What are you doing to develop your competence in creativity?

Creativity Expert, Alan Black, Ph.D. posed some provocative questions to me, “What are you doing to increase your creative skills, traits, and abilities?  What are the tools you use (mental, physical, emotional, social) to increase your creative thinking?  How do you increase your creative skills?”

After some reflection I developed these responses and realized that this is how I develop my creative competency.  It is my hope that this will spark some ideas for you to develop your own creative competency.  After all, creativity is a skill that can be learned, just like riding a bicycle.

Traits – I am daring and I am unafraid to reach out to people who are so out of my league it is laughable to think they would have anything to do with me.  However, sometimes they respond back to me and it is great fun.  I am passionate about learning as much as I can about creativity and how it can be applied to business, science, and technology.  Traits I possess are, I am daring, unafraid of failure, passionate, and I have the philosophy that if I am not having fun then I need to go do something different.

Abilities – I am always thinking about ways to promote creativity through the use of technology.  I have a Master in Business Administration; therefore, I am always on the lookout for how to justify creativity with (ROI) return on investment because that is the language business people understand.  I am always looking for examples of language to use that will make creativity theory understandable to “rational” people such as those in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).  I am often told that I am not rational (by my husband); I take this as a high compliment.

Tools – I read books about creativity and then I contact the authors and invite them to engage with me.  Oftentimes they ignore me but I have had some phenomenal successes.  Sometimes the authors find me and initiate the contact.  Michael Michalko did this and he invited me to write an endorsement for his new book, “Creative Thinkering” so I did. 

I use the public relations tools provided by (WITI) Women in Technology International to announce my latest creativity adventures.  They have a market reach of two million.  I am on their leadership team.  I also do webinars on creativity for WITI.  I am the Chief Creative Advisor to the President of Sedaa’s Global Brain Trust, which is a community of over three hundred in the field of (OD) organizational development.  I write blog posts about creativity on their site and how it relates to OD.  I also do webinars for them on social media and creativity.

I am an avid fan of Tony Buzan’s iMindMapping computer software and I use it for all my presentations.  I met him at the American Creativity Association conference in Singapore that I helped to organize.

I learn as much as I can about social media and then I implement what I have learned to promote creativity and connect with others who are interested in creativity.  I go where I have never gone before, for example, I am now a radio talk host on live radio for a program called Women\Men.  It is a new adventure and I am learning as I go along.  I plan to use this as a platform to apply creativity to everyday living and to make others aware of the field of creativity.

I am also constantly promoting RobotLab’s process developed by Lars Ringe that provides training in creativity to build high performance teams.  Our most recent success was his presentation in Copenhagen, Denmark of our white paper, “Mastering Creative Problem Solving within Teams” at the International Association of Science Parks conference.  We will soon begin our new book incorporating the ideas of tomorrow and the management solutions that create and maximize high performance teams by using creative problem solving.

I write blog posts about creativity.  I became a guest blogger for the Front End of Innovation, IIR USA and travelled to Amsterdam and wrote 19 blog posts about design thinking.  I continue to read and study design thinking to gain a better understanding of what it really means.  I recently connected with Roger Martin on facebook, the author of “The Design of Business, Why Design Thinking is the next competitive advantage.” 

Mental – I exercise five times a week.  I sleep eight hours every night.  When I am on the treadmill I zone out and often think about creativity.  I watch the news and think about how creativity might impact some of our world issues.  I am an insatiable reader of books, e-books and periodicals.  My reading ranges from the latest on Harvard Business Review to the latest historical romance novel.  I connect and hang out with international people; they are fascinating because they see the world differently than many of us.

I travel internationally at every opportunity.  Last year I went to Amsterdam; this year I am going to Ireland.  I will be going to China; therefore, I am educating myself about China.  I attend lectures and read about China.

Physical – I play with my two year old grandson on the floor and pay close attention to the way he perceives the world.  He reminds me of how fresh things once were to me and how innocent he is now.  I love to play with him and it leaves me filled with joy and new energy.  He loves to look at plants and animals and wonders about them.  My six year old grandson is just so brilliant; I love to have conversations with him about how he sees the world.  His perspective is so fresh and insightful.   They both make me start to think again about life with a fresh perspective.  When I am with them I take the time to look carefully at a plant, a flower, or to watch and think about the ducks. 

Emotional – I have been married for over 40 years and I am fortunate to be surrounded by a stable and loving family.  I do not take this for granted because some of our friends and extended family have the opposite situation.  I think about the creative skills required to stay married and to raise well adjusted children in such a turbulent society.  I am writing a book about my life’s journey entitled, “Mind Shift, Migrant to Main” and a second book entitled “Unconventional Corporate Mom.”

Social – I seek out creative people on social media networks and engage with them.  I became the President of the American Creativity Association – Austin Global.  It is a virtual community.  I seek out other leaders in creativity.  It is my intent to build a collaborative community using the latest technologies to promote creativity.  I envision scientists, software developers, engineers and other “rational” professionals meeting with creatives in one easy to use friendly collaborative virtual space.  I invite everyone to connect with me on LinkedIn, facebook, and Twitter and I engage with them.

What ideas do you plan on implementing to develop your own creative competency?

Since 1990, U.S. creativity has been in a downward spiral!Image: jscreationzs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Have you ever thought about whether creativity could be measured?  It seems that in 1958 E. Paul Torrance designed a series of creativity tasks to measure creativity.  He administered his test to 400 children in Minneapolis. 

I would question how accurate this creativity index would be in predicting creativity for adults.  I read a recent Newsweek article, The Creativity Crisis, by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman.   Apparently, Jonathan Plucker of Indiana University, validated a more than three times correlation to lifetime creative accomplishment with Torrance’s creativity index as contrasted to childhood IQ.

This year, Kyung Hee Kim at the College of William & Mary did a follow up study where he analyzed almost 300,000 Torrance scores of children and adults.  It appears that creativity scores steadily rose, just like IQ scores until 1990 and then creativity scores nosedived.  The decline is most significant from kindergarten through sixth grade.

In my prior blog post, I wrote about the CEO Survey of 1,500 CEOs who unequivocally identified creativity as the most important leadership competency for success in the future.  

What does this mean for the United States in terms of maintaining our leadership position in the world?  Our leaders understand that creativity is essential; yet at the same time our creativity scores are plummeting!

Stop and think about where we currently need creative solutions.  We are crying out for new ideas to solve our ongoing economic crisis.  We need new ideas to solve the issues of sustainability.  We need new ideas to support our changing demographics.

Creativity includes not only generating great ideas, but it also means being open to the ideas of others.  Through creative thinking we can generate solutions for a health care system as well as new thinking for moving towards a more peaceful world. We need new ideas to make our country more competitive and to identify new ways to measure success. 

Do you think creativity is important?

I am reading Tim Brown’s book, Change by Design, How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation.  IDEO is ranked among the ten most innovative companies in the world.  Tim is the CEO of IDEO. 

I was intrigued by the concepts of divergent and convergent thinking.  To experience design thinking, you must understand the difference between divergent and convergent thinking and how they can work together. 

With convergent thinking you are looking at a set of available choices in an existing world.  Divergent thinking is about creating new choices and seeing possibilities that no one else has seen.

When you begin with divergent thinking, you can maximize your choices.  As you increase the number of choices, your life will have become more complex.  However, as Tim Brown comments, “Divergent thinking is the route, not the obstacle, to innovation.”

With divergent thinking you multiply your options as you create choices.  You have more choices in regard to how you understand and apply consumer behavior in creating new products or new experiences. 

With convergent thinking, you head towards a solution.  In the convergent piece you eliminate options and focus on making the choices you wish to implement.

Why does understanding the difference between divergence and convergent thinking matter?  Westerners are taught to take inputs, analyze them against predefined criteria, and then converge upon a single answer.  Convergent thinking is not a good way to probe into the future and create new possibilities.  It is about finding the most expedient answer versus the right answer. 

Divergent thinking opens your mind to many possibilities.  These are two different phases that go together.  If you apply divergent thinking, you can create choices that have not existed before.  When you go into the convergent phase, you are well prepared to find the right answer.

I often use iMindMapping software and techniques to achieve divergent thinking.  What process or tools do you use to stimulate your mind to create new choices for your future?

When I first began blogging I had no idea that my journey would take me to Amsterdam within six months as a guest blogger for the Front End of Innovation Europe 2010, an event sponsored by the (IIR) International Institute of Research.

Although I had vast experience selling emerging technologies and I represented internationally renowned thought leaders in the world of creative thinking and innovation, I was a novice at blogging. 

I had signed up for a social networking class with Sabrina Gibson.  We received our first assignment and we created a blogging strategy plan.

Now six months later, I responded to a bid to be a guest blogger for the Front End of Innovation Europe.  Imagine my delight and surprise when I was selected.  I was notified of my acceptance five days before the event would begin in Amsterdam. 

My assignment is to blog LIVE and post during the sessions while the speaker is actually speaking.  I also had to produce ten tweets each day of the conference and post on two websites, the website of Front End of Innovation Europe 2010 and my own website, Develop Your Creative Thinking.  I am up for the challenge.

Over the next three days, I worked 15 hours per day and generated 22 blogs within that time frame.  When I first arrived, I was asked if I had brought my camera.  I was taken by surprise.  I do not travel with my camera because I typically do not take photos.  Fortunately, I did have my iPhone with me and it has the ability to take photos.  Now, I realize not only am I to blog but I have to hop up and take photos as well.

When I returned home, I redid all of my blog posts.  Now they read much better and make more sense.  Despite many challenges, I am incredibly pleased with myself.  

Remember, it was only six months ago that I began blogging.  I am quite proud of what I have accomplished.  I assure you if I can learn to be this productive with social media and social networking due to the superb training from my incredible teacher, Sabrina Gibson, than you can also learn these same skills.  

I just want to express my deep gratitude to Sabrina Gibson for giving me the necessary skill set to prepare me to blog at a major international design thinking and innovation conference.  Thank you, Sabrina Gibson!

LIVE Front End of Innovation Europe 2010

Speaker: Dr. Andreas Bong, Senior Vice President, HILTI

Topic: Customer Orientation Throughout the Innovation Process

The focus is on the front end of innovation.

Agenda:

• HILTI
• Innovation management
• Customer integration
o Fuzzy front end
o Development

You cannot duplicate what they have done at HILTI. They use a direct sales model with only 30 people selling to their customers. HILTI is about cultural diversity and this fosters creativity and the outcome of innovation. Their employees include more than 50 nationalities.

HILTI has a worldwide presence for construction professionals worldwide, they increase productivity, and provide the benefits from innovation to generate significant added value. They are known for system solutions for professionals.

Sales development doubled the company in the last ten years. They invest 4% in R&D, 10% is done in applied research.

In the HILTI business model they have a common purpose and values. HILTI passionately creates enthusiastic customers to build a better future! The foundation of their culture is integrity, courage, teamwork and commitment. They put people first.

Business improvement, customer competence concentration, customer needs versus requirements, innovative and value adding solutions, management and support creates higher customer satisfaction and better bottom line results.

Innovation management at HILTI is integrated with a holistic view. They have normative innovation management, strategic innovation management, and operational innovation management.

The focus is on outside-in innovation. This is a contradiction as innovation. Horizon 2020 is the identification of future key technologies. They look in the crystal ball to determine global trends and predict construction trends. They generate various scenarios using “Construction 2020” to forecast HILTI relevant applications in 2020, and to create a HILTI relevant global technology roadmap.

They are driven by sustainability. HILTI identified trends by interviewing customers to come up with scenarios. This led to the creation of roadmaps. They learn to survive in each scenario, so they are prepared regardless of which trends or applications occur.

It is important to understand applications and customer needs. What is their value chain? What is their application chain? How do they operate?

HILTI uses science methodologies, work methods, work flow and task durations. There is cooperation and communication to review problems, errors, and identify opportunities for improvement.

By observing their customers at work, HILTI learns what their customers really need. They do this by using video. The customers who are observed forget they are being videotaped. They then behave normally in a brief amount of time. Think about this, 10% of total construction costs are caused by job site injuries. Return on sales of the average construction company is only 2-3%.

Dr. Bong then shows us several examples of innovation at HILTI. One involves the installation of cable trays. It is a solution that is low tech, with low competition, and with a high improvement potential that saves 15-20% of the total time needed. Another example is to replace a yardstick with a laser measurement.

Once you have an idea and a business plan, then go out to customers and ask for their acceptance of that solution.

Enthusiasm creates innovation! Innovation creates enthusiasm!

Key Points are:

1.) Employee satisfaction is the key driver for customer satisfaction.
2.) Understand your customer’s needs.
3.) Idea of scenarios, learn to survive in each scenario.
4.) Creating enthusiastic users is a very steep one.

By Connie Harryman, Applied Concepts Creativity
Guest Blogger IIR USA

Do you ever wonder if our current business models are serving our need to innovate? One of the keynote speakers at the Front End of Innovation Europe is Josephine Green, Senior Director of Trends and Strategy, Philips Design, Royal Philips Electronics.

Her background includes international sales and marketing. She is an acknowledged thought leader for future trends using social research for advanced strategy.

Josephine takes into consideration the complexity and interconnectedness of our socio-cultural values with emerging technologies. She acknowledges the benefits of creating new business models.

She reminds us that current management structures were set up to accommodate the needs of mass markets. Their primary focus is managing logistics. This has nothing to do with innovation. Current management is about command, control, and distribution.

For creativity and innovation to flourish, we have to create spaces where people can experiment. We must create an innovative environment where we can feel free to create a future that considers our complex and connected world.

Factors to consider include the need to introduce new thinking around our business models while considering the human element. We must consider the sustainability of development in our culture. We must be knowledgeable about the impact of processes we implement.

She asks us to imagine viewing the universe with childlike wonder with a willingness to explore new possibilities. We might go beyond our current notions of time and space.

This means engagement with artists, scientists, and academics. This allows us to explore the space between the creative and scientific disciplines.  Perhaps you can learn to trust in your own subjectivity and that of others as much as you do in objectivity.

In Josephine Green’s e-book, Democratizing the future, Towards a new era of creativity and growth, she tells us there are new ways to create value by transforming our worldview of social models.

We can create a transformation of new approaches with new tools, new research and innovation, new leaders, new networks and new partnerships. This all involves cross-disciplinary, cross-industry, cross-border and public/private collaborations that will create the industries and markets of the future.

I am pleased to announce that I have been selected to be a guest blogger for the Front End of Innovation Europe.  

I will be sharing many more posts with you about some of the most outstanding thought leaders in the field of creativity and innovation. They will be sharing leading edge ideas with us at the Front End of Innovation Europe on how to create a better future.
#FEIEUROPE

What tools do you need to promote the development of a creative economy?  Why do we even want a creative economy?   Think about our economic slowdown, our failed schools and our need to build a sustainable community.   

As you have witnessed over the past year, there has been a seismic shift in the skill set needed to be productive and successful during a recession.  You must develop your imagination and empathy to deal with all the surprises that an uncertain future brings to you.  

John J. Cimino, Jr., the founding president and CEO of  Creative Leaps International, made me aware of a proposed bold new investment in culture.  It is called “Art and the Public Purpose:  A New Framework.”   It offers five concepts as the key to our national recovery as well as our cultural recovery.

1.)    Use creativity for the common good.

2.)    Engage all of us.

3.)    Build on all of us.

4.)    Put artists to work to support cultural recovery.

5.)    Stand for the expression, supporting democratic media.

These principles support our values of creativity, equality, responsiveness, hard work and freedom.  We have within our grasp the ability to become more resilient, resourceful and inspiring.

Culture and art are powerful economic drivers.  You can send a powerful message to President Obama and Congress.  It is time to develop a coherent cultural policy.  If you wish to be part of this wonderful movement, you now have the opportunity. 

When you look back, you will be able to smile with pride and say to your children, I helped to transform our country.  We have great schools, jobs are plentiful, and our communities are inspired.  You developed your creativity because you supported a movement to give you access to the right tools.  We were once ordinary and now we are extraordinary!

You should not delay, take action today, and sign the petition.  For more information click here “New Cultural Policy.” 

Now that you have signed it, tell your friends about it.  Thank you!

Author: Kirpal Singh

Back in the 1950’s, when I grew up in a tiny rural community in Texas we pretended we were all one skin color, we all spoke English and we all went to the local Christian church on Sunday.  Ours was a society that valued homogeneity.

Our world has changed dramatically since then. Our ability to travel and do business globally has significantly increased the likelihood that we will meet people from other cultures. Sometimes, we are confused by their assumptions and their behavior. It is unavoidable; we now live in a pluralistic society.

Imagine if you lost a $25 million business deal because you failed to research the cultural expectations of your potential business partner. This is a true story relayed by Kirpal Singh who spoke to the (CSTC) Creative Skills Training Council about the impact multiculturalism has on business and other aspects of our life.

Professor Kirpal Singh, the author of THINKING HATS & COLOURED TURBANS: Creativity Across Cultures, works with governments, non-profits and multinationals, on the issues and challenges surrounding the sensitive arena of cross/intercultural engagements. He is internationally renowned as a creativity guru and futurist.

Since 9-11, there is a new urgency to gain better understanding and knowledge about other cultures. We all have choices to make on how to interact with other cultures. We can demonize those who are different from us or perhaps we can invite them for a cup of tea, get to know them, and understand their perspective.

We are all invaluable as human beings; we bring many gifts from our respective cultures. We can create a world where we value multiculturalism, we can take pride in acquiring knowledge about other cultures, and we can make the choice to celebrate our differences and to live in harmony.

Kirpal Singh speaks about Creativity and Innovation – The Cross-Cultural Dimension. If you listen and learn, you may save your next multimillion dollar business deal.