A couple of weeks ago I had the good fortune of hearing a great expert on the subject of creativity in the business world. Dr. George Land of the Farsight Group started his speech with a powerful statement from a study done of a large group of CEO’s:
“Innovation and creativity are the two most important leadership qualities necessary in the next five years.” And he went on to tell us that the U.S. council on competitiveness made a bold statement, “Innovate or abdicate: innovation is the way you play the game.”
Unfortunately, as we become adults we unlearn creativity. He told us about a study that NASA conducted using a simple test for creativity. At the age of five years old the group tested at an average of 98%, by ten years old they were at 30%, at 15 years down to 12% and average adults test at 2%. The good news is that we can re-learn how to be creative.
The More the Better
Dr. Linus Pauling is credited with the creation of the brainstorming process. He found that the best ideas come from creating the largest number of ideas. It is critical to turn off all judgment and let out an explosion of ideas. And, “release your inner five-year old” to create all kinds of crazy ideas. The term for this is divergence.
Separate the Activity to Evaluate
Dr. Pauling found that the key is to separate divergence from convergence. In the convergence step you are reviewing all of the ideas to find those that you can possibly combine or use to create your new solution or innovation. It is critical to do this in a separate meeting after all the ideas have been gathered (as big a list as possible)!
Failing Fast
The key to strong innovation is to learn by implementing ideas, quickly learning if it doesn’t work and then trying another idea. The businesses that are most successful at innovation, quickly assess information to fail fast and then shift. The leaders make it an accepted culture to celebrate mistakes that take them closer to the next best idea.
Ideas only turn into innovation when you take action. I wrote a post last year about dealing with an overwhelming number of ideas with some tips on taking action, it is linked here: “Navigating the Sea of Ideas to Success”
How do you nourish your creativity? Please share in a comment
photo credit: mavin via Flickr creative commons