| News on Creativity and Innovation related
topics | |
 March 2009 | | |
 News
Our new Bite Size Creativity
workshop seems to be popular. Why not beat the queue
and download an info sheet here.
Details of all our workshops and programmes including
Domino2 Knowledgeware,
Futures, Intelligent Growth,
and
Business Creativity can
be downloaded from our downloads
page.
The 'rough and ready' survey of the major barriers
to creativity within organisations is still located on my Home Page. If you currently work, or have
worked for an organisation then I would appreciate it if you
could take the time to click on two
buttons. | |
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Dear Reader,
Welcome to the second edition of Innovation
Matters for 2009. We have hit our publication deadline of
the first Tuesday of the month (whoopee) and Spring has
arrived here in the UK, although there is still time for the
temperature to dip.
Meanwhile the economy continues to dive, all the more
reason to look at Creative ways to beat the recession. Do you
know about Train to Gain?
Yes, the UK government will actually
give you up to £1000 towards management
development. Get in touch to find out more.
Using a trusted domain does not seem to have affected
delivery at all so we will keep on using this method.
This month we have two articles, When is
Creativity not Creative? and Building versus
Implementing plus an introduction to the
Morphological Matrix.
Please look to your left and see what the latest
news is. Don't forget that you can revisit past editions of
Innovation Matters in our newsletter
archive.
... and here is a pearl of wisdom from Irish Rugby player
Brian O'Driscoll:
"Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, wisdom is
knowing not to put it into a fruit salad".
Happy reading, Derek Cheshire
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When is Creativity not creative?
There have been (and there will continue to be) debates
about what exactly is creativity and what it means to be
creative. I remember having a discussion with some artists
about being creative. Being artistic, they naturally thought
of themselves as creative and were seen in a similar way by
the general public. To be fair, their methods and output was,
to say the least, alternative but I posed them the question
"If you use the same method for each piece of art work you
produce, are you being creative even if the output changes?"
There is no real answer to that question, or
rather there are billions of answers depending on who you ask.
The reason is frame of reference. Creativity depends on who
and where you are and possibly what has gone before, it is
relative. One man's creativity is another's drudgery. What
might be seen as creative in one business will be viewed as
'old hat' in another
So I might see someone
else's ideas and methods as mundane because I have seen it,
done it and bought the T shirt. Does this mean that I have to
keep pushing the boundaries? Again there are many possible
answers. If you simply require new product ideas and have a
perfectly good 'creative' technique to use which does create
new product ideas then keep using it. Pushing the boundaries
would simply waste time and could be considered frivolous. If,
however it was your job to create new idea generation methods
for your business then you would almost be duty bound to
experiment wouldn't you?
Then we also have the
issue of whether it is the method or result that is classed as
creative. In this case I suggest that it is terminology that
is the issue. In business, it is an alternate way of thinking
that matters, to be used to gain a different perspective or
insight or to generate new ideas.
So to answer
the original question, creativity may not be creative if you
are observing someone else or if you are using the same method
and not generating different results. Other than that,
creativity is generally creative, but I'm sure readers will
have a different
opinion! |
 Building versus
Implementing
Like
most people with websites I spend time analysing statistics
from my website, especially the words and phrases that are
typed into search engines such as Google and
Yahoo.
One of the most frequent phrases or
sentences that crops up is 'implementing an innovation system'
or 'implementing innovation'. This is both puzzling and
worrying. It would seem to be a good thing that people and
businesses are searching for information regarding Innovation
but they seem to be thinking that Innovation is a system to be
implemented rather like a book keeping system and that there
is a magic prescription that they can follow that is to be
found somewhere on the Internet.
These Googlers
are likely to be frustrated and will probably be heard to
utter expletives at consultants who don't give anything away
unless they are paid exorbitant daily fee rates. Of course
those who develop intellectual property will wish some reward
but that is not the main reason for these frustrated Google
users. The truth is that there simply is no prescription. It
is possible to find checklists, frameworks and balanced
scorecards as well as stories of success but nothing of use
unless you first understand that an innovation system cannot
be implemented.
Such a system must be built from
the bottom up, with a thorough understanding of where you are
starting out from and what you wish to achieve. What you may
not know is how you are going to get there. This is what takes
the leap of faith and which is often the reason for the
consultants' fees. Once you start, the process is a little
like building a bespoke house brick by brick except that you
may never finish.
A better term might be
'growing' rather than 'building' as Innovation frameworks tend
to be based on soft skills and are unique to the businesses in
which they exist. They may exhibit similar characteristics to
one another on the surface but each company's Innovation
context differs due to the make up of its components,
employees. This is what we strive for, deriving competitive
advantage in a way that cannot be copied easily by others.
Having a system that could be implemented from a standard
blueprint would not be worth doing as others would copy
it.
And those consultants? Yes you will need them
to facilitate the process but beware those who wish to
implement everything for you. You will be paying them for a
system that can be easily copied - best to get the ideas then
do the work
yourself. |
 The
Morphological Matrix
This is a form of random stimulation that can be
used solo or in groups. It is ideal for generating
ideas when you have an idea about WHAT you wish to do but not
HOW you might go about doing it.
If you were a TV producer you might ask the question "How
might we go about creating a new soap opera?" To use this
technique in such a case first create a table with ten rows
labelled 0 - 9 and 4 columns initially numbered 1 to 4.
Next perform the following steps:
- Label each column with a different parameter or
characteristic of the problem or task e.g. for our example
column 1 could be target audience, column 2 - setting,
column 3 - theme, column 4 - suggested title.
- For column 1 generate varied and/or unusual ideas and
fill the column (you now have ten wacky suggestions for
target audience).
- Repeat for column 2, column 3 and column 4. Try not to
refer to adjacent columns when filling a column.
- Randomly select four numbers in the range 0 - 9. To do
this you could
- Turn over 2 dominoes, 2 numbers on each end gives four
numbers
- Use the last four digits of your telephone number
- Use the last four digits of your National Insurance
number
- Use the day and month of your birthday
- Use the four numbers to generate combinations by using
each number in turn as in index into one of the columns.
Each set of four random numbers thus selects a target
audience, setting, theme and title. Record your combination.
- Repeat the previous step as many times as you wish (and
keep recording the results). Note that this simple table can
create 10,000 different combinations!
- When you have sufficient combinations, choose one (or
more if you have time) to examine in greater detail. You
might use them as generated or they might suggest something
else to you.
Good luck! |
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