Creative qualities

There is no formula for identifying the creative person, but some are:

• independent - needing to think things through for themselves.
• inquisitive - having a seemingly unquenchable thirst to understand.
• iconoclastic - nonconforming - not wed to authority or the status quo.
• confident - feeling they can do something better than others.
• determined - convinced they will find a better way if they persist.
• learners - always keen to acquire new knowledge.
• intuitive - making leaps of imagination, not needing to stick to the facts.
• open-minded - no rush to decide, digging deeper, studying new angles.

Barriers to creativity

Creativity can be blocked for any one of several reasons:

• The value of getting things right time can induce a fear of mistakes and experimentation.
• So can a blame culture where people become afraid of making mistakes.
• Managers who are not as secure as they should be can resist or block ideas that are not their own or which they see as threatening.
• A culture that over emphasizes cost containment, processes, consistency or efficiency.
• A reward system that too exclusively celebrates getting things done fast with no mistakes.
• A general fear of risk taking, wanting to analyze everything to death, to wait and see what others do in the market before acting.
• A lack of explicit funding for experimentation.
• A strict requirement to demonstrate the value of an idea before it has a chance to prove itself.
• A tendency to shoot down novel ideas as a way of scoring points.
• An over allegiance to past successes, proven experience and tried and tested methods.
• A suspicion of novelty, a fear of the unproven.
• A resistance to learning from mistakes or trial and error, a tendency to blame external factors or other people for failures rather than to learn from them.
• Short termism - a drive to meet short term financial goals rather than to invest in the future.

Provide opportunities to be creative

• Creativity is like finding that elusive piece in a jigsaw puzzle.
• To find the missing piece you first need to see how the other pieces fit together.
• In an R&D lab or software house all the pieces may be hidden within the lab itself.
• In broader business contexts, the pieces are scattered over several markets.
• The opportunity to be creative depends on insight into a wide range of trends.
• Increasing complexity will make this insight harder to come by in any one person.
• Expose employees to as wide a range of contexts as possible.
• Consider employee exchanges and secondments with complementary industries/customers.
• Mix together a wider range of perspectives, especially more outsiders.
• Develop managers to be opportunity generators - to be better at stirring the pot.