[Photo via VCG]
Creativity and Innovation
To be clear, let's define the difference between creativity and innovation, two terms that are often interchanged, almost always incorrectly. Creativity is a trait – whether personal or organizational – that leads to something new. Innovation is that something new. From creativity comes innovation. Innovation is applied creativity. Innovation is what creativity looks like.
12 Essentials to Creating a Culture of Creativity
1. Always engage in mind stretching. Seek exposure to things beyond your current level of understanding, both business-related and not. "The most beautiful experience you can ever have," declared Albert Einstein, "is to gaze at a mystery."
2. Say "what if?" A lot. If Einstein hadn't asked what his peers called a childish question – "What would it be like to ride on a beam of light?" – we might still be waiting for someone to discover that E=mc2.
3. Break all the rules. Have you ever read The Apple Manifesto? "Here's to the Crazy Ones" says, among other things, "They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo." Right. They're Apple.
4. Set unreasonable expectations. Boeing's willingness to build jet engines for commercial use, and Airbus' willingness to build a plane – the A380 – that was too big to be built in any one factory in the world and too big to take off or land in any runway in the world (at time of initial idea) are well-known stories of success when others wouldn't dare.
5. Be ready to abandon your expectations. In 1957, Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavaness were making a textured wallpaper with tiny air bubbles, a product that went nowhere. By 1960, they had formed Sealed Air Corporation and were making bubble wrap. They changed their expectations – and the world along with that.
6. Stretch your definitions. Those in the telephone business 50 years ago who saw only phones are gone. The ones who saw more? Look in your pocket.
7. Create a cause, not a plan. When Jack Welch became CEO of GE, he quickly said of their 17 companies, "We're going to be #1 or #2 in every business we're in, or we're getting out of the business." It didn't take long for all GE employees to know why they were coming to work every day.
8. Listen to new voices; embrace new ideas. Welch again. Nobody encouraged cross-pollination of ideas and talent more than he did.
9. Let talent prevail. John Wooden always said he’d rather have talent than experience. Know a more successful coach in history?
10. Reduce the risk of experimentation. Then reward it. 3M allows their senior scientists a lot of unstructured time while pursuing new ideas. Failure is not feared because out of it comes successes like Scotch Tape, Masking Tape, Post-It-Notes, and thousands of other successful products.
11. Create dimension, not disagreement. Lou Gerstner took over IBM in a time of internal strife. What he created was IBM Global Services. His book "Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?" tells the classic story.
12. Act like a cell – divide, divide, divide. In the nineties I worked on a consulting team that designed a section of Johnson & Johnson's online onboarding system. When it worked for one of their 180+ companies (at the time), it was applied to all.
Implementing all twelve at once might be a stretch, but picking one is a good start.
