Leaders, consultants and managers must be competent in at least thirteen domains to even begin effectively managing creativity and innovation. Part 1 of Managing Creativity and Innovation covers
first seven of these domains.a) The difference between creativity and innovation. Often used interchangeably, two must be thought of as separate and distinct. One definition for creativity is that it is problem identification and idea generation, whilst innovation is best described as idea selection, development and commercialisation. These definitions alone imply at least six competencies (including one holistic). At a minimum, differences mean that, at each stage, varying skills, processes and structures are required.
b) The size and richness of idea pools. Initially creative thinking is used to generate an idea pool and then critical thinking reduces those ideas to feasible ones. To maximise quantity and quality of idea pool, a conscious application of processes and techniques must be applied. Some of these include
i)Using a variety of stimuli and frameworks to open up pathways ii)Not stopping when a good idea seems to present itself iii)Consciously stimulating change in direction iv)Distinguishing between numbers of ideas produced, their novelty, diversity and frequency of production.
c) Creative types. There is common belief that some people just are more creative and certain theorists argue for creativity characteristics such as tolerance of ambiguity and intolerance for conformity. However, traits are notoriously difficult to detect and not stable nor transferable across situations. Also, motivation is thought to be more important than traits – this is similar to possessing high intelligence - one must be motivated to improve and apply it.
d) Learning versus Talent. Can creativity be learned and developed or is it a natural talent or gift? The best way to answer this question is to investigate whether creativity improves with practice. The experience curve, automisation, learning theories and experiences of practitioners suggest that people do get better at generating more, better, diverse and novel ideas - but there are caveats, such as an increase in path dependency and peaks and troughs in motivation.
e) Motivation. Someone with natural ability or placed in right environment may not take advantage of it unless motivated. Intrinsically motivated individuals tend to expend more effort and create more output and synergistic extrinsic motivation better enables a person to complete an endeavour. On other hand, non-synergistic extrinsic motivation leads to a person feeling controlled and manipulated and is incompatible with intrinsic motivation. Specific motivators such as material reward, progress to ideal self, self-determination, self-evaluation, feedback, enjoyment, competency expansion, recognition and feasibility can all be quantitatively measured and monitored.
