Quod Scripsi, Scripsi

Creatology

My director forwarded to me an email that discussed an article in Time Magazine about disciplined creativity. Five principles were given:

1. Pick important, not interesting, problems.

2. Assess each potential innovation for its value to customers.

3. Appoint a champion who is committed to the project. At SRI it’s “No champion, no project, no exception.”

4. Build a team.

5. Continually share, implement, and improve ideas.

http://www.time.com/time/insidebiz/article/0,9171,1531307,00.html

So, five repsonses:

1. If most of your problems are important but not interesting, you’re in the wrong business. On one hand I hear about all of the startups that solved interesting problems and failed because nobody needed the solution. Then I hear from coaches and pundits that it’s important to be passionate about your work. So it seems that the secret is to find work that poses important problems that are usually (but not necessarily always) interesting. I’m fortunate enough to be in a job like that, but I doubt most folks are that lucky.

2. That’s pretty clear and obvious, which means it needs to be restated frequently or it will be overlooked. I would add that some innovations benefit customers by benefiting the organization that serves them.

3. What if you can’t find a champion who’s committed? If the project is important but not necessarily interesting, you might have a hard time finding someone who really cares about it. I guess it depends on how you define “important” versus “interesting”. I don’t know of many organizations that can afford to say, “this important but boring and potentially disastrous project has no champion, so we’re going to scrap it”. Credit Card security audits anyone?

4. It’s always best to build a team. Realistically, you’re often going to be handed a team and told to “make it work”.

5. That depends largely on the environment you’re in. Generally though, I’d agree that organizations that stop sharing ideas are mostly dead.