Making Creativity Practical E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Serie: J-B CCL (Center for Creative Leadership)
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 37

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Creative solutions can be challenged and defended in the pursuit ofprofitability. But first, creativity must be demystified. A processthat targets innovation provides leaders with just such aproblem-solving approach. The goal is to produce high-quality ideasthat are appropriate to the task--which means groups andorganizations can implement them with less risk. Work with the targeted innovation process consists of activities infive areas: stating the problem in a way that encourages creativeproblem solving, learning and understanding differentproblem-solving styles, learning and understanding creativepathways and their relationship to problem solving, generatingideas, and evaluating those ideas. Targeted innovation reconciles creativity with management. Managerscan use it to solve problems that meet their organization'scall for innovative answers to current challenges.

Leseprobe

Contents

What Is Practical Creativity?

Why Is Practical Creativity Important?

Making Creativity Practical

Stating the Problem

Understanding Approaches to Problem Solving

Seeking the Right Creative Path

Choosing the Right Creative Path

Generating Ideas

Evaluating Ideas

Making a Place for Creativity at Work

Suggested Readings

Background

Key Point Summary

Lead Contributors

Ideas into Action Guidebooks

Aimed at managers and executives who are concerned with their own and others’ development, each guidebook in this series gives specific advice on how to complete a developmental task or solve a leadership problem.

LEAD CONTRIBUTORS Stan GryskiewiczSylvester Taylor CONTRIBUTOR Talula Cartwright GUIDEBOOK ADVISORY GROUP Victoria A. GuthrieCynthia D. MccauleyEllen Van Velsor DIRECTOR OF PUBLICATIONS Martin Wilcox EDITOR Peter Scisco WRITER Rob Bixby DESIGN AND LAYOUT Joanne Ferguson CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS Laura J. GibsonChris Wilson, 29 & Company

Copyright ©2003 Center for Creative Leadership.

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

CCL No. 421ISBN-13: 978-1-882197-78-1ISBN-10: 1-882197-78-X

Center for Creative LeadershipPost Office Box 26300Greensboro, North Carolina 27438-6300336-288-7210www.ccl.org/publicationspfeiffer.com/go/cclguidebooks

The Ideas into Action Guidebook Series

This series of guidebooks draws on the practical knowledge that the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL®) has generated in the course of more than thirty years of research and educational activity conducted in partnership with hundreds of thousands of managers and executives. Much of this knowledge is shared—in a way that is distinct from the typical university department, professional association, or consultancy. CCL is not simply a collection of individual experts, although the individual credentials of its staff are impressive; rather it is a community, with its members holding certain principles in common and working together to understand and generate practical responses to today's leadership and organizational challenges.

The purpose of the series is to provide managers with specific advice on how to complete a developmental task or solve a leadership challenge. In doing that, the series carries out CCL’s mission to advance the understanding, practice, and development of leadership for the benefit of society worldwide. We think you will find the Ideas Into Action Guidebooks an important addition to your leadership toolkit.

Executive Brief

Creative solutions can be challenged and defended in the pursuit of profitability. But first, creativity must be demystified. A process that targets innovation provides leaders with just such a problem-solving approach. The goal is to produce high-quality ideas that are appropriate to the task—which means groups and organizations can implement them with less risk.

Work with the targeted innovation process consists of activities in five areas: stating the problem in a way that encourages creative problem solving, learning and understanding different problem-solving styles, learning and understanding creative pathways and their relationship to problem solving, generating ideas, and evaluating those ideas.

Targeted innovation reconciles creativity with management. Managers can use it to solve problems that meet their organization’s call for innovative answers to current challenges.

What Is Practical Creativity?

Creativity is the ability to produce novel ideas, not the ability to reproduce existing ideas with only minor variations. So what is “practical” creativity?

Simply put, it’s an approach to generating ideas especially suited to organizational problem solving—a kind of targeted innovation. In its initial stages, the only leadership required is to push a team’s thinking beyond obvious answers. Any attempt at managing the process, except for encouraging freedom, may kill it. Once the team has generated ideas, they can be evaluated with an eye to practicality and other concerns. That is when management becomes important.

The targeted innovation process can be used to diagnose, generate, and apply different creative approaches to specific problems. The goal of the process is to produce high-quality ideas that can be implemented without undue risk because they are appropriate to the task. Managers can view the process as a series of steps, although there’s a good deal of flexibility in moving from one to another.

1. State the problem in a way that encourages creative problem solving.

2. Learn and understand different problem-solving styles.

3. Learn and understand the creative pathways and their relationship to problem solving.

4. Generate ideas.

5. Evaluate those ideas.

Why Is Practical Creativity Important?