Introduction
Among the many streams of research regarding influencing factors on innovation, the idea of having a creative working climate (or environment) within an organization which related to a suitable working culture to facilitate an environment which would then enhanced the organizational power was very much often being mentioned. This idea had been put forward during the middle 1980’s and late 1990’s by several scholars among others included Ekvall, Arvonen and Waldenstrom-Lindblad (1983), Ekvall and Tangeberg-Anderson (1986), Zain Mohamed (1995), Zain Mohamed and Rickards (1996) and Amabile and Conti (1999) who focus on organizational climate factors which can foster creativity and innovation.
Researches on innovation had also identified a number of human, social and cultural factors which are crucial to the effective operation of innovation at the organizational level (OECD, 1997). These factors according to OECD (1997) were mostly centered around learning; it is learning by organizations as a whole (diffusion of knowledge to a broad range of key individuals within them) which is critical to an organization’s innovative capabilities. Beginning late 1990’s and the year 2000, the idea of learning at the organizational level and knowledge management had been closely linked to innovation (Argyris and Schon, 1978; Drucker, 1988; Garvin, 1993; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995).
What is the climate for creativity and innovation ?
What do we mean when we say climate for creativity and innovation? The answer is really quite simple. Think about where you were the last time you had a really great idea or breakthrough thought for a challenge or opportunity you were facing. Can you describe the important characteristics or aspects of that situation? Were you at work, driving a car, sleeping, dreaming, resting etc..? we often ask this question to large groups of people and rarely hear that their best ideas come while at work behind a desk. When they begin to explain why their ideas seem to come better in one place over another, they are talking about the climate for creativity.
It is important for us to distinguish between organizational climate and culture. An organization’s culture concerns the values, beliefs, history, etc., reflecting the deeper foundations of the organization. The organization’s climate, however, refers to the recurring patterns of behavior exhibited in the day-to-day environment of the organization, as experienced, understood and interpreted by the individuals within the organization. It is peoples’ perceptions of these behaviors that influence their attitudes at work as well as their levels of performance and resulting productivity. As Dr Goran Ekvall, a Swedish organizational climate researcher suggested :
“Climate affects organizational and psychological processes such as communication, problem solving, decision making, conflict handling, learning and motivation, and thus exerts influence on the efficiency and productivity of the organization, on its ability to innovate, and on the job satisfaction and the well-being that its members can enjoy. The individual organization member is affected by the climate as a whole, by the general psychological atmosphere, which is relatively stable over time. No single separate event produces this more lasting influence on behavior and feelings; it is the daily exposure to a particular psychological atmosphere.”
There are many variables that influence peoples’ perceptions of the working climate. For example, some of these variables are :
· The organizational vision, mission, goals and strategies
· The amount of available monetary and physical resources
· The leadership
· Personnel policies ( particularly rewards and promotions)
· The personalities of the people in the organization
· The organizational structures and systems
· Concerns for profits and losses
· Levels of job satisfaction.
All of these variables have an impact on how people view the working climate.
How to create a creative climate
Organizations of all sizes hope to encourage creativity in their employees and, consequently, spur innovation (the successful roll-out of those new ideas to the market). How can they better stimulate creativity in the workplace?
Here are ten tips to help create an organization that welcomes creativity; they are designed to help in what Harvard Business School’s Teresa Amabile has labeled the four stages of the creative process: preparation, incubation, illumination and execution.
Promote creativity and innovation as key organizational values—and the natural human enjoyment that accompanies this creative process. Communicating the importance of creativity encourages staffers to experiment and take risks. Make sure managers understand they will be assessed on the creative spirit and efforts (not results) of those they supervise.
Give staffers permission to make creative mistakes. Recognize that there is risk in creativity and new ideas will sometimes fail. Make it clear to the organization that failing isn’t the worst thing—not trying is!
Budget time and money for creative efforts. Carve out blocks of time for formal and informal brainstorming and experimentation. (This is helpful the incubation stage of the creative process.)
Stimulate creativity through training, outside speakers, and other opportunities to expose staff to external thinking and ideas. (This is crucial in the preparation stage.)
Make sure some of your new staff hires are from different industries or professions. They can help you and your staff look at old challenges in new ways and can offer a needed fresh perspective.
Discourage negativity and NIH (not-invented-here) thinking. Watch for those killer phrases (”We tried that already”; “That will never work”: “That will cost too much.”) that can strangle new ideas in the incubation and illumination stages.
Resist pressure for immediate and significant results from creativity efforts. This will give new ideas time to develop properly and it will also encourage
Protect creative ideas from the organization’s bureaucracy. Large organizations can kill such initiatives through committees and reviews.
Reward creative individuals and creative teams. The people in your organization who contribute to innovation should be recognized and praised, and rewarded financially.
Develop a process to push creative ideas and projects through to completion. Recognize the political and social aspects involved in any organization facing innovation and work to achieve full support of these initiatives.
It is often the case that the larger the organization, the harder it is to nurture creativity and innovation. Some large companies, like 3M, Toyota, and Lockheed, have found ways to develop and commercialize new ideas; often their approach includes structural changes (”skunk works,” independent creative teams, etc.) Whatever the size of the organization, however, focusing time, talent, and management commitment is a good way to encourage creativity and ingenuity at work.
Creating a Climate for Innovation
An enterprise, whether a business or any other institution, that does not innovate will not survive long. And management that does not learn to innovate and foster creativity will not last long. Business and every other organization today have to be designed for change as the norm and must create change rather than react to it.
Innovation is the means by which the entrepreneur creates new wealth-producing resources. It also enables existing resources to have enhanced potential for creating wealth. Innovation is the effort to create purposeful, focused change in an enterprise's economic or social potential. Some innovations come in a flash of genius, but most result from a conscious and purposeful search for innovation opportunities.
Above all, innovation is work rather than genius. It requires knowledge, ingenuity and focus. Without diligence, persistence and commitment, all the talent, ingenuity and knowledge are to no avail. In order to innovate, there must be a fertile atmosphere of creativity. Unleashing creativity requires more than brainstorming sessions. It is more than problem solving. People have ideas all the time. The real question is, "Which ideas are you going to use?"
Few workplaces actually encourage creativity. Management inadvertently stifles it with procedures and the status quo necessary for stability and performance. Individuals stifle it internally through their own voice of judgment.
Negativity, judgment and fear are the enemies of creativity. To the extent these exist in the work environment, there can be little creativity. In business, it isn't enough for an idea to be original; it must also be applicable to creating greater economic growth. It must improve a product or service in some way. Ideas can come from anybody, anytime, and anywhere within the organization. What Can Managers and Leaders Do to Enhance Creativity in the Workplace?
People will be most creative when they feel motivated by the work itself. When people are engaged because of their own natural interest and satisfaction in their work, they will be challenged to be creative through their own intrinsic motivation. External pressures or rewards are never as effective as internal motivation. In order to tap into that resource, people must be matched to jobs that tap into underlying values that motivate and excite them.
In addition to intrinsic motivation, two other components are necessary within an individual for creative resourcefulness, according to Theresa Amabile. 1. Expertise: a person must have the necessary technical, procedural and intellectual knowledge. 2. Creative-thinking skills: a person must be able to use their thinking in flexible and imaginative ways.
Trying to develop someone's expertise and creative-thinking skills can be time-consuming. It is far easier to enhance and tap into someone's internal motivation. Amabile wrote (HBR, Sept.-Oct. 1998) about six managerial practices that enhance creativity. These categories emerged from more than two decades of research that focused on the links between environment and creativity.
1. Challenge: Matching the right person with the right job in order to play into their expertise and creative thinking skills. This can ignite the intrinsic motivation that is the key to unleashing creative potential.
Making a good match requires the manager to have access to important information about employees and their preferences. This may mean using information available through assessments such as DISC, PIAV, Meyers-Briggs or any other instruments that indicate values and preferences. This also requires good listening and observing. People express what interests them and excites them all the time; are you listening?
2. Freedom: Intrinsic motivation and ownership is enhanced when people are free to approach their work the way they choose. They may not choose the mountain, but at least let them decide how they will climb it.
Managers tend to mismanage freedom by changing goals frequently or failing to define them clearly. Worse, they grant freedom in name only, declaring employees to be "empowered" and then they delineate the process to be followed and give penalties for divergence.
3. Resources: Time and money can either support or kill creativity. Some time pressures can heighten creativity. Organizations routinely kill creativity with fake deadlines or impossibly tight ones. This creates distrust, or burnout. Creativity takes time. Incubation periods have to be scheduled in.
Project resources that are too limited can push people to use their creativity to finding additional resources, rather than actually developing new products or services. 4. Work-Group Features: Managers must create teams with a diversity of perspectives and backgrounds. When people come together with diverse intellectual foundations and approaches to work, ideas often combine in exciting and useful ways.
Managers often make the mistake of putting similar people together. This may seem desirable because the people see eye to eye and get along, thus making decisions quicker. Their very homogeneity, however, does little to enhance expertise and creative thinking.
5. Supervisory Encouragement: Managers neglect to praise creative successes and unsuccessful efforts and thereby inadvertently contribute to stifle creativity. To sustain passion, people need to feel their work matters and is important. A certain tolerance is required for mistakes and failures so that they can be used creatively.
Managers often look for reasons not to use a new idea. Research shows that an interesting psychological dynamic underlies this phenomenon. People believe that their bosses will perceive them as smarter if they demonstrate critical, analytical thinking.
This creates a negativity bias that has severe consequences for the creative process. Such a culture of evaluation leads people to focus on external rewards and punishments instead of on being creative. It creates a climate of fear that undermines intrinsic motivation.
6. Organizational Support: Creativity is truly enhanced when the entire organization supports it. This is the job of the leaders of the organization who must put into place appropriate systems and procedures that emphasize that creative efforts are a top priority.
Leaders can support creativity by ensuring that information sharing and collaboration is the norm. Political problems and gossip take people's attention away from work. That sense of mutual purpose and excitement that is so central to tapping into the power of intrinsic motivation must be encouraged and supported. It can be killed by cliques and political factions. Taking the Mystery Out of Innovation
Using old ideas as raw materials for new ideas lets companies innovate continuously. However, the key is to systematize the constant generation and testing of fresh ideas. In order to foster innovation, Andrew Hargadon and Robert Sutton (HBR, May-June 2000) advocate four steps: 1. Capturing good ideas 2. Keep ideas alive and accessible 3. Imagine new uses for old ideas 4. Put promising concepts to the test "Social innovation and not technical innovation drives most successful companies." ―Jim Collins Seven Sources of New Ideas According to Peter Drucker, four areas of opportunity for innovation exist within a company or industry: 1. Unexpected occurrences 2. Incongruities 3. Process needs 4. Industry and market changes Three others exist outside a company in its social and intellectual environment: 5. Demographic changes 6. Changes in perception 7. New knowledge "Innovation is the way two ideas are brought together to generate something greater than its sum."― Robert E. Knowling, Jr. Business leaders must change how they think about innovation. They must change how their company cultures reflect that thinking. If people are given opportunities, innovation can be bolstered anywhere if people are encouraged to use good ideas from all sources inside or outside the company. Innovation and creativity are far less mysterious than previously thought. They are a matter of taking developed ideas and applying them in new situations. If the company has the right connections and the right attitude, it works.
Creating an Idea Factory: Lessons from Edison
Perhaps the greatest creation of Thomas Edison may have been his invention factory. His Menlo Park, New Jersey, laboratory was the world's first R&D facility. He built it for the "rapid and cheap development of an invention" and delivered on his promise of "a minor invention every ten days and a big thing every six months or so." In six years of operation, it generated more than 400 patents.
Rather than focusing on one invention, one field of expertise, or one market, Edison created a setting that enabled his inventors to move easily in and out of separate pools of knowledge, to keep learning new ideas and to use old ideas in novel situations.
They used old ideas and materials in new ways. The phonograph blended elements from past work on telegraphs, telephones, and electric motors. In 1820, H.C. Oersted, a Dane, discovered that a wire carrying an electric current was surrounded by a magnetic field. In 1825, W. Strugeon, an Englishman, wound a live wire around an iron bar and created an electromagnet. In 1859, H. van Helmholtz, a German, discovered he could make piano strings vibrate by singing to them. Later L. Scott, a Frenchman, attached a thin stick to a membrane; when he spoke to the membrane, the other end of the stick would trace a record of his voice sounds on a piece of smoked glass. Then, in 1874, a Scotsman from Canada, working in Cambridge MA, put these elements into one instrument. The instrument was the telephone and the man was Alexander Graham Bell. The only thing Bell contributed was a fresh synthesis; there was no new discovery.
How Is Your Climate for Innovation?
In our work with organizations, we find that the climate for innovation is crucial, poorly understood, and all but ignored when thoughts turn to improving the level of innovation. When leaders wish to improve the climate, many times they will just shotgun it - doing something that is poorly thought out, or doing something that makes the situation worse. There is a better way - first understand the system and get the data, then decide what to do.
Based on the pioneering work of Goran Ekvall in Sweden some 20 years ago, it is now possible to quantify the climate for innovation. Ekvall's work has been further refined and validated by Scott Isaksen and others at the Center for Creative studies at SUNY-Buffalo, who have defined nine dimensions of the climate for innovation. These nine dimensions are:
1. Challenge (How challenged, how emotionally involved, and how committed am I to the work?)
2. Freedom (How free am I to decide how to do my job?)
3. Idea Time (Do we have time to think things through before having to act?)
4. Idea Support (Do we have a few resources to give new ideas a try?)
5. Trust & Openness (Do people feel safe in speaking their minds and openly offering different points of view?)
6. Playfulness and Humor (How relaxed is our workplace - is it OK to have fun?)
7. Conflicts (To what degree do people engage in interpersonal conflict or "warfare?")
8. Debates (To what degree do people engage in lively debates about the issues)
9. Risk-Taking (Is it OK to fail when trying new things?)
Ekvall was able to validate the climate for innovation as a determinant of business success in his original work in Sweden, and that validation is now in progress in the United States. Intuitively you already know the outcome - of course there will be a correlation between the climate for innovation and business success!
We find we can group the nine dimensions into three areas: (1) Resources, (2) Personal Motivation, and (3) Exploration. Considering the nine dimensions organized in this way, we have:
RESOURCES
1. Idea Time
2. Idea Support
3. Challenge and Involvement
PERSONAL MOTIVATION
1. Trust and Openness
2. Playfulness and Humor
3. Absence of Interpersonal Conflicts
EXPLORATION
1.Risk-Taking
2. Debates About the Issues
3. Freedom
Among the many streams of research regarding influencing factors on innovation, the idea of having a creative working climate (or environment) within an organization which related to a suitable working culture to facilitate an environment which would then enhanced the organizational power was very much often being mentioned. This idea had been put forward during the middle 1980’s and late 1990’s by several scholars among others included Ekvall, Arvonen and Waldenstrom-Lindblad (1983), Ekvall and Tangeberg-Anderson (1986), Zain Mohamed (1995), Zain Mohamed and Rickards (1996) and Amabile and Conti (1999) who focus on organizational climate factors which can foster creativity and innovation.
Researches on innovation had also identified a number of human, social and cultural factors which are crucial to the effective operation of innovation at the organizational level (OECD, 1997). These factors according to OECD (1997) were mostly centered around learning; it is learning by organizations as a whole (diffusion of knowledge to a broad range of key individuals within them) which is critical to an organization’s innovative capabilities. Beginning late 1990’s and the year 2000, the idea of learning at the organizational level and knowledge management had been closely linked to innovation (Argyris and Schon, 1978; Drucker, 1988; Garvin, 1993; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995).
What is the climate for creativity and innovation ?
What do we mean when we say climate for creativity and innovation? The answer is really quite simple. Think about where you were the last time you had a really great idea or breakthrough thought for a challenge or opportunity you were facing. Can you describe the important characteristics or aspects of that situation? Were you at work, driving a car, sleeping, dreaming, resting etc..? we often ask this question to large groups of people and rarely hear that their best ideas come while at work behind a desk. When they begin to explain why their ideas seem to come better in one place over another, they are talking about the climate for creativity.
It is important for us to distinguish between organizational climate and culture. An organization’s culture concerns the values, beliefs, history, etc., reflecting the deeper foundations of the organization. The organization’s climate, however, refers to the recurring patterns of behavior exhibited in the day-to-day environment of the organization, as experienced, understood and interpreted by the individuals within the organization. It is peoples’ perceptions of these behaviors that influence their attitudes at work as well as their levels of performance and resulting productivity. As Dr Goran Ekvall, a Swedish organizational climate researcher suggested :
“Climate affects organizational and psychological processes such as communication, problem solving, decision making, conflict handling, learning and motivation, and thus exerts influence on the efficiency and productivity of the organization, on its ability to innovate, and on the job satisfaction and the well-being that its members can enjoy. The individual organization member is affected by the climate as a whole, by the general psychological atmosphere, which is relatively stable over time. No single separate event produces this more lasting influence on behavior and feelings; it is the daily exposure to a particular psychological atmosphere.”
There are many variables that influence peoples’ perceptions of the working climate. For example, some of these variables are :
· The organizational vision, mission, goals and strategies
· The amount of available monetary and physical resources
· The leadership
· Personnel policies ( particularly rewards and promotions)
· The personalities of the people in the organization
· The organizational structures and systems
· Concerns for profits and losses
· Levels of job satisfaction.
All of these variables have an impact on how people view the working climate.
How to create a creative climate
Organizations of all sizes hope to encourage creativity in their employees and, consequently, spur innovation (the successful roll-out of those new ideas to the market). How can they better stimulate creativity in the workplace?
Here are ten tips to help create an organization that welcomes creativity; they are designed to help in what Harvard Business School’s Teresa Amabile has labeled the four stages of the creative process: preparation, incubation, illumination and execution.
Promote creativity and innovation as key organizational values—and the natural human enjoyment that accompanies this creative process. Communicating the importance of creativity encourages staffers to experiment and take risks. Make sure managers understand they will be assessed on the creative spirit and efforts (not results) of those they supervise.
Give staffers permission to make creative mistakes. Recognize that there is risk in creativity and new ideas will sometimes fail. Make it clear to the organization that failing isn’t the worst thing—not trying is!
Budget time and money for creative efforts. Carve out blocks of time for formal and informal brainstorming and experimentation. (This is helpful the incubation stage of the creative process.)
Stimulate creativity through training, outside speakers, and other opportunities to expose staff to external thinking and ideas. (This is crucial in the preparation stage.)
Make sure some of your new staff hires are from different industries or professions. They can help you and your staff look at old challenges in new ways and can offer a needed fresh perspective.
Discourage negativity and NIH (not-invented-here) thinking. Watch for those killer phrases (”We tried that already”; “That will never work”: “That will cost too much.”) that can strangle new ideas in the incubation and illumination stages.
Resist pressure for immediate and significant results from creativity efforts. This will give new ideas time to develop properly and it will also encourage
Protect creative ideas from the organization’s bureaucracy. Large organizations can kill such initiatives through committees and reviews.
Reward creative individuals and creative teams. The people in your organization who contribute to innovation should be recognized and praised, and rewarded financially.
Develop a process to push creative ideas and projects through to completion. Recognize the political and social aspects involved in any organization facing innovation and work to achieve full support of these initiatives.
It is often the case that the larger the organization, the harder it is to nurture creativity and innovation. Some large companies, like 3M, Toyota, and Lockheed, have found ways to develop and commercialize new ideas; often their approach includes structural changes (”skunk works,” independent creative teams, etc.) Whatever the size of the organization, however, focusing time, talent, and management commitment is a good way to encourage creativity and ingenuity at work.
Creating a Climate for Innovation
An enterprise, whether a business or any other institution, that does not innovate will not survive long. And management that does not learn to innovate and foster creativity will not last long. Business and every other organization today have to be designed for change as the norm and must create change rather than react to it.
Innovation is the means by which the entrepreneur creates new wealth-producing resources. It also enables existing resources to have enhanced potential for creating wealth. Innovation is the effort to create purposeful, focused change in an enterprise's economic or social potential. Some innovations come in a flash of genius, but most result from a conscious and purposeful search for innovation opportunities.
Above all, innovation is work rather than genius. It requires knowledge, ingenuity and focus. Without diligence, persistence and commitment, all the talent, ingenuity and knowledge are to no avail. In order to innovate, there must be a fertile atmosphere of creativity. Unleashing creativity requires more than brainstorming sessions. It is more than problem solving. People have ideas all the time. The real question is, "Which ideas are you going to use?"
Few workplaces actually encourage creativity. Management inadvertently stifles it with procedures and the status quo necessary for stability and performance. Individuals stifle it internally through their own voice of judgment.
Negativity, judgment and fear are the enemies of creativity. To the extent these exist in the work environment, there can be little creativity. In business, it isn't enough for an idea to be original; it must also be applicable to creating greater economic growth. It must improve a product or service in some way. Ideas can come from anybody, anytime, and anywhere within the organization. What Can Managers and Leaders Do to Enhance Creativity in the Workplace?
People will be most creative when they feel motivated by the work itself. When people are engaged because of their own natural interest and satisfaction in their work, they will be challenged to be creative through their own intrinsic motivation. External pressures or rewards are never as effective as internal motivation. In order to tap into that resource, people must be matched to jobs that tap into underlying values that motivate and excite them.
In addition to intrinsic motivation, two other components are necessary within an individual for creative resourcefulness, according to Theresa Amabile. 1. Expertise: a person must have the necessary technical, procedural and intellectual knowledge. 2. Creative-thinking skills: a person must be able to use their thinking in flexible and imaginative ways.
Trying to develop someone's expertise and creative-thinking skills can be time-consuming. It is far easier to enhance and tap into someone's internal motivation. Amabile wrote (HBR, Sept.-Oct. 1998) about six managerial practices that enhance creativity. These categories emerged from more than two decades of research that focused on the links between environment and creativity.
1. Challenge: Matching the right person with the right job in order to play into their expertise and creative thinking skills. This can ignite the intrinsic motivation that is the key to unleashing creative potential.
Making a good match requires the manager to have access to important information about employees and their preferences. This may mean using information available through assessments such as DISC, PIAV, Meyers-Briggs or any other instruments that indicate values and preferences. This also requires good listening and observing. People express what interests them and excites them all the time; are you listening?
2. Freedom: Intrinsic motivation and ownership is enhanced when people are free to approach their work the way they choose. They may not choose the mountain, but at least let them decide how they will climb it.
Managers tend to mismanage freedom by changing goals frequently or failing to define them clearly. Worse, they grant freedom in name only, declaring employees to be "empowered" and then they delineate the process to be followed and give penalties for divergence.
3. Resources: Time and money can either support or kill creativity. Some time pressures can heighten creativity. Organizations routinely kill creativity with fake deadlines or impossibly tight ones. This creates distrust, or burnout. Creativity takes time. Incubation periods have to be scheduled in.
Project resources that are too limited can push people to use their creativity to finding additional resources, rather than actually developing new products or services. 4. Work-Group Features: Managers must create teams with a diversity of perspectives and backgrounds. When people come together with diverse intellectual foundations and approaches to work, ideas often combine in exciting and useful ways.
Managers often make the mistake of putting similar people together. This may seem desirable because the people see eye to eye and get along, thus making decisions quicker. Their very homogeneity, however, does little to enhance expertise and creative thinking.
5. Supervisory Encouragement: Managers neglect to praise creative successes and unsuccessful efforts and thereby inadvertently contribute to stifle creativity. To sustain passion, people need to feel their work matters and is important. A certain tolerance is required for mistakes and failures so that they can be used creatively.
Managers often look for reasons not to use a new idea. Research shows that an interesting psychological dynamic underlies this phenomenon. People believe that their bosses will perceive them as smarter if they demonstrate critical, analytical thinking.
This creates a negativity bias that has severe consequences for the creative process. Such a culture of evaluation leads people to focus on external rewards and punishments instead of on being creative. It creates a climate of fear that undermines intrinsic motivation.
6. Organizational Support: Creativity is truly enhanced when the entire organization supports it. This is the job of the leaders of the organization who must put into place appropriate systems and procedures that emphasize that creative efforts are a top priority.
Leaders can support creativity by ensuring that information sharing and collaboration is the norm. Political problems and gossip take people's attention away from work. That sense of mutual purpose and excitement that is so central to tapping into the power of intrinsic motivation must be encouraged and supported. It can be killed by cliques and political factions. Taking the Mystery Out of Innovation
Using old ideas as raw materials for new ideas lets companies innovate continuously. However, the key is to systematize the constant generation and testing of fresh ideas. In order to foster innovation, Andrew Hargadon and Robert Sutton (HBR, May-June 2000) advocate four steps: 1. Capturing good ideas 2. Keep ideas alive and accessible 3. Imagine new uses for old ideas 4. Put promising concepts to the test "Social innovation and not technical innovation drives most successful companies." ―Jim Collins Seven Sources of New Ideas According to Peter Drucker, four areas of opportunity for innovation exist within a company or industry: 1. Unexpected occurrences 2. Incongruities 3. Process needs 4. Industry and market changes Three others exist outside a company in its social and intellectual environment: 5. Demographic changes 6. Changes in perception 7. New knowledge "Innovation is the way two ideas are brought together to generate something greater than its sum."― Robert E. Knowling, Jr. Business leaders must change how they think about innovation. They must change how their company cultures reflect that thinking. If people are given opportunities, innovation can be bolstered anywhere if people are encouraged to use good ideas from all sources inside or outside the company. Innovation and creativity are far less mysterious than previously thought. They are a matter of taking developed ideas and applying them in new situations. If the company has the right connections and the right attitude, it works.
Creating an Idea Factory: Lessons from Edison
Perhaps the greatest creation of Thomas Edison may have been his invention factory. His Menlo Park, New Jersey, laboratory was the world's first R&D facility. He built it for the "rapid and cheap development of an invention" and delivered on his promise of "a minor invention every ten days and a big thing every six months or so." In six years of operation, it generated more than 400 patents.
Rather than focusing on one invention, one field of expertise, or one market, Edison created a setting that enabled his inventors to move easily in and out of separate pools of knowledge, to keep learning new ideas and to use old ideas in novel situations.
They used old ideas and materials in new ways. The phonograph blended elements from past work on telegraphs, telephones, and electric motors. In 1820, H.C. Oersted, a Dane, discovered that a wire carrying an electric current was surrounded by a magnetic field. In 1825, W. Strugeon, an Englishman, wound a live wire around an iron bar and created an electromagnet. In 1859, H. van Helmholtz, a German, discovered he could make piano strings vibrate by singing to them. Later L. Scott, a Frenchman, attached a thin stick to a membrane; when he spoke to the membrane, the other end of the stick would trace a record of his voice sounds on a piece of smoked glass. Then, in 1874, a Scotsman from Canada, working in Cambridge MA, put these elements into one instrument. The instrument was the telephone and the man was Alexander Graham Bell. The only thing Bell contributed was a fresh synthesis; there was no new discovery.
How Is Your Climate for Innovation?
In our work with organizations, we find that the climate for innovation is crucial, poorly understood, and all but ignored when thoughts turn to improving the level of innovation. When leaders wish to improve the climate, many times they will just shotgun it - doing something that is poorly thought out, or doing something that makes the situation worse. There is a better way - first understand the system and get the data, then decide what to do.
Based on the pioneering work of Goran Ekvall in Sweden some 20 years ago, it is now possible to quantify the climate for innovation. Ekvall's work has been further refined and validated by Scott Isaksen and others at the Center for Creative studies at SUNY-Buffalo, who have defined nine dimensions of the climate for innovation. These nine dimensions are:
1. Challenge (How challenged, how emotionally involved, and how committed am I to the work?)
2. Freedom (How free am I to decide how to do my job?)
3. Idea Time (Do we have time to think things through before having to act?)
4. Idea Support (Do we have a few resources to give new ideas a try?)
5. Trust & Openness (Do people feel safe in speaking their minds and openly offering different points of view?)
6. Playfulness and Humor (How relaxed is our workplace - is it OK to have fun?)
7. Conflicts (To what degree do people engage in interpersonal conflict or "warfare?")
8. Debates (To what degree do people engage in lively debates about the issues)
9. Risk-Taking (Is it OK to fail when trying new things?)
Ekvall was able to validate the climate for innovation as a determinant of business success in his original work in Sweden, and that validation is now in progress in the United States. Intuitively you already know the outcome - of course there will be a correlation between the climate for innovation and business success!
We find we can group the nine dimensions into three areas: (1) Resources, (2) Personal Motivation, and (3) Exploration. Considering the nine dimensions organized in this way, we have:
RESOURCES
1. Idea Time
2. Idea Support
3. Challenge and Involvement
PERSONAL MOTIVATION
1. Trust and Openness
2. Playfulness and Humor
3. Absence of Interpersonal Conflicts
EXPLORATION
1.Risk-Taking
2. Debates About the Issues
3. Freedom
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