By Ed Bernacki
Creativity is widely seen as an important workplace skill. The World Economic Forum suggests 70% of organizations believe creativity skills are crucial for the future. There is no question about the need. The only questions are … what are “creativity skills” and how can organizations develop these skills in their staff? The design concept for all Navigator Journals is based on a foundation of improving the creativity skills of users while they solve challenges and create new opportunities.
If you ask AI, it suggests: “A creativity skill is the ability to generate novel and valuable ideas or works using one's imagination.” This sounds like a capability, not a skill. It lacks insight into learning creativity skills. I will distill 30 years of experience into practical insights to understand organizational creativity.
Why is a creativity skill set important?
Everyone in every organization shares common job functions: all people solve problems, make decisions, and deal with change. While the scale will differ for executives, managers, and staff, it pays to expand our skills. This understanding is a form of risk management. When people find more effective solutions to problems, they make better decisions that reduce the risk of failure or weak solutions.
Edward de Bono
Edward de Bono invested decades of effort to teach the world about creativity. He published dozens of books and introduced many ways of thinking, such as Lateral Thinking and PO (provocation thinking). His most popular was Six Thinking Hats (every team should use it to improve results). We met him in the 1990s. He made this distinction:
“The English language does not distinguish between idea creativity and artistic creativity. Because of this failure of language, people are reluctant to accept that idea creativity is a learnable skill. Once we have separated idea creativity from artistic creativity, we can set about learning, and develop the skills of learning for new ideas.”
I agree. Problem solvers can be as creative as artists. What is learning for new ideas?
Hand of innovation analogy
In 2001, the Singapore Government created an innovation guide to launch its “Hand of Innovation” skills framework. I wrote much of it. At the core, these skills help improve problem-solving and build a foundation for innovation. The hand analogy involved five skills:
“The Hand of Innovation is a metaphor of an open hand ready to take action upon ideas. Five fingers represent competencies needed for innovation at an individual level. They are:
- Generating Ideas
- Harvesting and Developing Ideas
- Evaluating and Judging Ideas
- Proposing and Marketing Ideas
- Implementing Ideas
“As with the fingers of a hand, each competency is unique, yet interdependent with the others to function effectively. The palm is Team Learning, the sixth competency. The palm energizes people that creativity and innovation are best as a team effort.”
I used these words from the guide. Public servants could take two to three-day courses in each skill, up to 15 days. This is the best model I have seen anywhere. Each skill is worthy of study. This is the best model I know of as it explores the core skills. Each is worthy of study.
For example, many creativity books have techniques to generate ideas to solve problems. A classic book is ThinkerToys.
For complex engineering or scientific challenges, TRIZ is based on research into thousands of inventions in many fields. Its defines patterns in inventive solutions and the characteristics of the problems these inventions have overcome. The research has produced three findings:
1. Problems and solutions are repeated across industries and sciences.
2. Patterns of technical evolution are replicated in industries and sciences.
3. The innovations have scientific effects outside the field in which they were developed.
TRIZ applies these findings to create and improve products, services, and systems. My understanding of TRIZ is rudimentary. I have taken courses and seen it used. Its scope to solve technical problems is immense.
From experience, he weakest skills is #3 Judging Ideas.
The first step in judging is to decide which decision you need. Each is different in its intent. The bottom line is that you must make a decision.
- Is your objective to assess the idea? You have one idea: you can accept it or reject.
- Is your objective to enhance the idea? You have an idea and want to judge whether it is a “weak” idea or a “great” idea. That is, you want to find ways to make the idea stronger.
- Is your objective to select between ideas? You have a series of 3 or more ideas and want to select the best one.
Making these decisions takes an understanding of decision-making criteria to expand your thinking. Yet, few people can articulate "how" they judge the quality of a new idea. For example, how do you make a good idea “great”? This articles introduces one approach: Honing your innovation skills: are your ideas, GREAT, or just GOOD?
You can learn more about these skills. Download “30 Great Ideas” from the LEARN tab at www.NavigatorJournals.com. Section Two explores these skills.
Design thinking vs creativity skills
Many say design thinking is the secret to the future. The WEF says 50% of companies see the value of this problem-solving process. What is unspoken is that people still need the core skills as shown above. You can use “user experience” models to gain insights, but you must still generate, develop, and judge your ideas. You must also collaborate effectively. The weakness of design thinking links back to the lack of core skills for problem-solving and managing ideas.
Applying your creative imagination
In 1953, Alex Osborn published Applied Imagination after leading creativity efforts in his advertising agency. Osborn is a founding partner of BBDO. Over 270 pages, he introduces useful approaches to help people be creative. He then offers a process to harness the brains of people to solve problems: “… using the brains to storm a creative problem … and do[ing] so in commando fashion, with each stormer audaciously attacking the same objective!”
You know this as brainstorming. Many criticize brainstorming as weak or ineffective. Did they read his book? No. If they did, they would see that anytime a group of people collaborate, it is brainstorming. The process and methodology may change, but you still harness the brains of people to attack the same problem.
Critical thinking versus creative thinking
The WEF also suggests that analytical thinking is an important skill for the future. One aspect of this work relates to a theory of cognitive diversity developed by Dr. M Kirton. His insights on problem solving and problem solvers are critical for our understanding. This article is about problem-solving. We too rarely consider the problem solvers. If people thought alike, you could make assumptions about how others will solve problems. The reality is that people do not think alike. This leads to a much bigger discussion on cognitive style. We have yet to accept that cognitive diversity is real, measurable, and a useful diversity to harness. (See How to stop killing the ideas of people who do not think like you}.
Dr Kirton made a useful distinction for this discussion: “Creative thinking involves producing new ideas whereas... critical thinking involves reacting to others’ ideas or your own previous ideas.”
Both involve different types of analysis and thinking processes. Alex Osborn also recognized this factor. He said we have two types of imagination:
- Our creative mind, which visualizes, foresees, and generates ideas
- Our judicial mind, which analyzes, compares, and chooses ideas
These insights provide a useful way to see creativity as a skill set and not to confuse it with critical thinking. Both have great value in our mental toolkits for the future. Studying the core skills helps us bridge the gap between facing a problem and generating the insights and ideas that deliver results.
Related to this discussion: Manage your ideas as artists manage their paintings
