reading

Denkwerkzeuge der Kreativität und Innovation –
Das kleine Handbuch der Innovationsmethoden
Zürich: Midas Management Verlag AG

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OVERVIEW

Denkwerkzeuge als Firmenausgabe

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FORWARD TO THE FIFTH EDITION

I am pleased to present a considerably revised and updated fifth edition of Thinking Tools. Fortunately, due to its Amazon bestseller status, the recent editions appeared in relatively short succession; each one sold out quickly.

This fifth edition has additional new thinking tools that considerably expand upon the existing toolbox, especially in the areas of diagnostic thinking and thinking in solutions.

A significant change from the creaffective perspective is the addition of a third process model for systematic creative thinking that builds on and unites both Creative Problem Solving and Design Thinking into one model just as we have been practicing it with our clients for years. We call this third model the Systematic Creative Thinking Process.

It doesn’t matter which model you use, Creative Problem Solving, Design Thinking or the newer Systematic Creative Thinking Process. All of the thinking tools are described in the same way as they always have been.

I would like to thank my colleagues at creaffective for their contribution to the development of this new process and the thinking tools expanded upon here.

FORWARD TO THE FIRST EDITION

Innovation – unfortunately for many, this word is received as a tired cliché, or as lip service that appears in every company description and is announced from every political platform. Still, innovation is truly an important factor for every company‘s success, especially today. It is more than just an empty platitude.

Organizations must constantly be making multiple, simultaneous adjustments to keep producing new products regularly. This book helps you do that. We present 12 strategic areas of activity and describe them to make their application available for you.

The adage, “Innovation starts with an I,” identifies its starting point: There are individuals whose motivation, expertise, knowledge and skills with regard to creativity and innovation are present at the beginning of every innovation and are present in every culture of innovation. Unfortunately, skills for creativity and innovation are not actively included in the curriculum of our school and university systems. This is where this handbook comes into play. The amount that every individual in your organization can contribute to its success is influenced by various factors including a conscious awareness of creativity and innovation, personal attitude toward it, and systematic creative thinking skills. My hope is that this book will be able to make a helpful contribution to the development of these elements.

Based on 60 years of academic research in the field of creativity and innovation and ten years of practical experience with creaffective, my goal is to provide an aid for practical and application-oriented thought and action. As with books on physical fitness and changing personal habits, one thing is imperative: At the end of the day, you have to make a conscious decision to put the tools and concepts described in this book to good use.

Participants who have been in our trainings and workshops receive this book and have been able to put many of the techniques described here into practice. These techniques are not only helpful in the context of innovation within organizations, they are also helpful in all areas of life in which new perspectives, ideas and courses of action are required… so basically everywhere!

HOW DO I USE THIS BOOK?

Optically this book is based on the well-known Moleskine notebook cherished by many. Its handy format makes it possible for you to keep this book tucked away and then, as the need may be, take it out to jot notes, thoughts and ideas, look something up or find inspiration.

This book is arranged so that most of the sections can be read independently of one another. Further, you don’t have to read the book all at once, from A-Z. Just the opposite. I hope this book will be so helpful to you that you keep reaching for it, flipping through it regularly.

Thinking Tools for Creativity and Innovation contains the important fundamentals, which should be considered in all cases. The majority of the content consists of brief, practice-oriented descriptions of various thinking tools. The tools are arranged according to seven thinking skills relevant to innovation. In turn, these thinking skills form the basis of various process models for creative problem solving, which are also introduced in this handbook.

You can flip to chapters and techniques described that fit the type of thinking or aspect of a creative problem solving process is relevant to you at the moment.

This book is designed to give you a manageable, practice-oriented introduction to creative and innovative processes. References to additional source materials and literature at the end of each chapter are provided for those who would like to delve deeper into the subject.

This book presents a list of simple and versatile thinking tools that can be used in a creative process.

That being said, this book contains more than a collection of methods. There are a few fundamentals that will facilitate your understanding of using these tools to your advantage, and will help you recognize that techniques and methods are only aspects on the road to creating something new.

Creativity and innovation are dependent on a host of other factors as well, which we will touch upon while explaining these fundamentals. Before this, we want to arrive at a common understanding of what we are talking about when we use the words creativity and innovation.

Particularly important and in the truest sense of the word fundamental, the foundation for using all thinking tools is this: an understanding of the dynamic balance between divergent and convergent thinking and the separation of these two phases of thinking. If you do not take this fundamental principal into account, then all of the techniques will be limited in their effectiveness.

Definitions of Creativity and Innovation

Research into creativity as a scientific discipline began in the 1950s, as a subdiscipline of psychology. The initial impulse for doing so was created by J.P. Guilford with his 1949 lecture on the “Structure of Intellect.” J.P. Guilford was the president of the American Psychological Association. In his lectures, he argued that creativity is a resource that everyone has at their disposal, and therefore, everyone can also use it to make an enormous contribution to society. At the time this stood in stark contrast to the widespread notion of a general intelligence that underlies every intelligent act.

Unfortunately, there is not just one definition of creativity that is accepted by all researchers. There are as many definitions of creativity as there are scientists occupied with the subject; each definition reflects their scientific background and contains differing aspects. To have one definition capture the multi-faceted complexity of creativity is a challenge. We will focus on a categorization of these multiple facets, because they can be very helpful to provide understanding of systematic creativity. Nevertheless, there is something akin to a lowest common denominator definition that can serve as a working definition for the purposes of this book.

“Creativity is a process that results in novelty which is accepted as useful, tenable or satisfying by a significant group of others at some point in time.” M. Stein (1953)

“Creativity is an ability to come up with new and different viewpoints on a subject. It involves breaking down and restructuring our knowledge about a subject in order to gain new insights into its structure.” T. Proctor (2005)

For creaffective, the working definition that we use in our workshops and seminars is:

“Creativity is the ability to come up with something new that is useful.”

The term “new” does not say anything, perse, about the degree of originality or how fresh something is. The term “useful,” in our definition, also does not state for how many people it has to be useful as opposed to Stein’s example.

The terms creativity and innovation are often used as synonyms for one another. Creativity and innovation are, in fact, closely related to one another, and there are differences, primarily with respect to usefulness and the extent of the newness.

“The process of translating and idea or invention into a good or service that creates value or for which customers will pay.” (Business Dictionary)

“Invention plus exploitation (or implementation).” E. Roberts (Professor, MIT)

“Innovation is the introduction of something new into a market, an organization or a society that is useful.”

It is obvious how far innovation goes beyond creativity. Innovation is about how far the fruits of creativity can be introduced into the larger context. From a company’s perspective, this larger context can be a market where the product will be offered or it can be internal to the organization.

Usefulness stands in the foreground of innovation as a criterion. The innovation must be recognized by others as being useful. In the case of a new product or service, this can be seen in the demand for the new product or process.

Creativity is present at the beginning of and is central to every innovation, as is made clear in the above definitions and in the following illustration. Innovation is the introduction or the extension of a creative result into a greater context. For this, you first need to achieve something new that will be deemed useful enough to be integrated into a larger context.

A creative result that is introduced into a larger context goes far beyond an initial idea. It must also be precise enough and thought out well enough that you can act upon it. Creativity is thus more than having (raw) ideas; creativity also means developing these ideas far enough, so that you are able to do something with them.

Even though coincidences can play a role and shouldn’t be taken for granted, creativity is not just a sudden realization that can come out of nowhere. Creativity is, among other things, a process that can be consciously and systematically steered so to achieve a result that can then be introduced into a larger context.

CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION

The 4P Model of Creativity

We presented a few definitions of creativity and the difference between creativity and innovation. We can already see considerable differences in their unique emphasis.

An American psychology professor, Mel Rhodes, in the mid 1950’s, analyzed various aspects of creativity, categorized them and provided their summary in a 4P Model of Creativity. Rhodes believed that classifying the components of creativity provided a helpful framework to further develop this line of research.

The 4P Model of Creativity is a helpful model that remains useful today. With it, you can identify the various factors that influence creativity and understand where adjustments can and must be made to generate more creativity as an individual, as a team, and as an organization.

Creativity arises in people. Creative results are achieved through people’s actions and interactions. Individuals have unique qualities, values, attitudes, ways of thinking and patterns of behavior, which, in turn, influence the creative process, the creative environment and thus, in the end, a novel and useful, or creative result.

A creative solution doesn’t just fall from the sky; it follows a process from the emergence of an initial question or stimulus all the way through to the rise of a new solution. By nature all people implicitly use some kind of structured process for problem solving. Explicit models of the creating process were developed through the observation of and interviews with known creative people over the last 60 years. Step by step, they have been refined and improved. Creative process models are used in many organizations today. They are and can be applied as strategies for effective new thinking by individuals and with groups.

Rhodes derived this term, press, from the Latin pressus, which can mean a box or container. The environment is thus the container or context in which the person(s) and processes are located. The quality of the context has a direct effect, positive or negative, on how participants behave and how the processes unfold. We have all experienced a situation, for example, where it seemed impossible to come up with anything creative. On the other hand, in other situations being creative seemed very easy. Environments having a creative climate or a creative culture have certain characteristics that can be influenced by people.

Where the three circles, person, process and environment overlap, you see the product of creativity.

Product here refers to the result or outcome of the process and is not the same as the product we know of as a sales object. The product can either be material or immaterial, like a poem, a procedure or a theory. Important to understand is that creativity leads to a product and this is only achieved through using creative thinking.

Creative thinking is a natural prerequisite for a new product that provides value. At some point however, the focus turns toward doing something with the ideas.

Each of the other aspects has a direct influence on the creative product/outcome. Different people give rise to individual outcomes and each contributes in a variety of ways to the creative process of a group. The creative process can have a decisive influence on whether or not a product emerges at all and if so, what kind and quality of product it will be. More on this later. In turn, the environment influences the ways in which the people, processes and product/outcomes are able to develop.

4P-MODELL

Can You Nurture and Encourage Creativity?

Many people believe that creativity is an inherent ability. Either you’re blessed with a lot of it or you’re unfortunately not. That’s just your fate. Based on this set of beliefs, some people can be heard saying, “I’m just not a creative person.”

Still, creativity research shows that creativity is an inherent ability, one that everyone possesses. That means that all people can be creative. It’s true, people do have inborn talents. Every person has unique gifts and different people have different specialties. This means that every person can be creative, and different people are creative in different ways: some will be especially creative in the areas where they can build on their given talents.

On the other hand, creativity is a skill that you can actively practice and improve. In the section on the 4P Model, we see there are various aspects that steer creativity and they, in turn, can be partially influenced by every single person involved.

In this way, every person can change their approach and, for example, become more open to new ideas. There are certain basic skills of creative thinking, like divergent and convergent thought, that everyone can (re)learn and by doing so increase their creative thinking abilities. Furthermore, there are systematic processes (process models) that can help individuals and groups channel and structure their creativity to a certain degree.

After all, everyone can make even a minor change to their surroundings and consciously create an atmosphere that is more conducive to creativity.

Many people experience creativity as something spontaneous, like having a flash of inspiration that seems to happen when you’re kissed by the muse. We all know these moments, and they are an aspect of creativity that is hard to control. We happily welcome them when they arrive.

Researchers in the field of creativity studies speak of a continuum between absolute spontaneity (on the left side of the following illustration) as in the flashes of inspiration mentioned above, and conscious and intentional creativity (on the right side of the illustration) where one tries to be creative “at the flip of a switch.” We often practice this active form of creativity of in our facilitated creativity sessions: we inspire and support participants with techniques to give their creativity a jumpstart. You can also call this the “make it happen” approach. In between and before the “make it happen” approach can work, there is the “let it happen” phase. Here, it’s all about establishing the conditions in which creativity can flourish. This is where environmental factors often play a role. The factors can be modified so creativity arises more easily. This can mean, for example, ensuring ample time, freedom from constant interruptions, and/or having pleasant workspaces where people feel comfortable.

Many companies, for example, deliberately provide tea or coffee areas where people can mingle freely and talk with one another. Often, innovations arise as a result of these chance meetings. These are all examples of the “let it happen” school of thought. Building on the „let it happen“ strategy, you can go a step further to actively promote creativity and make a conscious effort to try and be creative (make it happen).

A common example of spontaneous creativity is the proverbial “standing under the shower” story. Many people report inspiration comes to them spontaneously while they are in the shower or on the toilet when their mind is at ease. This type of insight is good, and also important, though it usually isn’t sufficient. As a participant in one of our workshops said so well, “Showering is great, but it isn’t enough.”

PROMOTING AND SUPPORTING CREATIVITY

The Levels of Innovation

When you ask people in a company to name examples of innovation, various categories based on the type of company you are in usually get mentioned. In a company focused on technology, for instance, you will likely get examples of new products and technologies. An automobile manufacturer will emphasize one or more technical details from a new generation of vehicles. The innovation examples mentioned by people working in consulting or in the insurance industry will likely be very different. The innovation examples people cite tend to come from their direct experience, such as according to their job or the industry in which they work.

When it comes to categorizing innovations there are levels of differentiation. Below I cover important distinctions for classifying kinds of innovations, in three levels: Product, Process and Business Model.

Product/service level innovation uses new technologies that are protected by patents and are frequently reported on in the media. These technologies can be utilized in new products offered on the market. Examples include a higher-performance mobile telephone or a new software. Also, flowing into this level are new services, like a new banking or insurance service.

Process level innovation relates to an organization’s internal and external environment, as in finding a new or better way to produce or implement something. For example, process level innovation can be seen in a new method to manufacture aircraft parts faster and cheaper, or in a new procedure to optimize internal processes such as scheduling or inventory. Airlines that only use one type of aircraft – to simplify their maintenance and loading procedures – have experienced process level innovation. Another example of process innovation is subcontracting a part of a process to someone else like IKEA, for example, who came up with the crazy idea (at the time) of letting their customers assemble furniture for themselves!

“A business model describes the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers and captures value” (A. Osterwalder, Y. Pigneur). Often, value for a user and an organization is not created through technology, but through a new

Thinking Tools for Creativity
and Innovation

OVERVIEW

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FORWARD TO THE FIFTH EDITION

FORWARD TO THE FIRST EDITION

HOW DO I USE THIS BOOK?

1

THE FUNDAMENTALS

Definitions of Creativity and Innovation

The 4P Model of Creativity

Can You Nurture and Encourage Creativity?

The Levels of Innovation

Thinking Tools for Creativityand Innovation