(en traduction)
Techniques
pour la gestion de l'innovation
However we would like to define it,
creativity
symbolizes the production of something new, and this "something
new", can be a new solution or "a solution" resulting from the
reformulation of a problem.
Creativity and innovation are at the base
of problem solving, and this includes strategic innovation.
Imagination, that comprises ideas that
didn't exist before, or the generation of different modes to see a
situation, is important to ensue creative actions. Normally, creativity
is the recognition of relations between things (concepts), producing
something new, giving a solution to an immediate or mediate, explicit or
latent problem. Creativity is a characteristic of human
intelligence and is a function of our most common abilities, like the
association of ideas, memory (or remembrances), perception, analogical
thinking, searching in a structured problem space and critical thinking.
Or just case. Motivation and emotion are indispensable. The
cultural context and come personality factors are also very important.
Creativity happens on
concepts, on
ideas. It can be combinatorial, integrating the
attributes of known ideas; exploratory (investigative), generating
new ideas from the exploration of structured concepts, or
transformational, that implies the transformation of any dimension
of the conceptual structure to create new structures.
Innovation
Creativity is at the base of
innovation,
both are complementary activities. There's no innovation without
creative ideas. The organization of creative thinking (event though
creativity is a personal gift), innovation,
is the result of creativity in an appropriate organizational culture.
And it is this business culture what stimulates and sustains,
through creativity techniques, the possibility for the development of
individual and group creative abilities. The techniques for the
generation of creativity are implemented in the organization (business,
government, college or elementary or technical school). In the modern
organization, the organized practice of creativity becomes a
standardized process.
If creativity must "innovate",
creative thinking must take pace beyond the known limits (out-of-the-box).
Curiosity must be developed, running away from conventional ideas (considered a priori
as "rational") and from formal procedures, depending only of
imagination, divergence, accepting the aleatory and analyzing
multiple alternative solutions.
One of the fundamental points on which
business intelligence relies, is precisely creative thinking. Business
management, and its decisions and actions, while facing the rapidly
changing and ambiguous business environment, needs to develop strategies
and solutions to solve problems. It is creative thinking what permits
the improvement of understanding or problematic situations, finding
alternative and reserve solutions. In a "non uniformly" accelerated
(inconstant acceleration) changing world, it's
è imperative to think in advance, because there are not
many possibilities to extend the horizon of opportunities and
competitive force of organizations (businesses or other).
There are methodologies
to stimulate creative solutions
We are all creative even if our creativity
was more evident in our childhood; the "mystery" of how and why our
creativity stopped manifesting sometime in our infancy still remains.
Creativity can be learnt using tested and
experimented techniques that, stimulating creative abilities, help
people to leave their usual analysis style facilitating the
consideration of a wider range of alternatives, improving work
productivity and quality.
In the end, we can improve our creativity
training ourselves in the construction of new relations between concepts
or events that seemed unconnected before, and that result in new
knowledge entities.
Creativity is precisely about finding
new relations between things. Everything is related to everything.
Knowledge and
information are both at the base of creativity.
Very frequently we're not aware of how much do we know or how much we
can create, because of lack of motivation, time or tools to guide us in
practicing creativity, every time more complex and challenging.
Scientific research has oriented towards
the development of creativity as an educational process, even in
business. Techniques to support creativity are software tools
based on knowledge management:
artificial intelligence models, idea processing, information systems,
etc.) These tools are used with the aim creativity generation and
promotion, breaking prefixed schemes, stimulating imagination and,
depending on the method, improve the environment in which the creative
idea is produced. In a company (or in any other organization) it
is important to incorporate staff creativity in the organization of
processes and strategies.
There are several techniques aimed at the
stimulation of creativity and are applied to the most dissimilar areas:
product development. strategic planning, quality control. But this
comprises not only companies, but also educational organizations of
every level, government agencies and structures, etc.
Analytical
techniques follow a linear thinking format or step sequence,
for instance W5+H2, when trying to precise a situation: { When;
Where; Who; What; Why; How; How much;
}; and these
techniques are specially useful when a problem is very specific. The
result is normally a very detailed organization of information and
multiple perspectives of the same objective.
Intuitive
techniques are less structured and tend to offer "the complete
solution" (the ideal solution) at once, and are more useful for
undefined or ill-defined problems or situations.
Some of these techniques can be more
appropriate for the stimulation of creativity groups or in individuals.
Individual techniques can stimulate abilities in the individual by
avoiding the fear of mistake or some apprehension. At the group level, a
certain discipline and organization are required. Some of these
techniques can also be used either by groups or by the individual. It's
true that creativity, just as learning, is an attribute (and a construction) of the individual, but it gives its best fruits when it is
developed in a specific group.
Another way to categorize creativity
techniques is by the orientation of thinking: divergent or
convergent. Divergent thinking aims at the free flow of ideas and
requires discipline. Convergent thinking has the the function of idea
filtering, to identify which ideas really have an
innovative value and can
be integrated in a real solution. Both ways are complementary.
Generally, these activities are all
considered under the brainstorming concept.
It's a must for all creativity techniques:
-
Avoid evaluations.
-
Use the impossible
intermediate* (the
conceptual challenge).
-
Create analogies and metaphors.
-
Invent the ideal solution, from imagination.
-
And how can we implement the ideal solution?
-
Relate things or concepts that were not related
before.
-
Generate multiple solutions to a problem.
*
The "impossible
intermediate"
is an extension of divergent thinking (De Bono)
often used to prepare writing. Though an idea may
seem absurd or impossible, it might show edges from
which an idea with more chances of success can be
constructed.
Some
observations to stimulate creativity in an
organization:
-
Trust the group, do it for pleasure, for
amusement.
-
Maintain communication.
-
Use external sources of information.
-
Each member of the group is independent in the
production of ideas.
-
Support the participation of staff in decision
making, and their contributions at
brainstorming.
-
Experiment with new ideas.
What can these creative efforts offer?
Creativity
is (and has always been) the problem solving
resource, to facilitate adaptation to change, to
optimize the operation of organizations and to
improve the attitude of staff.
Creativity techniques can be used in any functional
area of a company:
strategic planning, business strategy, product
development, service optimization,
functional strategy, finance, human resources,
marketing, information management, quality
management, that can be encompassed in four
categories of creativity identified for organizations:
1)
Client oriented; 2) Products; 3)
Processes; 4) Strategic.
Every
kind of innovation is important. Strategic
innovation might not come necessarily from the the
top management, but visionary managers are
indispensable to implement strategic innovation
across the company. Many top managers might discover
that: 1) Many of their employees (at every level) have
ideas about every aspect of the organization; that
many of these ideas are well meditated; 3) that many
of these ideas have an economic value for the
organization.
The activity that expects from from creative
processes is Research and Development. Some of the
benefits that creative techniques offer to R&D are:
The organization of group creative efforts can
benefit from the participation of an external
consultant (though it is not a requirement). These
experts in creative techniques can be useful for
staff training in creativity techniques. Their work
is presenting the different techniques, the way they
must be used, their rules and perspectives of
creativity work.
It may
be useful to train the intermediate levels of the
company to stimulate creativity in staff, to
motivate them and to facilitate a working
environment based on these techniques.
In
other organizations, government or private,
dedicated to process, product or service innovation.
In personal creativity as a support for researchers,
product or service developers and in very small
companies.
The application of creativity techniques is
continuous process. Some of these techniques:
Knowledge Master, a concept processor, has
a strong relationship with artificial intelligence
and uses some of its techniques. KM can also
be used as a decision support system and specially
in the brainstorming phase:
-
Evaluate similar situations.
-
Examine metaphors.
-
Analyze other perspective
-
Focus attention on objectives.
-
Get attention and engagement from interested
people.
-
Invert objectives.
-
Analyze all ideas with maximum detail.
-
Relate also internal with external factors.
Therefore, the role of a knowledge
management system is not only to focus on some complementary resources
of Human Resources, but also to contribute to the creation of the
business context, that facilitates all business intelligence processes.
All of these techniques are based on the
principle of concept (or idea) processing. Handling ideas in text or
tables, or in exclusively graphical devices is very difficult and
unproductive. KM semantic networks (or concept maps) are the
natural environment for knowledge management, its methods and strategies
are the essence of business intelligence. Most of these techniques are
materialized in KM as templates or appear described in its
check lists.
Part of the idea processing strategy
(conceptual management) that stimulate
innovation potential in
companies or organizations of any kind is the utilization of knowledge
management devices.
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