Barriers to Creativity and Innovation - An International Survey

Ideas are the source of innovations, and when creativity is blocked, we will not see many ideas and innovations in the pipeline.

Here is a worldwide survey that I conduct to uncover the key success factors that are missing in organisations.

The survey is presented below. Click on the blank box for the drop down list of response choices. It should take about 5 minutes to complete this.

These are some of the initial conclusions from the findings drawn from the survey:

Communication

Why is communication important as a building block in innovation? We are not talking about active listening. Neither are we alluding to the use of NLP. Rather, it is what people in organisations hear from the chatter. Sometimes, we call this chatter the organisational grapevine. Employees are more likely to believe in what comes out from the grapevine than from official sources. Mismanagement of the chatter has negative consequences and it could upset all good intentions of the leadership team has of innovation for the company:

• We have a very active grapevine in my company and I believe what comes out from it more than what my manager tells me.
• I have several sources in the grapevine that I get my information, and none of them are my immediate superiors.

Supporting Environment

Having a creative idea is easy. It is the translation of the idea into a prototype and subsequently into an innovation that is a challenge. The success of this conversion needs a supportive environment. Organisational members who encounter difficulties in the environment are less likely to stick their head out and innovate on the behalf of their company:

• My managers seemed to be resisting or blocking ideas that are not his/her own or which he/she sees as threatening to his/her own growth in the company.
• We have a ‘blame-culture’ in the company and I am afraid of making mistakes and lose my prospect of growth in the company.
• The organisational value of getting things right the first time has induced a fear of making mistakes in me.

Role-Based Performance

There is this on-going maxim in the jargons of management – what gets measured gets done. I have one to share too – when we use the wrong measurements we will get behaviours that are detrimental to the organisation. We have to be mindful of the incentives we introduce and these are some that fly into the face of innovation:

• The reward system recognises me for getting things done fast with no mistakes.
• Ideas that demonstrate real and concrete value on the on-set is more likely to get support from the company.

Resources

It is unlikely that the employees will fork out their own pocket money to do innovative work for their company, especially not during this inflationary phase of the economy. The company has to help and companies that are not willing are unlikely to bring out innovative solutions:

• There seems to be a lack of explicit funding for experimentation and prototyping.

Social Networks

A worker does not work in isolation. In fact, he/she is connected to his/her network. We could call these networks ‘cliques’, ‘groups’, ‘gangs’, or ‘teams’. The networks could be formal or informal but they all have cognitive and affective control over their members. Poor management of these networks could hamper the organisation’s ability to innovate:

• There is a suspicion of novelty, a fear of the unproven amongst my peers.
• There is an over allegiance to past successes, proven experience and tried and tested methods from where I come from.
• There is a resistance to learning from mistakes or doing by trial and error, a tendency to blame external factors or other people for failures in the office.
• There is a tendency to shoot down novel ideas as a way of scoring points in my office.

Capability and Capacity

It is natural that we, as humans, are creative. If not, we would not be here today. However, it is an art to be consistently creative and innovative. It is almost like saying that we can get a creative idea and an innovation on demand, at the switch of a button. Now, this is difficult if we do not have the capability and capacity to do these. In capability, we are concerned about the competency, and by capacity we look at motivation. Organisations that fit these descriptions do have an uphill task of innovating and beat their competitors:

• We are very concerned about cost containment, standardisation, consistency and efficiency, and we look for talents that help us in these areas.
• There is a wanting to analyse everything to death and to wait and see what others do in the office before acting.
• There is a drive to meet short term financial goals rather than investing in the future.

This article was first written on 19 Oct 2007 and updated on 30 April 2008 and 14 Mar 2010.

Copyright 2007, 2008 & 2011. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

Innovation Practitioners Singapore

I am starting an on-line community of practice of Innovation Practitioners in Singapore.

What is Innovation Practitioners Singapore?

This is a platform for Innovation Practitioners in Singapore to network, share and create sustainable transformation through creativity and innovation.

Purpose

Create an access for building sustainable corporations through creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

Vision

Ideological commitment towards corporate, human, and ecological sustainability.

Mission

• To help organisations attain sustainable performance throughinnovative sustainable management practices.
• To build human capability and skills for sustainable high level organisational performance, and to renew the quality of life of the workforce, community, and society.
• To add to the richness of the biosphere by protecting, maintaining and renewing the biological integrity of the planet.

Values

• You do not do anything you do not want others to do to you.
• When you feel it is not right, it is not necessary the same for us.
• Openness is in the space of the listener. Feel free to speak your mind.
• We help. We do not sell. Not everyone want us and it is alright.
• Do not give up when you did not get it right the first time. We are fighting a cause and not for our lives.

If you are keen to join this community, please signup below.

Subscribe to Innovation_Practitioners_Singapore
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Basic SCAMPER

For several years, I have been asking to do write up on SCAMPER on my blog. Now, here is my brief attempt at it.

SCAMPER, which was created by Bob Eberle, provides a checklist for refining an existing product and service. There several reasons why SCAMPER is used. These are to reduce the:

• Material cost for creating the product or service,
• Manufacturing cost for producing the product or service,
• Distribution cost for diffusing the product or service to the customers,
• Storage cost for keeping the product or service to balance demand, and
• Propensity of product and service reaching the end stage of their life in the market.

From the principles of SCAMPER, I have developed a set of Let's SCAMPERTM cards in 2008.

SCAMPER stands for:

S - Substitute - If we don't use this, what else could we use in place of this?

Over the last 100 years, the global sea level has risen by about 10 to 25 cm. The Earth's climate will warm by at least 1 degree by the year 2100 and the seas will rise by 11 cm. The warming is likely to continue through 2400 even if pollution stops today. We could face the worst-case scenario of global average temperature rising by 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit within this century resulting to sea level climbing by a foot or more.

There is a need to reduce these emissions and prevent the continuous lost of coastal land and habitats, and biomass may provide the alternative source of fuel to petroleum.

C - Combine - Could we put two or more together?

Ask anyone who bakes and they will tell you how nightmare-ish it is using the measuring spoons. Wouldn't it be a joy in baking when the complexity of using the spoons is taken out of the process by combining the spoon heads into just two that ride on sliders?

A - Adapt - Could we change it slightly and use it else where?

When come to adaptation, no other product does it as well as Listerine.

‘Listerine was invented in the 19th century as a powerful surgical antiseptic. It was later sold, in a distilled form, as a floor cleaner and a cure for gonorrhea. But it wasn't a runaway success until the 1920s, when it was pitched as a solution for "chronic halitosis", the faux medical term that the Listerine advertising group created in 1921 to describe bad breath.

By naming and thus creating a medical condition for which consumers now felt they needed a cure, Listerine created a market for their mouthwash. Until that time, bad breath was not conventionally considered a catastrophe, but Listerine's ad campaign changed that.

As the advertising scholar James B. Twitchell writes, "Listerine did not make mouthwash as much as it made halitosis." Listerine's new ads featured forlorn young women and men, eager for marriage but turned off by their mate's rotten breath. "Can I be happy with him in spite of that?" one maiden asked herself. In just seven years, the company's revenues rose from $115,000 to more than $8 million.’ Source: Freakonomics. Listerine most recent addition is the whitening formula.

M - Modify - Could we modify its attributes to save on its costs and extend its life?

We are all too familar with the calculator. The sale of the first electronic desktop calculator began in the early 1960s and quickly became a commodity by late 1970s. The first microprocessor was developed originally as a calculator chip, which served as a springboard for an entire industry.


Modern calculators are electrically powered and have morphed in countless shapes and sizes varying from cheap, give-away, credit-card sized models to more sturdy adding machine-like models with built-in printers to extend it life and usefulness in the market. There are calculator softwares that could be uploaded onto the personal computers.

P - Put to another use

'Put is another use' is similar to 'recycle' and 'reuse' but we do not change the physical characteristics or attributes of the original product or service. We just take it lock, stock and barrel and apply it else where.

Sodium bicarbonate is used in baking where it reacts with other ingredients to release carbon dioxide to help ‘raise’ the dough. Sodium bicarbonate (or ‘NaHCO3’). Is a salt with many other names including sodium hydrogencarbonate, sodium bicarb, baking soda, bread soda, cooking soda, bicarb soda or bicarbonate of soda.

Baking soda has been put to many different uses without the need to change its Alkaline characteristics.

E - Eliminate - Could we remove its elements?

ELIMINATE - to go where it can’t be before

Recently the head of the US based MIT Media Lab, Mr. Nicholas Negroponte presented a prototype of the 100 dollar laptop to UN Chairman Kofi Annan at the WSIS-summit in Tunis.

This little bright green laptop can do almost anything a current laptop computer can, but, by using mass-produced cheap components, omitting expensive moving parts, and by the law of great numbers can be made for just one tenth of its price.

The price in the title is no mistake: this machine can be made for just 100 US dollars (S$148).

Source: http://www.bohol.ph/article116.html

R - Reverse - Could we turn it inside out or upside down?

Many things could provide fresh perspectives when we reverse it inside out or turn it upside down. Could we turn a piece of art upside down to give it a brand new feel? Could we print on the blank side of a piece of printed paper to recycle it? Here are some other examples of things on the reverse.

Copyright 2007. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved