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Imagination: an organization's treasure.

Article Excerpt
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

It has been said that human imagination is the main source of value in the new economy. Because the current organizational environment is immensely challenging, an ongoing culture of creativity and innovation is imperative for organizational health. Both analytical and intuitive techniques can foster creativity in any functional area of business, and managers can create processes to increase creativity.

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The world of business has changed; many companies struggle to simply keep their feet on the ground. In this unsettling environment, some companies are able to breed creativity and innovation as well as manage it. Their ability to do this serves as their competitive advantage.

There is no golden key to unlocking the doors to creativity, but creativity is a process that can be taught and managed. The realms of the creative process are not restricted to research and development but must spread seamlessly to finance, marketing, customer service, and all other functional areas and services.

Conceptual background

Corporate creativity authority John Kao defines creativity as "the entire process by which ideas are generated, developed, and transformed into value. It encompasses ... innovation and entrepreneurship.... It connotes both the art of giving birth to new ideas and the discipline of shaping and developing those ideas to the stage of realized value."

The creative thinking process is especially important for businesses, and one of the most beneficial ways of fostering creativity and innovation is the use of creative problem solving techniques. Managers, confronted with fast-changing and ambiguous environments, need to develop creative solutions and creative action-based strategies.

Training in creativity and creative problem solving is important to idea generation. Research has shown that it takes about 60 raw ideas to produce one workable innovation and as many as 250 raw ideas to yield one major marketable product. The average adult thinks of three to six alternatives for any given situation. An increasing number of companies want to own these ideas instead of getting them from an outside source, and the only way to do that is by exposing employees to creativity training.

When we think of a problem-solving technique we generally refer to the one involving left-brain thinking and consider the usual four steps: define the problem, generate alternatives, choose among alternatives, and implement the chosen solution. This is the rational problem-solving method; creative problem solving, on the other hand, involves the use of the right side of the brain (Figure 1).

In situations pertaining to the organizational context, a definite set of information is not always available, and it can be hard to conjure up alternatives. For example, consider the problem of implementing unpopular change without antagonizing employees....

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