books:

	• Creativity Inc.: Building an Inventive Organization Jeff Mauzy, Richard A. Harriman Harvard Business School Press, 2003 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 8 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The emphasis on tested principles and practices in place of a fixed recipe is the first of six underlying central assumptions for the book. The second assumption is that creativity and innovation are two distinct concepts. The authors follow clear practice in distinguishing creativity - "the generation of novel and appropriate ideas" - from innovation - which "implements those ideas". A third central assumption is that creativity occurs in three areas: individuals, coalitions and teams, and organizations.
The remaining pillars that hold up the perspective of Creativity, Inc.: Underlying creativity are four interconnected dynamics that form the "heartbeat" of systemic creativity: motivation, curiosity and fear, the breaking and making of connections, and evaluation; Creativity depends on climate; Systematic creativity asks everyone to be a leader.

This stimulating, informative, and cleanly written book is organized in three parts. Part I, Creative Thinking, Part II, Climate, and Part III, Action. The first two parts examine a range of aspects involved in building individual and organizational creative capability, while the final part shows how to connect creativity to purposeful work. Happily, the authors understand that organizations find it easier to boost creativity temporarily; making it stick as an integral part of the organization is much tougher. They devote the final chapter to "Sustaining the Change".

If you're the kind of reader who likes to go beyond the main text and dig into the authors' sources and references, you'll be delighted to find that the compact (185 pages) of the main text is followed by copious chapter notes and references. Creativity, Inc. provides a rich set of principles and tools for steeping every aspect of your organization in creativity. Mauzy and Harriman's book on systemic creativity complements work on systematic innovation processes. Businesses that manage to get the twin engines of creativity and innovation running at full power will have the only enduring competitive advantage left.

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From The Innovation Road Map Magazine

Because I've studied and read so much about creativity I must admit that I approached this book with a certain amount of trepidation. I wasn't sure that I wanted to read it. I told myself, just read the intro and the first chapter and then stop if you don't like it. Well, I didn't stop. It was an enjoyable read throughout with many insights along the way. What the authors bring forward in this book is a methodological approach to creativity in organizations, more particularly corporations. They describe a system that seems to touch all the right points in order to increase creativity in an organization. In addition, they provide some helpful information for individuals who want to improve their own creativity.

The book is broken into three parts and eight chapters:

Part 1 - Creative thinking

? The Dynamics That Underlie Creative Thinking
? Becoming Creatively Fit as an Individual
? Breaking and Making Connections for an Enterprise

Part2 - Climate

? The Climate for Creativity in an Enterprise
? Personal Creative Climate: The Bubble

Part 3 - Action

? Leadership: Fostering Systemic Creativity
? Purposeful Creativity
? Sustaining the Change

When an organization has systemic creativity, the authors write "systemic creativity becomes an integral part of everyday operations and spawns new thought, from small changes to breakthroughs, that organizations now need in every activity that makes a competitive difference.

For this to happen, creativity must become the responsibility of everyone - every leader and senior manager as well as every employee. Systemic creativity is only systemic when everyone in an organization learns how to practice it and then promotes it constantly."

This is not an easy task in today's short-term, bottom-line, stockholder-value driven organization. The authors point out "The behaviors required for successful creativity are out of tune with the behaviors that make a company operationally efficient, well-organized and clear-sighted on its mission and goals."

The authors also correctly point out that there is no "right way" to foster creativity in an organization. The approach depends upon a number of factors. "There are, however, basic principles and practical techniques that have stood the test of time." This book is a great contribution that goal.

The book is informed by six basic understandings:

1. There is no recipe for systemic creativity.
2. Creativity and innovation are two distinct concepts.
3. Creativity happens with individuals, coalitions and teams, and organizations.
4. There are four critical dynamics.
5. Creativity depends on climate.
6. Systemic creativity asks everyone to be a leader.

According to the authors, the four inter-linking dynamics of creativity are motivation, curiosity and fear, making and breaking connections, and evaluation.

In the authors' model, making and breaking connections within an enterprise is the pivotal dynamic of the creative process. To foster this, they encourage conflict of ideas, encourage risk taking, the promotion of diversity, organizing for intrinsic motivation, the development of information flows that support creativity, and the utilization of more and less information.

The "conflict of ideas" concept is one of the few areas in the book that I find myself disagreeing. I have found that the metaphor of battle in creativity to be de-motivating for many people. There may be certain personality types that enjoy competition over new ideas, but there are even more people who find this stressful and a turnoff. I think what needs to be fostered in organizations to promote creativity is the development and facilitation of conversations about ideas. Non judgmental conversations about ideas usually generates new ideas that quite often are better than the originals. To converse is to turn around together.

The authors make a distinction between climate and culture. The difference according to their definition is understandable. Many models of culture include a hierarchy of philosophies, beliefs, values and behaviors. Values set expectations and therefore the author's definition of climate encompasses values and behaviors.

The concept of a personal creative climate, a "bubble" is an extremely powerful one. There are many distractions, conflicting priorities, and decentives to creativity in organizations. I have always found for myself, as well as observing the behavior of others, that those who can create this "bubble" are the most productive and the most creative.

The authors end the book with some wise advice to would be promoters of creativity in organizations. They write "As the change to systemic creativity goes forward, everything covered in the introduction and the first seven chapters - from the dynamics of the creative process and their relationship to individuals and companies, through personal; and corporate climate, through leadership and innovation - requires continued attention, reinforcement, exercise, follow-through, and reinvention." They explain that the forces against creativity are so strong, that without continued reinforcement and reinvention, any approach to systemic creativity will fail. Their advice:

? Plan ahead
? Record results
? Expect resistance
? Encourage the flow of information

"More than forty years ago, in The Human Side of Enterprise, Douglas MacGregor challenged the command-and-control assumptions about the business establishment: `The distinctive potential contribution of the human being...at every level of the organization stems form his capacity to think, to plan, to exercise judgement, to be creative, to direct and control his own behavior.'

MacGregor was arguing on behalf of the creative climate. Today, while there has been much progress, too few leaders ask and expect creativity of their employees; too few leaders provide the climate in which creativity can flourish."

How true!

Jeff Mauzy is a Consulting Manager and Richard Harriman is Managing Partner at Synectics, a pioneering consulting firm specializing in business creativity and innovation.

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Cabbages, Kings, and Creativity

There are so many other books now in print which offer valuable guidance to those who wish to increase creative and innovative thinking within their own organizations. I identify several of them at the conclusion of this brief commentary. Include Mauzy and Harriman's among them. In fact, it is one of the most thoughtful and thought-provoking books on the separate but related subjects, creativity and innovation. Mauzy and Harriman agree with Teresa Amabile that creativity is the generation of novel and appropriate ideas whereas innovation implements those ideas "and thereby changes the order of things in the world." They carefully organize their material as follows:

Part I: Creative Thinking (The Dynamics That Underlie Creative Thinking, Becoming Creatively Fit as an Individual;l, and Breaking and Making Connections for an Enterprise)

Part II: Climate (The Climate for Creativity in an Enterprise and Personal Creative Climate: The Bubble)

Part III: Action (Leadership: Fostering Systemic Creativity, Purposeful Creativity, and Sustaining the Change)

I agree with Mauzy and Harriman that, "When systemic creativity is in place, creativity flourishes from top to bottom and across all functions. People and teams come up with blockbuster ideas that turn into multimillion-dollar products or even billion-dollar new businesses. Or they create ingenious marketing campaigns that ratchet up revenue, or lead process improvement programs that delight customers and empower employees alike, or implement restructuring initiatives that maximize cost reductions but minimize layoffs. And systemic creativity does not apply just to the big creative triumphs: People in organizations daily spark thousands of ideas that provide value in themselves and also build a higher plateau from which greater peaks of creativity can rise." I agree with Mauzy and Harriman that there is no "recipe" for systemic creativity but that most people within almost any organization (regardless of size or nature) can -- and will -- think more creatively if what Mauzy and Harriman characterize as "four critical dynamics" are present: motivation, curiosity and fear, the breaking and making of connections, and evaluation.

True, there are individuals who -- almost single-handedly -- have generated novel and appropriate ideas or implemented someone else's ideas and thereby changed "the order of things in the world." However, there are more instructive examples of how important, climate, environment, culture, etc. are to nourishing creative thought by members of teams or coalitions. Perhaps the most widely cited example is the world's first research and development center which Thomas Edison established in West Orange, New Jersey, in 1887. Others exceptionally creative "communities" include the Disney studios which produced so many animation classics; Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) which developed the first personal computer; Apple Computer which then took it to market; the so-called "Skunk Works" where so many of Lockheed's greatest aircraft designs were formulated; and Los Alamos (NM) and the University of Chicago where the Manhattan Project eventually produced a new weapon called "The Gadget."

Everyone seems to agree that having creative and innovative people throughout all levels of any organization is highly desirable and substantially beneficial. To achieve "systemic creativity," the question remains: HOW? The book which Mauzy and Harriman have written is their response to that question. I especially want to commend them on the fact that they devote much less attention to principles and much more attention to implementation than do most other books on this subject. With due respect to their talents as creators and innovators, I appreciate the fact that they are also pragmatists. No doubt each bears some scar tissue from combat with those who felt threatened by what is new or what is different.

When nearing the conclusion of their book, Mauzy and Harriman assert that information "is the fluid expression of knowledge feeding the creative effort. Keep it available, keep it rich and diverse, keep it flowing. And remember to keep it flowing up to leadership, not just horizontally or from the top down....If you and your organization have the resolve to carry on, the creative effort you undertake now will continue. In evolving forms, the effort will begin again and still continue. The rewards that creativity brings will continue and renew as well." To paraphrase Henry Ford, whether you think you can or think you can't think creatively, you're right. Most limits really are self-imposed.

For many of those who read Mauzy and Harriman's brilliant book, this will be the most exciting intellectual experience they have had in years.

Those who share my high regard for it are urged to check out Evan Schwartz's Juice: The Creative Fuel That Drives World-Class Inventors. Also Harvard Business Review on Innovation and Harvard Business Review on Breakthrough Thinking as well as Tom Kelley's The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm, Robert I. Sutton's Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation, Roger Von Oech's Expect the Unexpected or You Won't Find It: A Creativity Tool Based on the Ancient Wisdom of Heraclitus, Joey Reiman's Thinking for a Living: Creating Ideas That Revitalize Your Business, Career, and Life, Doug Hall Jump Start Your Business Brain: Win More, Lose Less, and Make More Money with Your New Products, Services, Sales & Advertising, and Michael Michalko's Cracking Creativity: The Secrets of Creative Genius.

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Innovations, by definition, change and improve the status quo. Mostly, they do so in small ways, such as a twist on an already existing idea. But when they do so in big ways?such as a new idea altogether?innovations can catapult the inventing company years ahead of competitors.

Those kinds of innovations?from the wheel to the assembly line, from the pen to the PC?are born of creativity. And many companies are allowing this critical wellspring to run dry. In Creativity, Inc., Jeff Mauzy and Richard Harriman marshal forty years of research into how creative ideas happen and how they become innovations to reveal a set of fundamental principles for infusing creativity into every aspect of an organization.

The authors argue that sustained leadership comes from making creativity a broad, enterprise-wide capability that is "on" all the time?to fuel day-to-day innovative responses, to imagine multiple future possibilities, and to develop the foundation from which fundamental, purposeful innovations can be launched. Through vivid examples from a wide range of industries, they show how companies can rework organizational climate, structures, and procedures to build systemic creativity in individuals, in teams, and at the corporate level.

The book?s creativity framework?designed to be customized to a company?s unique needs?walks readers through four interacting dynamics that make up the creative process: motivation, curiosity and fear, the making and breaking of connections, and evaluation.

Individuals will learn how to:
? Reclaim their own creative wellspring
? Exercise creativity in all aspects of their work
? Strengthen their ideas to address corporate response

Leaders of teams and organizations will learn how to:
? Build a climate that supports constant creativity
? Fuel daily creative response and long-term vision
? Develop a ready foundation for transforming ideas into innovations

Marrying practical strategies with theoretical research, Creativity, Inc. shows how entire organizations can embody and implement creativity and innovation.

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