Venue: BFEI | Room 108
Class: WDM
Topic: Creativity & Innovation & Bowl Exercise
Organisations need creative team to create innovative projects. This require creative thinking skills and collaborative team process. The creative thinking process is characterised by the conception of divergent ideas.
Simple Definition
How does this develop? In simple terms, creativity may be defined as idea generation while being creative is to be able to generate or to come up with ideas. For a team to be creative, it must have
a thinking process that is geared toward new generating new ideas.
Innovation on the other hand can be described as 'creativity implemented', therefore, we may say a team or organisation is innovative if the conceived idea(s) is being put into practice.
If creativity is a thinking process
Innovation is a productive process
Academic definition of creativity as discussed in the class:
“The process of sensing difficulties, problems, gaps in information, missing elements, something askew; making guesses and formulating hypotheses about these deficiencies; evaluating and testing these guesses and hypotheses; possibly revising and retesting them; and finally communicating the results.”- E. Paul Torrence
The Importance of Innovation
Conceptual changes need conceptually different creative processes. When a company fails to innovate and change as needed, its customers, employees and the community at large can all suffer. The ability to manage innovation and change is an essential part of a manager’s competencies. Organisations need to have a collaborative teams with creative process e.g research and development team. Continuous improvement on products and services can flow from the old models.
What is Innovation?
Innovation is the process of creating and implementing a new idea. It is the process of taking useful ideas and converting them into useful products; services or processes or methods of operation. These useful ideas are the result of creativity, which is the prerequisite for innovation.
Further in the class discussion we examined the role of divergent and convergent thinking in innovation. Our lecturer affirm that innovation is the combination of divergent thinking and convergent thinking.
Divergent and Convergent Thinking
Apparently divergent and convergent thinking describe the two stages within the creative thinking process. "Divergent thinking involves the creation of a diversity of new ideas; it is a method or thought process used to experiment and explore many new possible solutions. Convergent thinking is the opposite process whereby we start with a variety of previously generated ideas and try to filter, integrate, condense or select a subset of those as the finished product." (culled from Article on System Innovation.io)
Convergent and divergent thinking are two poles on a spectrum of cognitive approaches to problems and questions (Duck 1981). On the divergent end, thinking seeks multiple perspectives and multiple possible answers to questions and problems. On the other end of the spectrum, convergent thinking assumes that a question has one right answer and that a problem has a single solution (Kneller 1971).
Divergent thinking generally resists the accepted ways of doing things and seeks alternatives. Convergent thinking, the bias of which is to assume that there is a correct way to do things, is inherently conservative; it begins by assuming that the way things have been done is the right way. Divergent thinkers are better at finding additional ideas, whereas convergent thinkers have a more difficult time finding additional ideas. Convergent thinkers run out of ideas before divergent thinkers. However, convergent thinking strengthens the ability to bring closure and to conclude problems.
Bowl Exercise
Uses for a Bowl
Working Alone, I listed the following as some of the uses for a bowl that came to mind
Cereal
Soup
Popcorn
Mixing
Fruit bowl
Egg Noodles
Water
Salads
Group Brain Storming
Participants in the group exercise were Gavin, Robert, Jo'Art, Ahmad and Myself
Fluency – How many ideas? - Together in the group we came up with 21 ideas.
Flexibility – How many types of ideas? All of us came up with 8 similar ideas
Originality – Unusual or unique? 8 Unusual ideas and 2 unique ideas came from the group.
Reflection: On the contrary, I am of the opinion that working in teams increases collaboration and allows brainstorming. As a result, more ideas are developed and productivity improves as it was the case on this exercise. Two or more people are always better than one for solving problems, finishing off difficult tasks and increasing creativity.
Characteristics of Creative People
Knowledgeable
Display a great deal of curiosity about many things; are constantly asking questions about anything and everything; may have broad interests in many unrelated areas. May devise collections based on unusual things and interests.
Intrinsically Motivated
Comfortable with Ambiguity
Are often uninhibited in expressions of opinion; are sometimes radical and spirited in disagreement; are unusually tenacious or persistent — fixating on an idea or project.
Willing to Take Risks
Are willing to take risks, are often people who are described as a “high risk taker, or adventurous, or speculative.”
Discovery Orientation
Exhibit a good deal of intellectual playfulness; may frequently be caught fantasising, daydreaming or imagining. Often wonder out loud and might be heard saying, “I wonder what would happen if. . .”; or “What if we change . . ..” Can manipulate ideas by easily changing, elaborating, adapting, improving, or modifying the original idea or the ideas of others.” Are often
concerned with improving the conceptual frameworks of institutions, objects, and systems.
Social Context of Creativity
Family& School: Family, just as much as school, is a critical and essential context in the development of gifted children. Family environments can be influential in the development of young children's creativity. with regards to environment, the values and attitudes of parents are also causally related to creative development of children as well as acceptance and encouragement of such characteristics were crucial for creativity to flourish.
Globalisation has brought together peoples and organisations of all backgrounds and cultures. Especially in the context of increased global economic competition, companies are trying to generate, improve, and market new products and services. Perhaps as a result of this, there has been considerable academic focus and managerial effort regarding shaping organisational cultures
to maximise creativity and innovation (George & Zhou,
2002; Hurst, Rush, & White, 1996).
Research recognises that creativity occurs within a cultural and institutional context, and that the context-dependent nature of creative behaviour has shaped the structure of many innovative organisations (e.g., IBM, 3M, Toyota). Specifically, research has shown that organisational norms seem to influence creative behaviour (Goncalo & Staw, 2006; Woodman, Sawyer, & Griffin, 1993), and are, themselves, dynamic and reactive to cultural pressures (Balthazard, Cooke, & Potter, 2006; Cooke & Szurnal, 2000).
How social context affects creativity | Dan Newbie | TEDxUniversity Of Central Arkansas
Tech entrepreneur Dan Ndombe, also know as “Dan Newbie, The Wine Glass Musician,” discusses the importance of social context as a factor of creativity, and tells the story of the war in his native Congo as a means to discovering his creative side.
CASE STUDY ANALYSIS: IDEO
Case study analysis involved the transformation of the company by innovation and creativity where design and engineering work together to produce aesthetically pleasing products that are also highly functional.
IDEO is an international design and consulting firm originally. The business model for IDEO began as an open-minded place to design, develop and manufacture new products.
IDEO became a workplace for innovation where creative thinkers, inspiration, conception and evaluation meets.
The company attracted creative, educated, highly innovative people who are willing and motivated to work in team settings. The collaborative approach and flexible team structure allows the company to develop solutions that other companies with more resources are unable to attain.
The company leaders took effort to keep the culture of innovation, creativity and teamwork alive throughout the company by communication and regularly scheduled meetings to connect people and ideas and provide guidelines for making decisions on new projects and review the current status on current projects to keep people connected and supportive of the helping culture.
IDEO leadership values how it does business and therefore reinforce the core ideas of the company across the current distributed system of this multinational organization.
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