Roll on Monday…

But I believe that ‘creativity by committee’ only works when you have a group of very well-rounded individuals with ‘can-do’ attitudes.

If an Account Executive, Creative Team, Project Manager and Production Manager can sit down…appreciate, understand, build on and accept one another’s ideas, perspectives and parameters…and CREATIVELY conceptualize the client’s message on budget and on time…you have Nirvana.

Or rather, you’re half way there. In execution, when each individual concentrates their efforts on their own expertise, and it all comes together, you have creative bliss.

I think that’s a point most of us Creatives (or at least myself) fail to make when we say “Leave the creativity to the Creatives.” Most good creative professionals I know won’t turn down ideas from any source. Our fear of brainstorms (or at least mine) is the dreaded creativity by committee, which is usually not so much creative as it is a popularity contest. (This is esp. true if “the boss” is involved and you have a team that is too afraid to say no to “the boss”, even if the idea is a stinker.)

Creativity is the ability to create something that wasn’t there before. We’ve all got that.

Is all creative action artistic, innovative, inspired, or even original? No, of course not. But it’s pretty closed-minded to think that the only people in a company who are creative are the “creatives.” That’s only the creative folks who wanted to spend their days working in that way.

As to natural: Some people are given a head start at birth. Some people work really hard and develop their creativity.

Having said that: I’m not a fan of regular brainstorming, but I am a fan of open communication, and sometimes a brainstorming session can be good for that.

So can a comment box. Or an email address for great ideas coming in from other departments, as long as the creatives are open to reading and considering the ideas.

Let creatives do their work, just as engineers (etc.) expect to be allowed to do their own. But be open to the fact that cool ideas sometimes come from folks who have brilliant thought at midnight, folks who don’t see creativity as their daily drudgery.

Regards,

Kelly

and/or read this blog: http://www.matthewemay.com/elegant_solutions/2008/10/everyday-innovation.html

Or read the Paula Deen story: http://www.pauladeen.com/about_paula

I also want to share two quotes:

“When people ask me where I get my ideas, I laugh. How strange – we’re so busy looking out, to find ways and means, we forget to look in…All that is most original lies waiting for us to summon it forth. And yet we know it is not as easy as that….Embarrassment, self-consciousness, remembered criticisms, can stifle the average person so that less and less in his lifetime can he open himself out.”
Ray Bradbury-Author

“Individual creativity is very intimate and personal. So, it’s important to learn how to listen to your own instincts, to listen to your inner voice-or find your inner voice-so that your self-expression becomes authentic and grounded and not simply a function of what you think people want to hear,what’s fashionable or what you think you should do as a life-long task…. Creativity is very much about being intimate with yourself, but also a number of things that, frankly, are difficult, if not sometimes impossible, to articulate.”
John Kao -Innovator, Artist, Author of ”Innovation Nation”

Creativity is inherent in the human person.

Those who have honed their abilities to capitalize on this trait are the creative specialists. The one’s that go a step further, risk and implement these ideas are innovators (and I’m not talking innovating only on a corporate level; ref: Matthew E. May’s blog above).

I think the problem is that we, the specialists, have created this aura around being creative, that we are the custodians of the muse. I believe we are crippling our collective creativity by thinking in this way.

I don’t say this flippantly, but people are creative and innovative every day both at home and at work (and unfortunately often less at work!)

@Jim Cook is right on!

People use creativity to deal with failing health, broken products, shortage of funds, broken relationships, getting food, entertainment, and myriads of other things. People lack the knowledge, skills, money and fortitude to commercialize their creativity, but is it absent? Never.

Mark says, “the success of a brainstorm depends highly on the ability of the ‘chairperson’ to direct the brainstorm and make sure everybody feels comfortable and is inspired.”

Unfortunately, I don’t believe any person can *make* every individual in a group brainstorming feel comfortable and/or inspired. And besides, the goal of brainstorming is idea generation and preferably good idea generation. (I’m avoiding discussing idea selection which often gets lumped into brainstorming only to brainstorming’s detriment)

There *are* ways of leveraging the creativity of others- of those who aren’t specialists per se, but who with minimum knowledge of a situation can provide magnificent insights if not outright solutions, but it’s not necessarily in the context of regular team brainstormings.

BTW, I’m not advocating the elimination of brainstorms per se. Bouncing ideas off others, seeing what others have done is a good thing. But humans have motivations, fears, dreams. All this comes into play when doing traditional brainstormings and without addressing these needs even seasoned specialists can be less fruitful in brainstorming sessions. Please read the first three pages of this paper to see some scientific insights into brainstorming:
http://zenstorming.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/cognitive-problems-with-brainstorming.pdf

So, to wrap up this mini-tome, ultimately, what I’m advocating is using alternate techniques that “virtualize” brainstorming which minimizes participant issues and therefore maximizes creative output from all people involved.

I mean, c’mon! We’re all creative types, right? Why have we dogmatized some method that’s 70 years old as being cutting edge? Why are we not willing to explore and entertain other more efficient methods for coming up with ideas?

I think if we do, we’ll find the results will surprise us!

Isn’t creativity something other than artistic expression? Creating a beautiful piece of artwork is a type of creative expression, however my dictionary describes the verb to create as:

“to cause to come into being, as something unique that would not naturally evolve or that is not made by ordinary processes.”

The ability to think of different systems for processing the paperwork in order to save the company money, and the ability to reinvent the company’s position in the marketplace, and the ability to take the status quo and see past it – aren’t these all examples of creativity.

I think our school systems teaches us to not be creative, to not think independently. We are taught to take in info and spit it out – there’s nothing creative about that. However, people can learn to be creative, to “think outside the box” (although I hate that expression, and if I were being creative at the moment, I would come up with a different trite expression to insert here).

If you really want to have creative input from everyone, present them with the problem or situation. Ask them to go think on it awhile, brainstorm it independently, and have them submit their answers anonymously. This takes the social pressure off, reduces the chances of watered down ideas, and allows everyone to be heard.

Personally, while I may come up with good ideas, in a group setting I am more inclined to listen than to participate. Even if some people feel pressure, I would feel the desire to learn from others, rather than put out ideas that may not be embraced by the group.

Thanks for these thought-provoking posts!

~Kimberlee

Oh, and without the help of people who are far removed from the ‘creative’ types, I would not be able to do my job. Ironically, the most important thing I do in my job is get the information right. When that’s right, and approved, a client has a hard time saying ‘no’ to the proposed creative solution. In my experience, I mean. Finally, I work best pretty much alone – no brainstorming sessions in big conference rooms for me. Just give me a legal pad and a pen, or a keyboard, and I’ll write anything. Well.