How to Improve Your Creative Process

An introduction to "Innovation 101: Tools for Personal and Organizational Breakthroughs" with Deb Giampoli, Blair Miller, and Jonathan Vehar

"Daring new ideas are like chess pieces moved forward:
they may be beaten, but they start a winning game."
-- Author unknown

How many times have you heard this: "we've got to be more creative around here," or "we need some creative solutions to this problem," or "he/she is so creative -- they're always coming up with great ideas."

Creativity has always been well-regarded in fields like the fine arts or inventing. Yet increasingly business and industry are embracing it as a way to improve quality, reduce costs, generate new products and services, and gain a competitive edge.

This article will look at some ways to help you create more options or ideas to solve your personal and professional problems or challenges. We'll do this by putting creativity to work. Now wait, before you say "I'm not creative," let me say, "Excuse me, but yes you are!" You may not feel as creative as Albert Einstein or Thomas Edison, but there have been hundreds of studies that show that everyone is creative. Especially you, especially if you don't give up on your challenge. And if you use the tools that we'll present here, you may make yourself even more creative.

These tools can help you create more options and ideas for yourself and help you eliminate stress and fear from your life by solving your problems and challenges. Creativity can be very freeing. Now let's look at it more closely.

What is creativity

Ever since the days of ancient Greece, people have been looking at creativity, mostly from the perspective of who is creative. We've already noted that everyone is creative, so let's look at another side to it: How can we be creative?

One person who did an extensive amount of work on this question was Alex F. Osborn. He had a strong interest in creativity since his business revolved around it -- he worked in advertising, in fact he had a lot to do with one of the largest ad agencies in the world. The name of the agency is BBD&O, and he is the "O" in the name. He also invented the technique of brainstorming, which we'll discuss a bit later, as well as co-creating the Creative Problem Solving process.

No matter how you are creative, it plays a big part in most of the things that you do, whether it's in your personal lives, your job, your relationships, or your education. You need creativity to keep up with the changes in the world. Change that seems to be happening faster and faster than ever before, with companies laying off more people, crime on the rise, our schools not being able to manage on the budgets they're given, and the fact that technology is causing our world to change and seem faster and smaller.

It would be very easy to become tense about these things, in fact it's probably happened to you. It's happened to me. But throughout history, we always have been, and always will be, able to adapt to new ideas, new occurrences, and new influences.

That's what creativity helps us do -- adapt to newness by creating new ideas or options that we can use. The definition we use for creativity is "novelty [or a new idea] that is useful," I think that's a good way to approach it, especially when thinking about how to handle problems or challenges that we face.

What happens if we don't accept new ideas?

If we don't accept newness, the world will march right by us, and we'll be left all by ourselves wondering what happened. Consider these examples of people who weren't ready for new ideas:

"Heavier than air flying machines are impossible"

This was said by Lord Kelvin of the Royal Society in 1895, and by many other people before the Wright brothers proved them wrong. Think of that the next time you drive by an airport or fly in an airplane.

"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."

The next time you pick up the phone to "reach out and touch someone," think of the preceding quote from an internal memo at Western Union in 1876, and wonder what would have happened to this telegraph company if they had accepted this new concept.

"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"

I do. And billions of dollars are spent by people every year to see movies. This shows that many people don't agree with H.M. Warner of Warner Brothers films who made this statement in 1927. Fortunately, Warner Brothers changed their minds, otherwise it would have been "that's all folks" for them.

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."

This time, they were right. You've probably never heard of a band called The Beatles, have you? Oh, you have. Then I guess the executive at Decca Recording Company who said this about John, Paul, George, and Ringo's group in 1962 was wrong. So wrong that Rock and Roll hasn't been the same since they introduced their sound to the world.

"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C', the idea must be feasible"

What do you suppose this Yale University management professor was talking about, cars made out of bubble gum? Training cows to clean houses? Trying to get the government to reduce taxes? No, this was the response to a paper written by Fred Smith proposing a reliable overnight delivery service. He proved the professor wrong by founding Federal Express. Think of that the next time you're passed by one of their white, purple and orange trucks.

Get the picture? New ideas sometimes look strange, funny and impractical. But don't be so quick to rule them out. Now let's talk about how to create new ideas.How can I be creative?

So now that you're done laughing at those foolish people who were wrong about new concepts, take a look at the following symbol and say what you see:

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