Harvard Business Publishing

Gill, You are absolutely right about what you said in the first paragraph. Creativity in many persons can be recognized in their idiosyncrasies or even those trivialities which you mentioned. Very true, they make the most interesting people in the barren corporate fields. But some of them are also somewhat of outcasts and iconoclasts?

It is difficult for lawyers to express their creativity at work (unless they are out of some John Grisham novel), but they surely can increase their clientèle by being more attentive to them, by being good listeners and talking the same everyday phrases more creatively, impressively and impeccably no matter what case it is. What I mean to convey is that a little creativity in small things makes a huge difference. And same is the case with the bankers. They cannot endeavor to be creative in hedging and bring about a loss of millions of dollars! Whereas a photographer has got nothing to lose when his eye is behind the viewfinder of his camera. All he has to do is let his imagination, emotions and viewpoint take wings and the result would be a creative piece of art in the end. So again doesn't it all boil down to freedom of thought, visual and mental perspectives and consequence of an action in the scope of work? Speaking of perspectives, we may as well take the hackneyed story of Newton: Many have seen the apple fall, but why was it that only Newton thought about gravity? When I quote this story, most of my friends say "So what's the big deal in thinking about Earth as a magnet attracting the apple towards it?". But you know where creativity of Newton's thought lies: He also proposed that the apple must also attract the Earth towards it with an equal amount of force and he proved it mathematically! Now that's creativity of thought. And it only comes by seeing the same old things in a new light.

I think it is the culture of the company that can be the biggest constraint to creativity rather than the industry you work in.

If people are encouraged to do things differently (and sometimes to make mistakes) then this will foster a culture of creativity. I worked for a Big 4 Accounting firm some years ago which on the surface may not seem to most creative of environments. However it was not uncommon for someone to come up with a new solution offering or route to market that was completely new and innovative. Without the culture being there to encourage and support this would never have happened.

Chris

http://learn2develop.blogspot.com

Nikhil

'A little creativity in small things makes a huge difference' -

You are so right - and it's a pity we see so little around in business. It can be really simple things, as you say. A Kuwaiti engineer I coached recently told me that of the many Chinese executives he has to meet in China, one always stands out -because of his shocking pink tie which has become a running joke!

And yes, Newton's great discovery was, literally to look at things from a different perspective. How many of us challenge ourselves to that every day - even in small ways - at work?

Chris

Culture is, indeed, an enabler (or suppressor) of creativity. You raise an important point - creativity can be found in sectors and companies that would not immediately be obvious, as in the Big 4 as you state. It's also fascinating to watch companies whose bedrock is creativity when they struggle to find new ideas!

Gill,
I love the approach of Alessi http://www.alessi.com/en/company
who have through the years found and inspired creative artists. But these things are cultural specific. I mean here in Scandinavian, the design is monochrone and minimalist with sometimes anarchy thrown in - however most of the latter is domesticated into abstract paintings which do not stand for themselves but are seen as "interior design" going with office or home layout. I believe "high" creativity challenges the values of a company, tests where we are going, and ultimately is frowned upon or as above domesticated. I think real and productive value can come from opening up to the possibility of "high" creative imagination, one without borders, allowing for a space to release tension, to maximise strategic potential, and just add aesthetic pleasure to the day, a maxim of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement, before it was stream-lined in the Bauhaus vision.

" I think real and productive value can come from opening up to the possibility of "high" creative imagination, one without borders, allowing for a space to release tension, to maximise strategic potential, and just add aesthetic pleasure to the day, a maxim of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement"

Stephen - I really like this comment, which has given me much to think about. The idea that art, space and having beautiful things around you every day can release tension and maximise strategic potential is a powerful idea for business.

It's rare to find art and space outside the boardrooms or on executive floors. Offices I have worked in and visit tend to be cramped, low-ceilinged, badly lit and decorated in dull colours - it's no wonder there's little room for creative expression.

There is one exception - a large insurance firm in the City of London which has made a point of distributing paintings and sculptures throughout the company offices and regularly changes the artwork. It's always interesting, surprising and energising to be there - and I look forward to my return visits.

What are your experiences?

Gill,

You asked for my experience. I suppose that it is based on my visits and working in numerous kinds of office environments both in Europe and in Japan. My interest in creativity stems from an arts background, one which though rudimentary nevertheless radically changed how I view art and experience it. I remember standing outside of an art museum in provincial England with an art book and stopping visitors who were leaving to ask them to pass comment on two paintings, one was a Jackson Pollock, like: http://www.guggenheim-venice.it/inglese/collections/artisti/dettagli/pollock_alchimia.html

The other was a figurative painting like this portrait by Thomas Gainsborough:
http://www.boughtonhouse.org.uk/htm/gallery2/paintings/emontagu.htm

The reaction was fairly predictable. Generally they preferred the latter portrait, and could not resist making derisive comments about the “mess” by Pollock. However, even then there were a minority both educated and uneducated who admired the abstract. We at the art college had been conditioned to prefer Pollock and take an anti-academy stance one which Tom Wolfe brilliantly satirised in “The Painted Word” of 1975. I can now today quite happily commute between these two positions, and can see “beauty” and “edge” in both abstract and academic art. Unfortunately, despite over a hundred years of experimentation, a lot of people still don’t get the “point” of art and view it like Sarah Palin does Washington as the work by elites for the elites – and this is echoed in way art is treated in the corporate world, where creativity is “dumbed” down because Art like Science is difficult. Instead of opening up that way of looking which would be beneficial, it tends to treat creativity like laughter – it forces people to look in a certain way, causing in the process a sensation that maybe it might be for real, "a real creative experience", but as in those laughter clubs, there is a feeling of embarrassment which is repressed until later it spills out into cynicism and overall disillusion. Art is difficult, and different from craft. When someone buys a painting for an office, they often view it as a craft. When they engage in what they consider to be creativity, it is a shallow shadow of a meaningful aesthetic experience, it is domesticated by many constraints – instead it should be one that confronts values, and actually get one to rethink how we see, and it is this goal in “higher creativity” missing in scores of the quick-fix crafts solutions. People should get the point, and it is beholden to managers to help their employees to reach that goal in such way that does improve the way we do business and of course see the world.

Gill,
A wonderful piece on locating hidden talents within an organization. It's amazing to me just how little some people know about the others within their companies. I recently recommended a tool which I have found to be surprisingly useful to do just that and to identify synergies that I never knew existed - the org chart! Rather simple in thought, but so few people ever take the time to look at their respective organizations' org charts and there can be so much value hidden within it.

My piece can be viewed, if desired, here:

http://ninasimosko.com/blog/2008/08/18/org-charts-as-a-tool/

I'd love your thoughts as well.

At Hallmark we had a creative guru - Gordon MacKenzie, who regularly showed up to think a bit different about issues that different areas were facing. It's hard to imagine that a building with over 700 creatives running around needed someone with special permission to shake the place up, but we did and he did. Latter wrote a book comparing corporate life to orbiting a giant hairball...

So often people with creative ideas clam up because they are asked to defend an idea as quickly as it pops in their head. By finding ways to capture the out-of-left-field idea and realize it can be nurtured and assessed over time (rather than having to kill it immediately for fear of the distraction) you can encourage innovation without sacrificing momentum.