the problems: I Need My People To Be More Creative. I wish our people would come up with ideas to cut our costs, ideas to make us more effective.
What would really be great is to get some ideas for hot new plans, products, and services! Then if we got creative ideas, I wish we had a management structure in place that could get these new ideas out into the field. But My Boss Might Say: We Can't Afford Any More Creativity! "What would I do with new ideas, " he could say. "I don't have the time or resources to complete work on the old ideas. "Good point, " I'll reply; but I will also remind him about the innovations of our competitors in the bureaucracy-not to mention those of the enemy! I'll remind him that the cheapest place we are going to get better ideas is to stimulate the creativity and innovation processes right here in our own organization. Why Leaders Should Stimulate Creativity Leaders should stimulate creativity for two very important reasons: to prevent obsolescence and to increase productivity. Let's consider both in turn.
In-House Obsolescence If the organization is not getting a steady stream of new ideas, a focus on the old ideas runs the risk of current work being obsolete before it is even finished. Moreover, just how sure can you be that the old ideas are the best ideas? You say you can't afford to do new things. Maybe you can't afford NOT to do new things. Managing programs should be done with an "eye open" to incorporating changes that will make the work of higher quality, lower cost, or faster completion. Worker Output Can Always Be Increased Professionals tend to have the same capabilities in all organizations, and there is certainly room for improved productivity.
The survey of 1, 300 R& D scientists and engineers by Per and Andrews, [ 2 ] for example, revealed that half of the research and development (R& D) engineers surveyed had no patents in the last five years; two of five junior scientists had not published anything, not even a report, in the previous three years. The noted science historian, Derek de Sell Price, has shown that scientific research papers come from a small elite, whose number is calculated to be about the square root of the total population of scientists; in a population of 10, 000 scientists, for example, over 50 percent of the papers are written by only 100 people. The payroll is going to be about the same, whether workers become more innovative or not. Wouldn't it be nice to get more for your money'? What Do We Know about the Creative Process? The literature on the creative process is vast, [ 3 ] and we can only summarize it here.
Have you seen the add from IBM Corporation, in which there was a long alphabetized list of "old English" words? The ad's caption read, "Anyone could have used these 4, 178 words. In the hands of William Shakespeare, they became King Lear. " King Lear epitomizes the essence of creativity: to take commonly used and understood ideas and recombine them in elegant new ways; clearly the combinations have to have value. [ 4 ] The basic condition for a creative act is to combine known elements into new combinations or perspectives that have never before been considered. [ 5 ] Perkins writes of the utility of deliberately searching for many alternatives so that many combinations and perspectives can be considered. He stresses that superior creative effort involves deliberately searching for many alternatives. Creativity is much more likely to emerge when a person considers many options and invests the time and effort to keep searching rather than settling for mediocre solutions. Scratch-Pad of the Mind The first and fundamental step in the creative process is to have a clear notion of what the problem is and to be able to state it clearly.
The effective thinker begins by first focusing on the structure of the problem, rather than its technical detail. I symbolize putting the problem statement onto a scratch pad, because the next series of mental operations occurs in the "scratch pad" of the mind, the so-called working memory (which is like the memory involved while you are remembering the phone number you are dialing). Also brought into working memory from creative operations are the potential solutions. These come from each person's permanent memory store, his or her lifetime database of knowledge and experience. Other potential alternatives are brought in from such external sources of input as reading, ideas from colleagues, data bases, and other sources. Next, these alternatives can be processed logically (by associating, sorting, and aligning into new or unusual categories and contexts) or more "illogically" by the use of images, abstractions, models, metaphors, and analogies.
The next stages involve noticing clues and potential leads, realizing permutations of alternatives that are significant, and finally selecting those thoughts that lead to a new idea. The process of considering and choosing among alternative approaches involves a progressive narrowing of options in the early stages of creation and a readiness to revise and reconsider earlier decisions in the later stages. This narrowing process requires the creator to break down and reformulate the categories and relationships of thoughts and facts that are commonly applied to the problems and its usual solutions. The creative thinker examines all reasonable alternatives, including many which may not seem "reasonable. " Each alternative needs to be examined, not only in isolation, but in relation to other alternatives-and in relation to the initial problem expressed in different ways.
The practical problem then becomes one of reducing the size of the problem and alternative solution space to workable dimensions. That may well be why one has to be immersed in the problem for long periods, with subconscious "incubation" operating to help sort through various alternatives and combinations thereof. Note that all of these operations must occur in the working memory, which unfortunately has very limited capacity. That is probably the reason why insight and creativity is so hard to come by.
Researchers of the subject of creativity would do well to look for ways to create more capacity for our working memory and to make it more efficient. The most manipulable factor would seem to be the mechanics of supplying information input from external sources. One example of a way that we already use to increase the efficiency of external source input is the use of brainstorming. The final stages of creativity are more straightforward. They involve critical, logical analysis, which typically forces a refinement of the emerging ideas.
Analysis should force the rejection of premature ideas and re initiation of the search and selection processes. Sometimes, analysis will force the realization that the wrong problem is being worked or that it needs to be reformulated. Eventually, out of these iterative processes will emerge the bright idea. Creativity Can't Be Planned-Directly We know that discovery and creative thought cannot be planned by a leader; such thought just happens, emerging often during the course of ongoing activity that may have nothing to do with the new ideas. In reviewing the literature on the creative process, Arieti [ 6 ] concluded that there are three stages in creative work: (1) an initial analysis that terminates when a "dead-end" is reached, (2) a period of rest, recovery, and relative inattention to the problem, and (3) a sudden and unexpected burst of insight and solution. Perkins would argue that this last stage only seems to be sudden; the actual processes described earlier on our mental scratch pad have probably been going on consciously and unconsciously for quite some time.
The Way We Classify Things Creates a Logjam to New Ideas Something in Newton's sensory or cognitive world caused him to see the similarity between an apple and the moon in a new way; of course they were both round, solid bodies. But it is not clear what caused him to perceive what is now obvious, namely that both are subject to the effect of gravity. Even seeing the apple fall from a tree would not be a meaningful mental stimulus to most people, because they are not used to thinking of the moon as "falling. " Creative thought is affected by the ways in which we classify things. We put apples and moons into categories; but by insisting on describing and naming them, we restrict the categories to which they belong. Apples are supposed to be round, red, and sweet, while moons are large, yellow, rocky, and far away. The names themselves get in the way of thinking of either as a classless object that is subject to gravity.
A lesser order of creativity is commonly seen in the simple realization of the significance of obvious associations. The associations may even be negative (i. e. , if penicillin is present on a bacteriological plate, the organisms will NOT grow). Imagery Is More Likely to Stimulate New Thought Than Language Great discoveries may emerge from primitive imagery. Words and language, according to Einstein, had no role in his creative thought. Some famous scientists claim that their best thinking occurs in the form of visual images, even at the level of fantasy.
Einstein, for example, in one of his fantasies visualized himself riding on a beam of light, holding a mirror in front of him. Since the light and the mirror were traveling at the same speed in the same direction, and since the mirror was a little ahead of the light's front, the light could never catch up to the mirror to reflect an image. Thus Einstein could not see himself. Although fantasy, such thinking is not the product of an hallucinating mind; there is clear logic and order imbedded in the fantasy. Neuroscientists know that humans have a "split brain" wherein the left half controls analytical thought involved in speech and mathematics, while the right brain deals more holistically with imagery, music, art, and assorted nonverbal thought. The creative process seems to depend on freeing our right brain from the domineering control of our left brain.
Managers tend to reward people for left-brain thinking, which is rigorous and precise. Are we thereby stifling creativity? What Do We Know about Creative Leaders? We do know some facts about creative leaders. They can be summed up as follows: Creative Leaders Have Modest Intelligence In summarizing the personal characteristics of creative thinkers, Arieti [ 7 ] concluded that they must be intelligent. The paradox is that they generally are not TOO intelligent.
Excessive intelligence cripples creativity by imposing an examination of self and ideas that is too strict, too "logical. " Creative Leaders Are Well-Informed A profound knowledge of a problem area is needed in order to understand the limits of current dogma and to identify those areas where creative thought will be most fruitful. However, too much knowledge impedes the creative process, producing...
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Research essay sample on R Amp D Creative Thought
