Kal Bishop

Managing Creativity and Innovation is an oxymoron.

When ideas are required, leaders tend to herd people into a room with a flip chart and conduct (usually an ineffective) brainstorming session...

When ideas are required, leaders tend to herd people into a room with a flip chart and conduct (usually an ineffective) brainstorming session. Implicit in this action is an acceptance that certain techniques and processes can increase problem identification, idea generation and the elicitation of tacit knowledge.

Structures such as the Hero's Journey are accepted as increasing creative output when idea streams (such as in screenwriting) are needed.

Product development theory has proven innovation strategies that allow better idea selection, development and commercialisation. Frameworks such as the S-curve and idea funnels allow the efficient monitoring of ideas through a pipeline and effective go or kill decision making.

Creativity cannot be managed because ideas occur out of the blue.
Ideas are the result of the mind working on particular problems at various cognitive levels. Though you cannot predict what an idea will be, where it will occur and what form it will take you can increase the likelihood of ideas occurring. Further, you can increase the number of ideas produced, the rarity of those ideas, the diversity of those ideas and the frequency of their production.

Creativity is not a process.
If you analyse the behaviour of people who are used to generating many ideas regularly, you will find that common patterns emerge. There is a definite process that triggers creative activity on multiple cognitive levels, resulting in the required insight.

Creativity is not tangible; creativity cannot be measured.
Analysts can measure (and therefore make tangible) creativity by benchmarking a wide number of criteria. For instance, idea generation can be measured according to the number of ideas produced, their novelty, their variety and the frequency of their production. The DIY Creativity and Innovation Audit that comes with the MBA dissertation lists more than 150 benchmarking criteria, allowing holistic measurement.

Creative people will be creative whether they are "coached" or not.
Perhaps. Consider the infinite number of people who have been working on half finished manuscripts for months and often years. Management techniques increase creative output enabling completion in much shorter periods. Further, management techniques encourage targeted prolific activity, thus allowing the building of competencies and improvement.

These and other topics are covered in depth in the MBA dissertation on Managing Creativity & Innovation, which can be purchased (along with a DIY Audit, Good Idea Generator Software and Power Point Presentation) from http://www.managing-creativity.com

Kal Bishop, MBA

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