The Handbook of Creativity & Innovation in Business

Since this is an introductory chapter, we cover the “What? Why? Who? and How?” of creative thinking. We introduce some key concepts that will be developed in depth later in the book. Starting with the question of what creativity is, we consider the changing historic viewpoints and perspectives. We cover different paradigms proposed by various people as they considered the “What is creativity?” question over the millennia. Next we consider “How?”. How can creativity and creative intelligence (CiQ) be identified and measured (once we know what it is)? Next you, as reader, might wonder: “Why this is important?”, especially to business executives now, and into the future. We aim to answer that from a few business perspectives, including sticky problems, contextual changes and competitive marketspace factors. We start with our best attempt – given the current body of knowledge – to answer the question: “What is creativity?” We then progress to various definitions and theoretical frameworks on how creativity is seen from various paradigms, including psychology, physiology and business. This chapter covers the six Ps, an extension of the traditional four Ps of Person, Product, Process and Press, to include Partners, and Possibilities. We then cover the “Who?” Who are considered creatives?, or in the terminology of this book, Who are creative genii ? (Throughout this book we refer to creatives as a collective noun – also named genii – when we refer to creatives’ inherent abilities, talents, personality and characteristics or intelligence)

The human brain is a fascinating and fabulous thinking machine. Although scientists understand a lot about how the brain works, not all is revealed yet. But between neuroscientists and psychologists the world of the mind is slowly becoming clearer and less mysterious. The way the human brain processes information has a huge range, including sensory reception, affective perception, memory, multiple intelligences (e.g., musical, logical-mathematical, spatial and linguistic intelligence), thinking, learning, intuition, decision-making, problem-solving, and creativity. The chapter focuses on the biological, genetic, neuroanatomical, and physiological perspectives of creativity. The most important finding is that creativity involves the whole brain. The chapter will answer, to the best of our current knowledge, questions such as: Which parts of the brain associate with what type of thinking? Which parts of the brain are involved in creative thinking and problem solving? And can we improve our creative intelligence, or is it genetically endowed, given our brain structure? Can we enhance our creative capabilities given the human brain’s capacity to adapt and learn?

The brain is the central engine in the creativity machine. It drives all the competencies necessary for creative intelligence (CiQ). Different brains lead to different forms of creativity, and creativity is central to human life. Although CiQ is closely linked to general intelligence, imagination, adaptability, empathy and innovation, creativity is quite distinct from these intelligences. This chapter discusses the various types of minds or intelligences, and how decisions to be creative can offer incremental and disruptive contributions to innovation.

To develop creative ideas, we first need to understand what they are. Creative ideas contain three core elements. They must be original, appropriate, but also artistic. The development of these ideas requires an understanding of divergent and convergent thinking processes and how they are used to generate creative ideas. These creative ideas must then make it through challenging evaluation processes.

This chapter offers four metacognitive exercises to illustrate forms of perceptual awareness. They demonstrate how CiQ can develop from a conscious meta-cognitive awareness of our responses to daily life as we live it. How personal actions, directed by felt senses as response to stimuli, can be an immediate source of information. When carefully observed and mindfully recognized, these responses as insights contribute to the development of a critical self-reflective awareness. From the exercises and examples presented, readers should consider the richness of their responses, as indicative of possibilities to further develop their CiQ.

There is much evidence that humans are incredibly good at solving problems and building inventions to solve a range of human dilemmas. Unfortunately, our thinking patterns and cognitive lapses – including biases, prejudices, fixations, and several incorrectly applied heuristics – sometimes prevent our fallible minds from finding novel, appropriate, valuable solutions. In this chapter we cover the various thinking errors such as those already listed, and assumptive, reactive thinking, and mental set fixations. The last part of the chapter focuses on possible techniques and habits to overcome these cognitive blocks to ensure creative solutions through optimal ideation, idea refinement and decision-making.

Personality refers to the characteristics of the person that account for consistent patterns of feelings, thinking, and behaving, that distinguishes one person from another and persist over time. Personality has conspicuous impact on creative intelligence (CiQ) and individuals’ success (or failure) in developing new ideas and translating those novel, original ideas into appropriate, valuable actions or artefacts. There is an extensive body of knowledge on the impact of personality traits on creative intentions (motivations), inventions (enacting or executing ideas) and how these traits interact with the creative teams and processes that occurs at work. It is important to note right at the outset that creative personalities vary greatly between domains and disciplines. A further key concept readers will quickly arrive at, is that there not one single identifying personality trait for creative genii. Also, no personality traits should be regarded as predictive of performance (either at work or at play), without considering the wider context or the specific situation (i.e., the other Ps in six Ps of creative intelligence).

The creative thinking processes is complex. Techniques and systems that work at one stage of the process can be detrimental if applied at another stage. This chapter discusses the Four Stages Model of the Creative Thinking Process, and highlights the importance of understanding what occurs within each stage. With this knowledge individuals and organizations can enhance their ability to develop creative ideas.

It is a myth that creative genii sit quietly hoping for inspiration and insight come to them in a flash of illumination. Some discoveries are either by accident or the result of some form of creative “spark of genius”, but for most novel, valuable business solutions, problem-solving often starts with a design challenge/problem or opportunity. Thanks to decades of research and tried-and-tested tools applied in a range of domains and business disciplines, a treasure trove of creative problem-solving tools and techniques is available to creatives and innovators. These tools turn problems into possibilities, and provide opportunities to develop ideas, processes, products, or procedures that are new to that job, team or organization. Business Schools and industries have no shortage of models, frameworks and tools to improve business effectiveness or generate new and interesting problem solutions for clients. Thinking tools have merit and include divergent or convergent (or both) thinking techniques. We cover thirteen of the most well-known and useful tools and techniques in this chapter. There are many more, but the scope of this book limits what can be covered here.

In chapter 10 we covered thirteen ideation tools. We dedicate this chapter to Design Thinking (DT), as a procedure to generate and test ideas, and even more importantly as a creative problem-solving methodology. DT is a human-centred process that will help designers, innovators, entrepreneurs and business executives to systematically solve complex problems, not only in product design and businesses processes, systems and other sticky organizational problems, but also in our communities and our everyday lives. Some leading global brands, such as Apple™, Google™ and Samsung™ have adopted the DT approach to complex problem-solving.

As DT is a shift in our way of thinking and a collection of hands-on methods and tools, we devote this chapter to this highly useful, well-honed 5-stage process. The chapter first covers the history of and thinking modalities involved in DT, then examines how various design thinking schools and leading universities (e.g., Stanford, Harvard and MIT) apply the DT principles using models with three to eight stages. Finally this chapter covers the 5-stage DT iterative process we propose for business executives – those who lead multi-disciplinary teams of innovators, ideators, intrapreneurs and others in business problem-solving roles.

In this chapter we deal with the third and fourth indicators of creativity (after novelty/new/unique and appropriateness/effectiveness), namely elegance of expression and genesis. The final two pieces of the jigsaw to understand and assess creativity involve firstly a genii’s ability to persuade someone that the idea or creative product is valuable and has merit. Secondly, the idea’s value is increased, the lifespan extended and its impact on society broadened when the idea leads to further extension, expansion or related novel ideas that germinate from the roots of this new idea.

Responding to a brief – a specific response structure – despite the rigor of compliance, has the opportunity for compelling content, focused on addressing the audience requirements in an engaging, informative and convincing way. The aim is to persuade, whether by visual appeal, content structure or clarity of message. Very often this requires a creative, agile work environment focused on targeted delivery within a short timeframe of weeks or sometimes months. The message needs to be highly adapted/tailored to the brief and strategy of the client – whether internal to the organization or an external client, the purpose is to compel the client to accept the pitch or tender and “close the deal”, making the offered solution their preferred choice.

The main focus of this chapter is to discuss appropriate tools, and the various models and frameworks to use in determining which of the ideas generated during earlier creative thinking phases are worth short-listing. Additional tools, both qualitative and quantitative, to further investigate the resulting short list, are covered after sorting or clustering ideas. Shortlisted ideas are considered for in-depth analyses to find “winning ideas” worth pursuing, as they are viable or of strategic value to the organization. This chapter offers a brief overview of the available tools that can be used to sort and select the best ideas for invention and implementation.

Encouraging creativity in organizations requires the development of a creative culture that encourages and supports employees to pursue new ideas in pursuit of clearly defined goals.

This culture is an ecosystem consisting of three interconnecting cogs: the management culture of the organization, the environment in which employees operate, and individual creativity.

Entrepreneurship is a blend of the creativity and innovation necessary to start a new business. An entrepreneur possesses strengths in three key areas: psychological capital, human capital, and social capital. These strengths also apply to an employee relationship where the employee is tasked with developing new products, services, or management processes.

We consider two Ps of the six Ps Model in this chapter: Press and Partnerships. Businesses constantly face contextual changes in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) marketspace. To remain relevant, businesses need to create innovative products, services and business processes. The ability to analyse opportunities and threats, and mobilize teams and whole supply chains to implement ideas is at the core of business survival in today’s tumultuous marketplaces. While innovation involves applying creativity to generate unique solutions, entrepreneurship is applying innovations, scaling the ideas, and inspiring others’ imagination and stakeholders’ commitment to realize the envisaged solution. This chapter looks into the roles of entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, teams and crowds to source and implement innovations in business, forming various partnerships to collaborate to achieve effective solutions. Key issues such as the skills, attitudes and personality traits of entrepreneurs, and team composition and collaboration tools such as Six Sigma and Kaizen are covered. We look into the role of teams, social webs and crowd sourcing in corporate innovation for today’s businesses.

There is an ever-increasing realization that leaders need to develop and nurture the Creative Intelligence (CiQ) of their teams and for the organizations they lead and guide. This chapter examines the important intersection of creativity and leadership. It covers the three dimensions of creative leadership. Finally, this chapter provides practical recommendations for leaders and managers to inspire creativity within an organization to enable business growth and support business development and thought leadership initiatives.

In this final chapter, we return to the individual, who is an important cog in the wheel of the business invention thinking machine (Kucirkova N, Littleton K, Cremin T. Cambr J Educ 47: 67–84, 2017). Our problem-solving capacities and creative minds allow us to design, compose, and alter the world we live in. As indicated many times in this book, all humans are born with an inherent ability to be creative, and it is our diverse nature and our diverse insights into problems that allow us to survive and thrive in the harsh reality of volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous (VUCA) environments. Business executives in VUCA marketplaces have to become very comfortable with – and perhaps even pursue – constant change and variability. Creative leaders like trying new things; they dislike repetition for the sake of conforming or keeping things as they are. Creative genii never stop developing and never stop learning. Fast-paced competency development and creative intelligence gathering involves doing different, difficult and challenging things sooner rather than later. “Different and difficult serve as constraints that preclude low and promote high variability” (Stokes PD. Creativity from constraints: the psychology of breakthrough. Springer, New York, 2006, pp 135). This chapter is focused on unfolding the last of the seven Ps: possibilities.