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Creativity unlimited

14 December 2015

THINKING INSIDE THE BOX FOR BUSINESS INNOVATION

Naturally drawn to innovative concepts, I was intrigued and captivated by this unique idea. The author suggests that we do not need to ‘think outside

the box’ in our pursuit of creativity, but rather we should rethink the way we look ‘inside the box’ in a very systematic way. Creativity is seen as a process accessible to everybody, not just the few creative souls among us.

When asked “How important is innovation and creativity for the survival of the company?”, we tend to automatically say “very important”. This book gives another view on finding new routes to success. I was especially interested to learn the scientific data on the impact of innovation on business performance results:

• The combination of ‘product’ creativity and ‘marketing’ creativity accounts for 77% of the market share change, 52% of changes in the financial results and has a 61% effect on customer satisfaction.

• Only between 5% and 20% of all new products survive the promotion phase. So there’s a clear need to do things differently. Why invest lots of money in product R&D if, in all probability, the majority of the products will never become actually profitable?

• There is a mathematical model that shows that employee happiness arises when work challenges and their skills are roughly at the same level. And the happier the employees are, the higher their creative capacity is. If their skills are not up to the task, they become stressed; if the task is no longer challenging, they become bored. In other words, their skills should more or less match the task at hand, otherwise personal creativity becomes impossible.

• The creative capacity and the creative result are most affected by: motivation at 25%, prior knowledge at 32% and corporate governance at 43% (too strict rules kill the creative spirit; insufficient rules jeopardize the results given the lack of focus on what is useful).

Key Tips to Boost Creativity

The author insists that everybody can be creative. The book provides exercises and tools to train your brain to become better at generating ideas. The author also points out that, besides individual development, the key is to implement a process to optimize the creative capacity. The book is structured around three key steps:

1. Shaking the box: Implement innovative strategies to rearrange and view the current business components from a different angle, e.g. by creating new products or services, or by finding new, unexpected ways of combining existing products or services.
2. Expanding the box: Business creative thinking is limited by the four walls: conventions and rules, common sense, physiology, and consciousness. The author offers tips to reduce, if not eliminate, the impact of these natural constraints.
3. Filling the box: Add even more knowledge and grow awareness of demographic realities to promote innovation.

In conclusion, “Creativity Unlimited” is packed with interesting techniques, numerous exercises and eye-openers that shake you up to become aware of pertinent changes and to implement them in order to optimize your company’s creative capacity and market performance.

 

“Creativity Unlimited: Thinking Inside the Box for Business Innovation” written by Micael Dahlén

Sylvie Grégoire, MBA, CRHA
President, Totem Performance organisationnelle