Organising Creativity

Adam Jorlen Feb 2012adamjorlen.com

”The biggest issue at stake in this emerging age is the ongoing tension between creativity and organization.”

Richard Florida, Rise of the Creative Class

Background

The tension between individual and collaborative creativity

Staff engagement Humans are happiest when they’re

exercising their ingenuity.

Innovation Creativity + Action = Innovation

Why is creativity important in organisations?

Interdisciplinary research

1950s-70s – Personality of the creator

1980s: Social & Cultural Dimensions of creativity. Csikszentmihalyi’s systems approach

90s-00s: Collaboration and Group Dynamics, Collaborative emergence

Creativity research

Sawyer2009

Increased collaboration

Pre-70s 90s 00s80s

Everyone in the org

Several disciplines

and functions

One group – The R&D

team

One person – ”Lone Genius”

Google 20%

Innovation labs

Crowd-sourcing

The R&D team

Outside the org (customers,

suppliers etc)

”Skunk works”

Semco

”Collaborative webs”

Open innovation

Fisher- Price

10s

Successful initiatives in the past/present?

Who benefits from the creative work?

A critical view on the creators

What’s gained/lost along the way from ”lone genius” to ”wisdom of the crowd”?

The dark side of creativity

D H Cropley, A J Cropley, Kaufman & Runco 2010

1. How can managers organise creativity to benefit both their organisation and the eco-system of which it is a part?

2. What were/are the conditions in some successful initiatives of organising creativity in the past/present ?

3. How can managers ensure that the ”dark side” of creativity is avoided, i.e. that what emerges from the creative initiative benefits the eco-system of which the organisation is part?

Questions

”Lone Genius” Isolated group Innovation Lab Collaborative Organization Open innovation network

Phases…

Method Four-quadrant mapping of the conditions for creativity

Wilber, 2000

Intentional

•Psychology of the individual•Intrinsic/extrinsic motivation •Introversion / extroversion

Behaviour

•Skills•Behaviours

Culture

•Collaboration•Group dynamics•Groupthink•Brainstorming•Improvisation

Social system

-Officical strategies organisations undertake-Environment-Location (the core vs the edge)-Architecture

Method Four-quadrant mapping

A layered methodTo understand the depth of the creativity which emerges...

Inayatullah 1998

Type ”Lone Genius”

Isolated group

Innovation Lab

Collaborative Organization

Open innovation network

Creative initiative:

Edison’s lab Xerox PARC Mattel’s Project Platypus

Semco Open IDEO

Litany "Genius is one percent inspiration, and ninety-nine percent perspiration."

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."

” If we do not let people do things the way they do, we will never know what they are really capable of”

“Where people design better, together”

Systemic Causes

What are the socio-economic, technical, political, environmental etc drivers and trends which impacts on the initiative and organisation?

Worldview What are the worldviews of these initiatives and the organisations they are part of?

Myth/ metaphor

What are the underlying myths and metaphors?

A layered method