One complaint I hear frequently is that their managers give employees incremental ideas, or more of the same, while what they want are ideas are radical and different, that have the potential to transform the business. Find below some concrete tools managers can use to stimulate more radical and revolutionary ideas in his collaborators.

Mind Mapping: One of the most powerful tools for creative thinking are the mental maps. A mind map is a graphical technique to organize and connect ideas visually created by Tony Buzan, where part of a central node and ideas unfold as the branches of a tree in a radial fashion. This way of organizing ideas break with linear thinking and helps us create new connections between our ideas. Mind maps, being a graphical tool, promoting the use of the right hemisphere of our brain, which is associated with visual thinking and creative thinking.

Lateral Thinking: Lateral Thinking is a term coined by psychologist and author Edward de Bono Maltese as a set of techniques to induce creative thinking. Instead of waiting for the ideas come as if by magic, De Bono proposed the use of lateral thinking consciously and deliberately to change patterns of thinking, breaking the logical and predictable, to produce new and unexpected ideas.

TRIZ: The TRIZ and systematic inventive thinking is a method that is based on research by the Russian engineer Genrich Altshuller, who obtained his first patent at age 15 and worked all his life to systematize the creative process. As part of his research, Altshuller investigated more than 200,000 patents and found that they all followed a similar series of patterns which organized around a set of principles and created a technique that named TRIZ (Theory of Inventive Problem Resolution in Russian .) TRIZ is a method that helps you to find creative solutions in a structured and systematic. What makes it different from other methods is that creativity is based on certain patterns of thought that historically have led others to think creatively. It is for this reason that this technique produces a short list of ideas and more applicable than other methods.

There are many other tools available to generate creative ideas. The aim of all is to get people out of their normal thought patterns, showing them new ways of seeing things and helping them make new links.

Conclusion: As we have seen, creativity is a skill that can develop in all employees of a company. What you should do is focus on creativity, create the conditions for support, provide stimuli that arouse and provide staff with practical tools to help them think differently.

credit to: Mario Morales
Source: www.gestiopolis.com/innovacion-emprendimiento/como-estimular-la-creatividad-en-su-empresa.htm
image source: http://topjobinterviewquestionsanswers.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/company-success.jpg

Several studies have shown that the intrinsic rewards, such as the satisfaction of doing a good job, are much more powerful than extrinsic rewards (rewards, incentives or money) to stimulate creativity. That is why we must try to assign work and projects in accordance with the interests and passions of the contributors. It is commonly known that companies like 3M and Google will allow employees to work a percentage of their time on projects that excite them the most personal level.

Take time to think: One of the reasons why creativity does not flourish in organizations is because we have no time to get out of everyday thinking. Creativity requires a certain period of “leisure” to incubate and mature ideas. In fact, when I ask people where you place your best ideas, tell me about places like bathroom, car, gym or bed, and almost never mention the job. Scientists believe that “Eureka moment”, that point when creating more of the subconscious to the conscious, is achieved more easily when one is relaxed and without stress.

Promote diversity: It is well known that new ideas emerge when people from different disciplines, experiences and expertise collaborate in the creative process. If you want to stimulate creativity, to promote space for people from different departments interact and form multidisciplinary teams to solve specific problems. We also invite people from outside the organization, to bring a new and different perspective to the challenges you face.

Allow experimentation and failure: When I want to know if an organization is truly creative and innovative, the first thing I ask is: What happens here if someone makes a mistake? The response I received clearly indicates the level of creativity of the company. Fear of failure is the number one enemy of creativity. If employees do not feel a proper environment to take risks and experiment, they will not think of anything very creative. The most appropriate environment to stimulate creativity are to be allowed where “serious game.” It is shown that an atmosphere of humor and fun promotes the search for more creative solutions.

Create the right environment: Regarding what I said previously, it is clear that a cubicle is not the best place to be creative. That is why leading companies like Google, Pixar, GE and many others, their work environments designed to stimulate creativity.

3. Provide incentives to awaken creativity

Contrary to popular belief, it is very difficult to be creative with a blank sheet. Our brain needs stimulation to enable it to generate new ideas.

Freshness Note: If you look closer, our life is a great routine. We work by the same route, we hear the same radio station, read the same newspapers and magazines, lunch with the same people and going to the same places over the weekend. The routine is the antithesis of creativity. Having fresh means to cultivate the habit of yielding to new and different stimuli to get out of the routine to generate new and different ideas. For example, you can take every Friday at a special guest to talk about an entirely different company’s business. These exercises open the mind and stimulate creativity.

Break Paradigms: Pablo Picasso said that “the first creative act is essentially an act of destruction.” This means that if we take care to generate creative ideas to question assumptions and beliefs that everyone has already accepted to find new and different ways of doing things. But to question our assumptions and beliefs is one of the most difficult things in the world because we are so accustomed to them that we take for granted. Many times, we are not even aware of them. Our beliefs and assumptions form the box which we should get out if we want to be more creative. It is for this reason it is often easier to be creative for someone coming from another company or another industry, because it has no preconceived belief about how things should be done or what is possible or impossible in an industry . I have seen companies who have a computer that meets monthly to challenge the paradigms of the business.

credit to: Mario Morales
Source: www.gestiopolis.com/innovacion-emprendimiento/como-estimular-la-creatividad-en-su-empresa.htm
image source: www.americancsn.com/images/americancsn-projects.jpg

The truth is that most organizations are designed to kill creativity. When he arrived at a company, the first thing I ask is what if someone here comes up with a good idea?

The answer I always hear is, “if I have a good idea, I say to my boss and then the idea dies, either because a) I said that it will not work, b) tells me there is no time or resources to implement c) steals it to take all the credit, which causes that no one wants to give new ideas. Many managers are in fact murderers (serial) of ideas.

However, creativity is essential to any successful business and today more than ever, is key to the survival of businesses. Unfortunately, creativity has not been in the priorities of most managers. This is, perhaps, it is considered as something intangible, elusive and difficult to administer, and we are more focused on obtaining short-term operational efficiencies, instead of thinking in creating the future of the company.

This is compounded when you consider that we have also mystified creativity and see it as something exclusive to artists, inventors and “creative” advertising agency, or consider it as something that applies only to certain areas of the business ( marketing, advertising, R & D). We have forgotten that creativity is a skill that can be leveraged across all areas and all people in an organization. The only difference is that in business, instead of drawing on a canvas, we do it on the market and customer needs, and instead of using paints and brushes, we use strategies, design processes, allocate resources and leverage the capabilities human.

Here’s a practical focus on how managers can stimulate creativity in all areas of your business and use them to turn ideas into innovations that provide a competitive advantage to business.

1. Focus on creativity

Generally we believe that creativity is something that happens spontaneously and that, therefore, we leave it free to flourish. Phrases such as “think with a blank sheet” and “the sky is the limit” come to mind. In fact, in my experience and although it sounds counterintuitive, creativity must be focused and restricted to be effective. I have seen many companies tell their partners, glibly, “we want ideas, and then become frustrated because they receive very few ideas relevant to the business.

Creativity should focus on strategic business objectives. For example, employees must be told “we want ideas to reduce costs in this process” or “we want ideas of new services for this market segment.” Creativity should focus on the most pressing challenges and issues facing the organization. This means employees do not want any kind of idea or occurrence, but ideas aligned to company strategy and give a competitive advantage.

Also, while we otherwise stimulates creativity more the higher the number of constraints we have. For example, “deal to create a network of distributors and we have no money.” Recall that the need has always been the mother of invention. One of the most focused resources that creativity is the time: “busy finding a solution to this problem before this date.” Therefore, we must ensure that our employees always have an important set of challenges to stimulate their imagination.

credit to: Mario Morales
Source: www.gestiopolis.com/innovacion-emprendimiento/como-estimular-la-creatividad-en-su-empresa.htm
image source: http://blog.creativityden.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/creative.png