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.