The famous management and entrepreneurship guru, Peter Drucker, believed that a combination of systematic environmental analysis and creativity could lead businesses and entrepreneurs to find new opportunities for entrepreneurship and innovation. In his book, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (New York: Harper and Row, 1985), Drucker details seven sources of ideas for new businesses. These were described in Chapter 1.
How can we use Drucker’s sources of change to generate ideas for ourselves? We can do so by combining environmental scanning with creativity techniques. After we read and work through the following sections on creativity, we will be ready to generate some business ideas for our projects.
The Concept of Creativity
Creativity is the initiation of a product or process that is useful, correct, appropriate, and valuable to the task at hand where that task is heuristic rather than algorithmic. A heuristic is an incomplete guideline or rule of thumb that leads to understanding, learning, or discovery. It is a fuzzy map of where we are and where we are going, but the roads are not completely drawn in. Heuristics serve to stimulate a person to learn more; they are similar to determining how to get from A to B on a blurry, indistinct roadmap.
An algorithm, in contrast, is a mechanical set of rules, a preset plan of operations for problem solving, decision making, and conflict resolution. Flipping a coin is an algorithm because the two sides of the coin and the indicators of head and tail predetermine exactly what the outcomes will be after the coin is tossed in the air.
Perhaps a better question than, “What is creativity?” is “Where is creativity?” Creativity occurs at the dynamic intersection of three forces (T. Amabile, The Social Psychology of Creativity [New York: Springer Verlag, 1983]). These forces are:
- The individual, with his or her intelligence, experience and dispositions
- The domain of knowledge within which the particular individual has chosen to work
- The field or social context within which the merits of the work or product produced are evaluated and judged.
We are now quite familiar with the first force, that of the individual. Some of the attributes of creative people, discussed in the literature on creativity, are curiosity, openness to new experiences, tolerance of ambiguity, independence of judgment, sensitivity to problems, flexibility, and originality. One of the better ways to think of individual tendencies is by using the Kirton Adaptor-Innovator theory (KAI). The KAI postulates that everyone is creative in either one of two ways. Some people are good at figuring out how to “do things better.” This is an improvement approach to creativity. People who can do things better find ways to incrementally change what is already in existence. People who are good at the “do-things-differently” approach are creative in finding new and novel solutions to problems. But research has found that this trait approach is insufficient; therefore, we need to consider other variables.
We also need to consider the domain of knowledge. Here we may be referring to arts, like music or painting; sciences, like computer science or biology; or a business area, like finance, marketing, product development, or new venture creation. People can only be creative if they are prepared to be creative, which means they must have some understanding of a knowledge base and some skills at manipulating this base. It is also true that one can know “too much” about a domain of knowledge and uncritically accept all of its forms, premises, assumptions, and values. An individual who accepts all of these things might have a difficult time producing divergent thinking—ideas that modify or substitute for the conventional wisdom.
The last force is the field or social context. For an idea or product to be judged creative (as opposed to simply crazy or weird), it must be considered valuable and meritorious. Who does the judging? In the case of fine art, this work is done by critics, curators, and experts. In the case of business-related creativity, the organization and inevitably the market make these judgments. If an idea sells, it was creative; if it does not sell, it was not creative. This sort of retrospective evaluation is part of the paradox of creativity. If there were rules that one could formulate a priori, then one would have developed an algorithm, and its product could no longer be considered creative.
Types of Creative Behavior
All creative behavior can be described in one of three general ways. Creation is the act of pure invention—making something out of nothing. A writer facing a blank page “creates” characters, plot, and action. For example, Beethoven created symphonies from scratch. People generally consider this the only type of creativity. Because we associate it with heroic efforts and classic works of art and science, we tend to believe that creativity is a gift from the gods and is available to only a chosen few. But there are other types of creativity that are just as important and within the reach of mere mortals.
Synthesis is the creative act of joining together two previously unrelated things. It is bringing together the telephone with the computer, or combining a theory of evolutionary biology with economics. Synthesis is the creativity we find in humor, when two incongruous elements are combined to make something appear funny. Synthesis can have a major impact on a market or a product. For example, the Japanese created synthesis when they merged statistical methods, quality control, and systems thinking in the manufacture of automobiles. The synthesis of direct-selling methods with the cosmetics industry created Avon. And the synthesis of the computer with the concept of small and personal led to the creation of Apple Computer (http://www.apple.com). In retrospect, all successful creative acts look logical and predictable through the historical lens because they work. But at the time of the creative act and the birth of the creative product, the creator cannot judge the value of any particular outcome.
Another type of creativity is modification. Modification occurs when a thing or a process is improved or gains a new application. A modification can be quite small – a change in design, a new floor plan for an office or a new way to solder electrical connections along an assembly line. Clearly, no heroic acts are needed for a modification, and therefore creativity is within the reach of all people, and is in fact a natural part of human existence.
Analogy is the creative act of seeing how one thing is like another. It enables us to take an action or use a product that was originally meant for one purpose, but has other purposes as well. For example, a common screw is also a propeller. A television commercial is like a little movie, and so is a music video. There are many instances of one industry borrowing a practice or product from another and putting it to effective use. The people who think of these transfers are doing so by making an analogy – seeing how the problem they face is like the problem that was faced by others in the past.
Creativity and the Resource-Based Theory
What are the links between creative entrepreneurship and competitive advantage? Because creative ideas are based on imagination, they are hard to duplicate, rare to intuition, and not easily substituted with expert systems and artificial intelligence. Creativity has always been of interest to researchers and practitioners in the field of new venture creation. This is not because it is magical or metaphysical but because economic advantage can be derived from it. The requirement for creative behavior to have value (as opposed to being simply weird) is clearly in line with our resource-based model. A creative act is not valuable in and of itself unless it is appropriate to the situation. The situation here is the creation of a new product or process. The creative act should therefore contribute to the objectives of gaining revenues or lowering costs (which encompass all the nuances and permutations that can be included in the firm’s revenue and cost functions).
All humans have creative abilities to some extent; the evidence is in our dreams. But creativity is rare in organizations because organizations have elements that suppress creative thinking, creative behavior, and the use of creative programs and processes. The barriers to innovation and creativity in large organizations are quite real, for the repressing side of “big business” has a decided slant toward uniformity. Inventors and entrepreneurs need long-time horizons, flexibility, incentives, and motivation to succeed. In large organizations, the forces against creativity may be so strong that separate business units may be required.
Creativity is one of the most important resource advantages because it is so difficult to duplicate. Its elusive nature has stumped philosophers and entrepreneurs since the beginning of recorded time. Attempts have been made to stimulate the creative impulse, from meditation techniques to computer simulations. Not only should the entrepreneur covet and encourage creative impulses in him- or herself and others, he or she needs to engender a culture that transforms creative energy into economically (as opposed to psychologically) rewarding forms.
Creativity Techniques
An individual can learn to be more creative by understanding the process of creativity and mastering a few simple techniques. These techniques can be used by a single person working on a problem that calls for a creative solution, or they can applied within a group setting. The key to using these techniques is to overcome the linear thinking and the traditional linkages between things and events, and employ lateral thinking, which encourages innovation by challenging concepts, perceptions, and assumptions, and provoking incongruity (E. De Bono, Serious Creativity [New York: Harper & Row, 1992]).
The Creative Pause: Trying to force a creative solution is impossible, but we can make an effort to find one. The creative pause is a deliberate interruption in the routine flow of work in order to concentrate on a point or process. At what point does the pause occur? It doesn’t matter. And there need be no particular reason for that pause at that time. This pause is a technique that makes people aware that they are doing something routine, and enables them to question why they are doing it a particular way, or if they should be doing it at all.
Focus: Simple focus means paying attention and concentrating. There needs not be a problem to solve. Such focus simply means questioning the linear thinking embedded in any routine. The target of one’s focus can be an object, a process, or a policy. When using specific focus, a person has a defined target such as looking for new ideas to serve customers, or generating creative ways to reduce the cost of handling materials. Although the specific focus technique requires that the user have knowledge of the domain, it is not dependent on increasing the amount of knowledge. Rather, it depends on using existing knowledge in new ways.
Challenge: Using the creative challenge, people question why something is done a certain way, and if there are other ways of doing it. We challenge the historical and traditional processes. Such challenge is not meant to be an exercise in criticism. We may challenge something that works quite well while looking for a better way. The creative challenge does not accept the view that there is one best way to do something, or that the current way is the optimal way.
Alternatives: Generating alternatives is the most basic creative response. However, we usually engage in this exercise only when we feel a need or have a problem. Creative alternatives can be generated at any time and applied to anything, even when there is no crisis. Creating alternatives is a two-stage process: (1) We need to find out what alternatives are already available because there is no sense in reinventing the wheel, and (2) We must design new alternatives or ways to do things. The first stage is information gathering, but the second is about being creative.
Provocation: Creative provocations are experiments in thought. Deliberate provocations force a person to consider incongruities, discontinuities, and seemingly impossible events and situations. The key to using the provocation technique is the childlike question, “What if?” and working backward from there, to determine the implications of the question. Einstein asked, “What if I could ride on a beam of light? What would I see?” and from this thought experiment, he derived the conditions of relativity.
Mind Mapping: This is a technique that works through mental and linguistic associations. It enables the user to break through the “wall of rationality” surrounding a proposition. Mind mapping is a multi-stage process that starts with a clear statement of the problem at hand and extends to the search for a creative approach to solving the problem. A map of free associations is generated and some arbitrary limits are reached. The generated map is then studied for patterns, novelties, and interesting insights.
There is an easy four-part model to help us think about the way creative thought and action are turned into a business. Each of the model’s elements begins with the letter I, so, this is known as the Four-I model. The four parts are:
- Imagination—the creative act of originality.
- Incubation—the time period between the point at which the entrepreneur gets the idea and the time when
the breakthrough is discovered.
- Illumination—the point at which the entrepreneur is able to see how the idea can be turned into a
profitable business.
- Implementation—the transformation of the idea and concept into a physical reality
The above is an excerpt from Prof. Marc J. Dollinger’s book “ENTREPRENEURSHIP, Strategies and Resources, FOURTH EDITION, 2008”
Raphael Diluzio
Sam Berns
