Creativity Management Synthesise Collaboration With Competition
19 July 2008
I recently gave a presentation at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design on a topic entitled “Is creativity management an oxymoron?”
The essential confusion to people resistant to the idea of “creativity management” was the word “management.” Replace it with the word “optimization” and the resistance disappears; all we’re really trying to do is optimize the quality of the idea pool and optimize the implementation process.
Then you can suggest that most people already implicitly accept the idea of creativity management: if you ask them to solve a problem or engage in a particular endeavour, one of the things they’re likely to do is herd people into a room with a flip chart and conduct some sort of brainstorming session and implicit in that action is the acceptance that certain methods, processes and procedures enhance creative output.
Then you can begin discussing how to improve the enormous amount of creative output people generate, from problem solving in everyday business life right up to the level or art. Which leads to a large number of concepts that diverge significantly from the common misconceptions and mythology that surrounds creativity and innovation.
Collaboration NOT Competition
Whilst competition is a driver of idea generation, collaboration is more productive for a number of reasons, including:
a) Collaboration enhances intellectual cross-pollination whilst competition restricts it.
b) Collaboration does not cause people to shut down as much as competition.
c) Competition increases evaluation apprehension.
d) Collaboration is more inducive to a culture of psychological safety and freedom, which encourages people to express their cognitive activity.
Learn more
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The Complete 188 stage Hero’s Journey and other story structure templates can be found at http://www.clickok.co.uk/
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Kal Bishop, MBA
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Tags: creativity, innovation, management, manager, Managing
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