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May 06, 2005 Free Articles

Creativity Myths

Sustained myths about Creativity and Innovation lead to confusion, bad practice and bad decision-making. Some of them include:

Creativity Management and Time Pressure

There is a pervasive belief that time pressure stimulates creativity. This is both true and false.

Creativity Management and Behaviour

What behaviour maximises the chances of thinking of great ideas? What behaviour maximises the ability to nurture ideas until they begin to reveal their potential?

Creativity Management – Measurement, benchmarking and Improvement

Contrary to common perception, creativity can be made tangible, measurable and useable. In terms of measurement, benchmarking and improvement, the first step is to decide on definitions, the second is to decide on methods of measurement and finally, to monitor each measurement for improvement.

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...

Creativity and Motivation

Motivation in creativity and innovation is more important than personality traits. This is like possessing high intelligence – one must be motivated to improve and apply it.

Creativity and Innovation Management in conservative, staid organisations

Conservative and staid organisations generally have a harder time implementing creativity and innovation into their day-to-day work processes and people. Leaders may want to capture the benefits of creativity and innovation, yet there may be relevant and almost contradictory issues that they have to deal with, including:

Creativity and Innovation Management – Personality Testing

Whilst tests measuring the creative or innovative personality exist, there are a number of inherent flaws. Some are noted below:

Creativity and Innovation Management - Core Competencies and Competitive Advantage

Following is a brief definition of core competencies and competitive advantage and their fit with creativity and innovation management.

Creativity and Innovation Directors, Consultants and Managers

Creativity and Innovation is essential for competitive advantage, yet the role of Creativity and Innovation Manager is often not viewed as essential. Organizations without such a role will simply not perform as competitively as their rivals.

Innovation Management – diversity can make all the difference

Companies are welcoming a diverse range of employees (The Sunday Times, April 10 2005). Doh!

Good Ideas – Creativity and Innovation Management - part 2

The relative ease of i) generating good ideas and ii) lack of resources means that there are usually more good ideas available than can be successfully innovated. As a result, it is often the case that ideas must be evaluated for risk and reward in order to select those that are most likely to succeed.

Good Idea Generation – a process

It seems incongruous that good idea generation can be a process or that a process may lead to insight. However, if you examine the behaviour of people who regularly generate good ideas – such as creatives in advertising - you will find that common patterns of behaviour do emerge and it is possible to make insight more likely.

Effective Brainstorming

Most managers simply herd some people in a room with a flip chart and call it a brainstorming session. Yet there is a definite process that maximizes the size and quality of the idea pool. While there are hundreds of valid techniques for doing this, below are just some of the important concepts leaders should consider.

Creativity, Innovation – Competition versus Collaboration

There is much confusion as to whether competition or collaboration is most beneficial to creativity and innovation. Though there are negatives to collaboration and it is not easy separating the effects of time pressure and group activity, in general collaboration beats competition. This article will set out some of the arguments.

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