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BANANAS

Always enter the process with a Smile

Entering the creative process without the fear to fail. During the first assignment in class we got to draw a self portrait and sign with our name on it, left-handed and upside down. Fun to do.

Way to challenge our minds!

SUMMARY

COMPETE WITH CREATIVITY

Jeff B.R. Gaspersz

Creativity is an enabler to think and see differently, allowing us to answer the question, “How can we do it better, smarter and more productively?”.

Once we get more productive, we can continue delivering to our customers. In this process of finding more ways to be more productive meanwhile staying innovative, there are several opinions, sometimes conflict arises due to this pursuit. Still, there is also an awareness that the conflict of opinions and ideas can produce new oportunities.

Sometimes we expect new ideas to come in the rush of a meeting or when we demand ourselves to think out our brains out into it, but the truth is that it mostly happens during the exchange of information and opinions with others. “In the corridors, over lunch and even on the intranet lively discussions about new ideas occur”.

The article also talks about how Creativity is handled in organizations and suggests three levels of the hourglass: A. Creativity-stimulating climate, B. Creative thinking skills, C. Idea management.

It stands that a good creative climate, must be consolidated so people can come up with ideas before they get killed. It also refers to a study by Stern and Robinson, on the generation of valuable ideas that notes that it is impossible to predict where a golden idea will come from. Any member of the organization, even those not expected to bring any special ideas forward, can suddenly submit a precious suggestion. Therefore, by making assumptions about who might make a creative contribution, a company will limit its own creative potential.

Management must include anybody in the invitation to suggest new ideas. One of the examples given comes from a statement of an employee that stated: “My job was to select the best ideas and the best people from 300,000 employees. That is what a leader must do”.

“A rigid ‘this-is-how-we-do-it-here’ attitude can dominate in closed, conformist organizational cultures with tight, uniform norms and values, and considerable recruitment from within”.

When the culture of Creativity permeates the whole organization and cuts through hierarchical levels, the employees start to exchange in groups, and Cross-fertilization occurs spontaneously.

It is important to pay attention to how much time the organization is willing to spend to generate new ideas. Enough time would bring some rewards. “Precisely when our competitors have higher productivity, we need to free up time to answer creativity-stimulating questions like: How could we work more effectively or efficiently?”

Creativity allows us to look differently at matters like workflow, processes, and management styles. “At Coca-Cola, creativity is not an ‘epiphany du jour’. It is not something we propagate as the campaign of the month. It’s not just an invitation to a creativity facilitator. Creativity is what we put into practice 365 days a year.”

Then it becomes a discipline reflected in how one person interacts with another. It is in every step along the way how we approach and work with others.

In the creative sector, with organizations working on advertising, architecture, concepting and so on, Creativity is taken for granted. It is a way of living. So it is up to each organization to continuosly look for that “benevolent anarchism”, Where everyone is willing and allowed to express doubts and feeling about what they are doing and how they are doing it.

The reading also relates to how Creativity is being handled in governmental institutions and gives a glimpse of some opportunities to support creative processes in the Netherlands. One of them is that government could promote closer relations with the creative industries. Another one is to acknowledge those organizations that are doing well in terms of Creativity. Also, talk about inviting experts to boost some ideas to address challenges in the public and private sector.

The author gives an example of the city of Groningen, which has given their community several features to come with a great creative potential; involving people of diverse backgrounds, in education, in the cultural sector, and also innovative companies in ICT and life sciences sectors. Also stimulating creative thinking in teaching programs, such as “Learning to think creatively” in some Dutch schools.

DESIGN THINKING

On this article from Harvard Business Review, Tim Brown approaches Design Thinking froma creative perspective, thinking as a designer in every process to develop products or services.

First, the author recalls how Thomas Edison used to work, unrevealing his very secret of success, putting away the so called “lone genius inventor” and looking at the fact that he was sorrounded by a team of great thinkers. A “team-based approach to innovation”. The author makes its point into one of the big miths of creativity from the beginning.

Then he goes into the workflow of the design itself. The author states that it is very importanto to rapid prototyping and testing. “Prototypes of a service innovation will of course not be physical, but they must be tangible.” Some innovators often videotape the performance of prototyped services. Also important to consider that this prototyping fase should take as less resources as vital to generate helpful feedback and give some critical insights into the idea. Anothe good tip for prototyping is that “the more “finished” a prototype seems, the less likely its creators will be to pay attention to and profit from feedback.”

As a very good point to take in mind, the article talks about applying a human-centered design methodology, where people create for people, having in mind all the complexity that comes with it, and knowing that a small process into innovation can provoke an outsized impact.

Concept of "FLOW"

GREAT LECTURES, HERE ARE SOME

INSIGHTS

Conecting points of knowledge and being naive enough to trust the ideas that come out of the mix of them.

Brainstorm: To have an idea being transformed by others and given a different perspective.

Let the person with the less importance in the room, share his/her idea first. Sometimes the Status Quo inflicts into perceptions and opinions of others.

Creating SAFETY is a very important topic to work on a creative environment.

The CULTURE Cycle

– SIDE NOTES

INNOVATION

Culture is the priority when it comes to innovation. You can have a strategy to go for, but the culture can enable or erase it. “Culture eats strategy for lunch”.

We must take in account that the competitive advantage in an organization is only temporary, meanwhile the Culture of an organization is UNIQUE and its only advantage.

The Culture is so important because of the social norms, they move people to do and behave. People don´t want to be different, they want to fit in the group and be accepted, being different and stepping out involves vulnerability. For this the Culture reflects on the needs and behavior of individuals.

This book tackles the complexity of managing creativity from the inside of a creative company. They are aware that maintaining a creative culture is not as easy as it may appear in an environment of talented people and those ones who are expected to come with creative ideas. The journey for Pixar struggling with the human complexity brings so many learnings in explicit examples, for instance, the fact that they had to change the shape of a table for the brainstorming sessions becoming more welcoming to some people that were not allowed to speak (they had not even noticed this situation, until one day they discovered a lot of people were being left aside in the room). Or the fact that leaving the door of the office opened did not lead to any solution for making people reach their boss at any time.

They discovered that a sustainable creative culture is a day-in-day-out, full-time job. Mainly, when the principal resource of profit for this company was the mind of those talented creatives and their ideas bringing together movie masterpieces.

The challenges that Pixar faced during the face of escalation of the company make me see in a mirror much of our behavior in our own organization. How we intent in a clumsy way to manage people choices or desitions regarding culture,

and overseeing some other variants that really come into the game; as those when dealing with people who are working with a different kind of contract; as freelancers, and their relations with others who are full-time workers.