17.12.13

THE INDUSTRIALISATION OF CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION



There is an argument that creativity managers attempt to industrialize creativity. The implication is that we attempt to reduce it to a formula, mass produce it, turn it into a process, try and design a universal formula, apply  Taylorism and Fordism to it – and that all this detracts from its true essence.

The above perspective is incorrect and implies that creativity should somehow be left untouched. There are shades of analysis paralysis in the argument. There are also implications that the approach is "old."
As people who produce a lot of creative output ourselves, we state that the aim is to make creativity tangible, measurable to make creativity tangible, measurable to make creativity tangible, measurable  and useable in order to optimize the quality of the idea pool [creativity] and the quality of the idea pool [creativity] and the implementation process [innovation]. We follow this approach because we know that this increases our success rate.
In addition, the framework we have developed allows us to apply creativity and innovation universally; it allows us to play with, expand, develop and apply many of the important concepts.

Creativity, Innovation and Gender
It is more accurate and safer to argue that there are no gender differences: that males and females are equally creative and equally capable of innovation. There are studies that show that, for example, males dominate in fields such as engineering, IT, mathematics and so forth and that women dominate fields such as social sciences, fashion etc.
However, all of these studies are highly questionable in terms of reliability, variability and generalisability. Further, their conclusions and implications are highly disputed.
Additionally, socialisation, education, nurture, acceptable gender roles et al play an important part in determining what activities males and females engage in.
So do yourself a favour, leave this one  alone.
Competition versus Collaboration
Which is more effective, competition or collaboration? The answer: a synthesis of both.
 Competition has it’s own life force. Scientific tests have proven that competition increases output but there are  caveats: competitors may not value the goal, they may decide that they may not  win etc and so refuse to partake.
Collaboration also improves creative output. That's because richer ideas result from intellectual cross-pollination – the group is usually smarter than the individual. Again, there are caveats: groups suffer from politics, dilution of  ideas, group-think, social loafing etc.
Synthesizing the two optimizes output: first get participants to compete and then allow them to collaborate.
But for the maximum effect, a particular approach must be taken that involves allowing participants to compete / collaborate as individuals, then pairs, smaller groups and then larger groups.

Chapter II CORPORATE STRATEGY

Our principles: We recognize that we must integrate our business values and operations to meet the expectations of our stakeholders. They ...