Making sense of creativity

Introduction:

Creativity is about the quality of originality that leads to new ways of seeing and new ideas. It is a thinking process associated with imagination, invention and innovation. However, creativity is not just about an idea that is new and different: for and idea to be truly creative it must also be appropriate and useful. 

A number of commentators have found it convenient to distinguish between creative people, creative processes, creative places and creative products. 

People: 

Considerable energy and research has gone into trying to work out the characteristics of creative individuals. Three broad types of individuals have been identified: creative people, innovators and entrepreneurs. Creative people are usually seen as people who generate ideas, innovators and those who take an idea and develop it into something real ( such as products or service or business process) and entrepreneurs as those who take the product to market or implement the process and make it a commercial success. Entrepreneurs in large organisations are referred to as intrapreneurs. 

Studies of creative people show characteristics such as independent thinking, not being affected by peer pressure, good verbal communication skills, imagination and reasonable but not outstanding level of intelligence. Creative people are said to be better at asking the right questions. They also appear comfortable with risk-taking and are open to new ideas. 

Place:

These days a good deal of management thinking argues that the society we live in and the organisational climate, culture and structure have a major impact on creative output. The suggestion is that creative ideas flow where new ideas and challenges are welcomed and where people are encouraged to play rather than controlled and threatened. It follows then that organisations that want to promote creativity might need to look at creating a flatter organisational structure (removing levels of hierarchy) in an attempt to reduce bureaucracy and speed up the creative processes.

Process: 

The creative thinking process is traditionally linked to imaginative thinking which is expansive and divergent in nature (such as brainstorming and lateral thinking) as opposed to evaluative thinking which is convergent in character. Divergent thinking helps people to generate a large number and variety of ideas and approach problems from different angles. The emphasis here is on quantity where an 'anything goes' attitude is encouraged. Convergent thinking on the other hand, is needed to narrow down the output from the divergent phase. The focus here is on quality- making one or two selections from a huge number of possibilities. In practice, the creative process requires a framework which allows for alternating phases between divergent and convergent thinking. 

Product: 

Creative products may arise from a radical breakthrough or a series of small incremental steps. Management methods in the west have emphasised radical breakthroughs, while Japan has built much of its success on small incremental steps. The task of the manager is to encourage and coordinate multi-disciplinary teams working on product development and drive these processes along.