Blocking Creativity and Innovation
Is your organization Blocking or Stifling Creativity? How do you harness Creativity and produce new Innovation in your organization?
As organizations grow, they setup structures that inherently block creativity.
Systems and Processes
Have your heard of organizational efficiency? Bottomline? Operational excellence? Larger organizations setup systems and processes to become leaner and more efficient, and become focused internally. However, when the systems and processes become an end goal, creativity that drives new innovations and competitive spirit becomes non-existent over a period of time. Hence, organizations must build new processes such as identifying and isolating key creative teams from the rest of the organizations, and stimulating them towards driving innovation.
Selected references:
Leading eBook on Creativity and Innovation in Business
Creativity and Innovation Best Practices
Creativity and Innovation Case Studies
The Innovation Index
Top 50 innovative companies in the world
Leading eBook on Creativity and Innovation in Business
Creativity and Innovation Best Practices
Creativity and Innovation Case Studies
The Innovation Index
Top 50 innovative companies in the world
If you enjoyed reading this Creativity best practice, I recommend the complete list of Creativity Innovation Best Practices.
Acknowledgements:
eCornell. Leading through Creativity Certification Training.
As organizations grow, they setup structures that inherently block creativity.
Systems and Processes
Have your heard of organizational efficiency? Bottomline? Operational excellence? Larger organizations setup systems and processes to become leaner and more efficient, and become focused internally. However, when the systems and processes become an end goal, creativity that drives new innovations and competitive spirit becomes non-existent over a period of time. Hence, organizations must build new processes such as identifying and isolating key creative teams from the rest of the organizations, and stimulating them towards driving innovation.
Selected references:
Leading eBook on Creativity and Innovation in Business
Creativity and Innovation Best Practices
Creativity and Innovation Case Studies
The Innovation Index
Top 50 innovative companies in the world
Reward and Recognition Systems
Who do you reward and recognize at your organization? The operational excellence team, the sales team or the innovation team? Do you even have rewards and recognition systems in place? If you are frequently associated with rewarding behaviors like "going with the flow" and where behaviors like "questioning status quo" are ignored or even reprimanded, creativity will suffer. In order to create the best creative output from employees and teams, organizations must put formal rewards and recognition systems for the innovators and creativity contributors. Recognition and rewards could be in the form of a company-wide announcement of the contributions of your most innovative employees, press releases recognizing and introducing their innovations, providing the innovators paid vacations and combining them with trade shows where they can meet customers, salary bonuses, and more.
Organizational Culture
What stories do you hear in the cafeteria? Are the stories about the next big innovation that someone is working on, a new marketing campaign that is creating great returns or a product that was launched last year and became hugely successful? Or are the stories (or lack thereof) about improving profit margins, increasing productivity and becoming an efficient organization? An organization's culture is built on stories and legends. How many of these stories are known and recognized by the external world? An organization where creativity was not celebrated historically rarely has a vibrant creative environment. However, organizations where most talked about stories revolve around creativity, inspire others to follow suit, building a culture of creativity.
Creative ideas must make business sense. For instance, asking questions on whether you have the means to convert an idea into innovation, the associated costs of doing this, how many customers will use this new innovation, and the revenue potential. Most successful organizations achieve a balance between creativity and operational excellence.
Here are nine processes that you can create at your organization to unblock Creativity and drive Innovation:
Who do you reward and recognize at your organization? The operational excellence team, the sales team or the innovation team? Do you even have rewards and recognition systems in place? If you are frequently associated with rewarding behaviors like "going with the flow" and where behaviors like "questioning status quo" are ignored or even reprimanded, creativity will suffer. In order to create the best creative output from employees and teams, organizations must put formal rewards and recognition systems for the innovators and creativity contributors. Recognition and rewards could be in the form of a company-wide announcement of the contributions of your most innovative employees, press releases recognizing and introducing their innovations, providing the innovators paid vacations and combining them with trade shows where they can meet customers, salary bonuses, and more.
Organizational Culture
What stories do you hear in the cafeteria? Are the stories about the next big innovation that someone is working on, a new marketing campaign that is creating great returns or a product that was launched last year and became hugely successful? Or are the stories (or lack thereof) about improving profit margins, increasing productivity and becoming an efficient organization? An organization's culture is built on stories and legends. How many of these stories are known and recognized by the external world? An organization where creativity was not celebrated historically rarely has a vibrant creative environment. However, organizations where most talked about stories revolve around creativity, inspire others to follow suit, building a culture of creativity.
Creative ideas must make business sense. For instance, asking questions on whether you have the means to convert an idea into innovation, the associated costs of doing this, how many customers will use this new innovation, and the revenue potential. Most successful organizations achieve a balance between creativity and operational excellence.
Here are nine processes that you can create at your organization to unblock Creativity and drive Innovation:
- Open communication within and between departments, and across all management layers.
- Hiring of people with diverse backgrounds and experience, and avoiding "cloning."
- Encouraging employees to find new ways to do their daily work, and empowering them to make decisions.
- Creating an organization that extends out to customers, suppliers, partners, and environment.
- Stimulating research activities and providing employees some free time to experiment.
- Allowing employees to take measured risks (with small costs), and seizing opportunities.
- Creating processes to evaluate any idea on merit, regardless of where it is coming from.
- Identifying and separating the creative from operational functions in the organization.
- Using group creativity techniques frequently to promote team building and generate new ideas.
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Selected references:Download Now
Leading eBook on Creativity and Innovation in Business
Creativity and Innovation Best Practices
Creativity and Innovation Case Studies
The Innovation Index
Top 50 innovative companies in the world
If you enjoyed reading this Creativity best practice, I recommend the complete list of Creativity Innovation Best Practices.
Acknowledgements:
eCornell. Leading through Creativity Certification Training.
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