Continuous Learning. Managing Creativity and Innovation by: Islam Mahrous (Director of Six sigma) & Mohamed Ghanem (IT Manager)

Every Child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. Pablo Picasso

* Creativity is not only a talent exercised by individuals alone- it is also a process any group can learn to apply
* This topic shows you how to manage an intellectually diverse work group and the environment in which they work to produce more , and better, ideas that support innovation in product development and other work processes

•Is your group having trouble generating new business ideas?
•Is the group thinking too much along traditional lines, or having difficulty thinking very far down the road?
•Is your group reluctant to take risks?
•What can you do as a manager? Are there steps you can take to change such patterns of behavior?

Definitions of Creativity and Innovation
•Creativity is a process of developing and expressing novel ideas that are likely to be useful.
•Innovation is the embodiment, combination, and/or synthesis of knowledge in original, relevant, valued new products, processes, or services

Embedded in these definitions are three key insights
•Creativity is not so much a talent as it is a goal-oriented process.
•Creativity involves convergent as well as divergent thinking.
•An innovation is the end result of the creative process

Creativity is not so much a talent as it is a goal-oriented process.
Making your group more innovative is not a matter of importing a few people who have creative character traits, and then relying on these folks for all your breakthrough ideas. Rather, it’s a matter of designing a collaborative approach that maximizes everyone’s distinctive gifts, experience, and expertise. Moreover, the purpose or goal of the creative process is the solving of a particular problem or the satisfying of a specific need
Creativity involves convergent as well as divergent thinking
The creative process begins with divergent thinking—a breaking away from familiar or established ways of seeing and doing that produces novel ideas. Convergent thinking occurs in the later stages of the process. As the original ideas generated by the divergent thinking are communicated to others, they are evaluated to determine which ideas are genuinely novel and worth pursuing. The outcome of this convergent thinking is the choice of an option that has the potential for solving the problem that initiated the creative process
An innovation is the end result of the creative process
Again, creativity is a process you employ to improve your problem solving. So you’re not done until your creative efforts have produced a product, service, or process that answers the original need or solves the problem you identified at the outset

Key Misconceptions
•The smarter you are, the more creative you are
•The young are more creative than the old
•Creativity is reserved for the few—the flamboyant, high rollers
•The creative act is essentially solitary
•You can’t manage creativity

When all men think alike, no one thinks very much. Walter Lippmann

Different Thinking Styles
Extroverted people look to other people as the primary means of processing information.
Introverted people tend to process information internally first before presenting the results to others.
Sensing people tend to prefer hard data, concrete facts—information that is closely tied to the five senses.Intuitive people are more comfortable with ideas and concepts, with the "big picture."
Thinking people prefer logical processes and orderly ways of approaching problems.Feeling people are more attuned to emotional cues; they are more likely to make decisions based on the values or relationships involved.
Judging people tend to prefer closure—they like having all the loose ends tied up.

By contrast, perceiving people like things more open; they tend to be more comfortable with ambiguity and often want to collect still more data before reaching a decision.

Don’t get hung up on the actual word used to describe a particular tendency. Everyone exhibits all eight of these tendencies, but they do it in varying degrees. For example, it’s not that a feeling person is incapable of logical thought—rather, it’s that his thinking about a decision tends to be guided by the emotional impact of that decision on key relationships.

Enriching the Physical Environment
•Truly creative environments are notable for the variety of art, toys, and reading material they contain
•How might you encourage casual conversations that lead to creative ideas?
•What tools might you supply to encourage better communication?
•What types of media do team members respond to?

Steps for Fostering Creative Conflict: Depersonalizing Issues
1.Grant legitimacy to others and assume the best about them.
2.Allow all parties to the conflict a chance to speak.
3.Seek to understand the differences between individuals.
4.Reconcile the various actions/decisions desired by taking into account all the data and interpretations uncovered.

Steps for Promoting Creative Conflict: Surfacing Unspoken Issues
•Create a climate that makes people willing to discuss difficult issues
•Facilitate the discussion
•Move toward closure by discussing what can be done.



Steps for Enhancing Your Own Creative Potential
•Strive for alignment.
•Pursue some self-initiated activity
•Take advantage of unofficial activity
•Be open to serendipity
•Diversify your stimuli.
•Create opportunities for informal communication




Tips for Brainstorming Sessions
•You may want to include some customers, non customers, or competitor’s customers in the brainstorming session.
•Be sure to provide any supporting infrastructure needed—flip charts, a table covered in paper used for doodling and note taking, or even an electronic whiteboard
•In coming up with possible solutions or ideas, be as concrete as possible. You may want to draw or represent some of the ideas visually.
•Don’t assume that it’s business as usual, that this problem or challenge is similar to ones that have come before.
•Set high aspirations—stretch goals for what you’d like your group to achieve
•Don’t fall in love with the first possible solution you create—generate as many ideas as you can before evaluating and prioritizing them.
•Remember: productive brainstorming sessions are the result of skillful facilitation.



The list of outlawed killer phrases.
•We’ve never done it that way before….
•It won’t work…
•We haven’t the time…
•We are not ready for it…
•What will the customer think?….
•Too old fashion…
•You don’t understand our problem…
•Yes but………We’ve never used that appropriate before…etc



What you do after the brainstorm?
Turning ideas into action must be integral part of the brainstorming session