Original. Out of the box. Inspired, innovative, inventive, imaginative. Quick-witted, ingenious, artistic. Fertile.
“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” —Thomas Edison These creatives have their counterparts in business: Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. Like their more “artistic” counterparts, they are no strangers to hard work. So here’s a question. If a substantial part of creativity and innovation is work, can it be managed like work? Can creativity and innovation be fostered within a company? Can it be managed to provide a reliable contribution to the enterprise? The short answer is yes. The longer answer is yes, but it will take (here’s that four-letter word again) work and (not so paradoxically) creative thinking. To foster creativity in yourself, as well as in your enterprise, first demystify it by breaking it down into its component parts. Work is one of those parts. Be prepared to work, to master the basics. You’ll never create the next great app if you don’t know how to write code. If you’re managing a team, make sure the members have the necessary basic skills and give them the resources to maintain and expand those skills.
These are the words that describe the cool folk, the creatives. Well, maybe not fertile, but you see where we’re going here. Creativity is a highly valued asset; and whether we’re in business, or in the arts, whether we drive a cab, write code or compose music, we generally appreciate those efforts that give us a different view, call into being a graceful simplicity, or find a new way to move us, to take us from here to there. For the musician, the painter, the poet, the value of creativity comes in the making of something beautiful. For the engineer, an elegant design that contains nothing more than the task requires. For the scientist or the inventor, it may be an insight that leads to something heretofore unknown. For the businessman or woman, creativity may encompass all of the above as long as it benefits the “Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is the bottom line. result of good work habits.” Controlled. Disciplined. Focused. Managed. Organized. —Twyla Tharp Planned. Ordered. Structured. Not words that go with creativity. Those are the words of the uptight, narrow-eyed bean counters, Cornell professor Robert Sternberg, says there’s nothing mystical not the cool folk, but those are the words that put creativity to about creative thinking. “Innovations arise from habit. . . . If we work. And that is the issue in this information age. For the past are to assess creativity, we need to assess it as a habit of ordinary decade at least, the Holy Grail for companies has been innovation. life.” Proctor and Gamble encourages innovation by making it But despite all that has been written about creativity, despite the ordinary. “At P&G, we think of creativity not as a mysterious gift example of companies like Google and Apple, Tesla and Amazon, of the talented few but as the everyday task of making nonthere doesn’t seem to be a clear process to catch lightning in a bottle. obvious connections—bringing together things that don’t normally However, as contradictory as it may sound, there may be some go together,” says Craig Wynett, chief innovation officer. guiding principles. Along those same lines, Steve Jobs talked about creativity as The cellist Pablo Casals, when asked at the age of 93 why he connecting the dots. “It’s just about connecting things. When you continued to practice hours each day, said “I’m beginning to ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty notice some improvement.” because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed Let’s go back a step or two and think about those words because obvious to them after a while.” Of course there are flashes of they fit together much better than you might think. Those freeinspiration, but if, as Jobs thought, creativity is just connecting the spirited, arty, creative types—the Picassos and Hemingways, the dots, then to be more creative you and your company have to get Yo-Yo Mas and Misty Copelands—all exhibit a tremendous work a lot of dots and find new ways of connecting them. ethic. They understand that thousands of hours of practice go Those dots usually come in the form of a knowledge and into mastering a craft that is merely the preface to creativity— awareness of your company’s capabilities, and a sensitivity to the just the price that admits you into the possibility of making ever-changing needs of the marketplace. Look within your something unique. They all were/are controlled, disciplined, company or industry. Research both successes and failures, underorganized, focused and they all were well versed in the structure stand workflows and look for those traditional structures that may and rules of their respective disciplines. be on the cusp of change. More broadly, be aware of how changing demographics shape consumer demand and how perceptions close some opportunities and open others.
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