Creativity: How innovation is born

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Comment by Jean-Pierre Moczalla on May 29, 2009 at 10:53am

If the journey is pleasant, fullfilling and memorable.Then the ending is worth it. You should always remember the purpose for your travels.

Comment by Gregg Fraley on May 20, 2009 at 8:48am

The swing you refer to can be viewed as "polarity management". Corporate innovation is a swing between the polarity of standardization and innovation. Innovation is not a problem to solve, it's a polarity to manage. You can't focus all your energies on innovation, or, you'll neglect the necessity of running the business. And if you focus only on running the business the business will wither away without new/better products and services.

Comment by Bob Lieberman on May 19, 2009 at 4:49am

This is an interesting discussion! I've been pursuing the idea that we naturally swing between meeting fulfillment needs and survival needs (Maslow's being needs and deficiency needs). And that if we embrace that swinging process fully, we get into the zone (aka the flow) and manifest a quality we call creativity. In that process, fulfillment activity provides the juice, the laughter, the passion, and survival activity provides the material products, many of them innovative. My observation of the business world from this perspective is that fulfillment is routinely neglected. The neglect restricts the natural process, limiting the creativity of the experience and the innovativeness of its material products. It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing!

Comment by Jean-Pierre Moczalla on September 10, 2008 at 8:37pm

Deliberate creative thinking may be triggered to fill Maslow's hierachy of needs? And the auto-pilot creativity might be the result of our genetic inheritance?

Comment by Annalie Killian on September 3, 2008 at 8:38am

I think there's another question to be asked....how is creativity triggered? Now we all know (assuming we are all passionate & knowledgeable about this field otherwise we wouldn't belong to this group!) that we are all using our cognitive creative abilities more or less all the time as we just go about the business of living, crossing a street, reaching for an object, interpreting a picture or even text, but I regard that as "auto-pilot creativity". Contrast that with "deliberate" creative thought and thats what I am interested in. How and when is it triggered, long before we are even talking of innovation?

I dont belive we invoke deliberate creative thinking for routine tasks....it would simply be too complex to live in such a state. I believe it is triggered by some juxta-position, some problem or challenge out of the ordinary or expected that represents a disruption to an expected pattern....and the mind cannot operate from "auto-pilot" but actually has to stop and find a new response because the mental path of habit (and we have superb habit/ pattern-making brains!) cannot apply the same thinking, or we deal with it through humour/ making fun and laughing. (Thats why we laugh so often at realy shocking and tragic events..is a manifestation of our creative processes trying to make sense of the disruptive patterns).

Seeing I am interested in the application of deliberate creative thinking in the workplace, it makes sense to examine our patterns and routines and the assumptions that underpin them. This applies to our customers, our competitors, our processes, our products and services. How much of our thinking is actually on "auto-pilot" when those that ultimately disrupt our businesses, are not stuck in subconscious pattern recognition but actually see with fresh eyes?

Comment by Jean-Pierre Moczalla on August 16, 2008 at 2:16pm

Alan I love he fact that you create to amuse yourself I to challenge youself, or to have fun. I think that creating exists to offset the fact we are mortal. In other words the more we create the less we die.

Also another reason I must agree with you Alan is that you look like Santa therefore I suppose you know where I live.

Comment by Alan (Robert Alan Black, Ph.D., CSP) on August 16, 2008 at 10:07am

Interesting idea Garth

You can have Creativity without Innovation but you can't have Innovation without Creativity.

Much innovation is adaptation, adjustment, refinement, replacement, readaptation, readjustment......the list goes on and on.

Therefore is the act of doing something that is different always the act of creativity?

If so the definition of creativity becomes vast and all encompassing.

I have lived and worked with the basic definitions that you shared earlier that E. Paul Torrance helped me see.

creativity...production of new ideas or new combinations of existing or old ideas

innovation...the improvement or modification of existing ideas, products, services (line extensions for example).

Over the past decade or so while corporations have included innovation as a focus to keep their entities thriving or surviving or at least included the word in their advertising and on their stationery and in their MISSION STATEMENTS innovation has become defined as

creativity applied in a profitable way

Csinkszentmihalyi and many others have narrowed creativity into

meaningful only if determined valuable by a community, society, culture, profession.

Hmmm...Impressionism, breakthroughs in art, design, business, philosophy, styles, fashions, fads, etc. i.e.: Sony Walkman and many things that were "creative" long before any community, society, culture or profession accepted them as 'MEANINGFUL, VALUABLE, creativity.

A new friend of mind creates designs and art or things them physically demonstrate ideas 2, 3 and 4 dimensionally for himself. He does not create them to show to people, to exhibit to sell simply so that he can see them and enjoy them.

He simply creates to create for himself.

But according to

Csinkszentmihalyi his works, paintings, designs, constructions are not creative.

I have always had a problem with that narrow view.

So it has been re-solved by labeling things

BIG C and little to tiny little c creativity

I often create simply to challenge myself, or to have fun, to amuse myself, to pass the time away, because I am bored or even solve immediate to long-range personal and professional problems to daily little challenges.

Not to show, sell, impress, exhibit.

Perhaps we need more terms, words, labels....to more accurately discuss the universe of human activity even within the ranges of what is

creative
or
innovative

Comment by Tim Hurson on August 15, 2008 at 8:56am

Lovely comment, Jean-Pierre. I agree: creativity should be fun. Isn't it interesting how often the most productive creative thinking sessions are accompanied by laughter!

Comment by Jean-Pierre Moczalla on August 13, 2008 at 6:28pm

After reading all the comments, about creativity and innovation. I feel that everything can be explained with graphs, quotations,grams and mollecules. However there are things that are just fun and spontaneous. For example when kissing someone passionally I don't think the indivividuals involved are thinking too much about the exchange of saliva. They just enjoy it. No one can bottle the soul or graph a feeling. I think creativity and innovation can only survive if it is pleasant. First create the mood, and innovation will follow.

Comment by Garth on August 11, 2008 at 5:42pm

oops...correction: You can have Creativity without Innovation but you can't have Innovation without Creativity.

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