The Value of Creativity

Researchers at 3M are allowed and encouraged to spend 15% of their time pursuing any idea that interests them. This policy of 15% of time for creativity has dramatically boosted 3M’s profits many times with breakthrough new products.

Henry Ford once hired an efficiency expert to go through his plant to identify non-productive people. The expert found only one, a man who was always just sitting at his desk with his feet propped up each time the expert passed his office. The expert recommended to Ford that this employee should be fired. Ford responded, “I can’t fire him. I pay him to do nothing but think.”

Creativity is the spark that ignites fires at your business or organization.

At times like these, when economic stability is volatile, when consumers are cautious about spending and businesses are nervously watching black ink turn red, it is easy to forget to place a value on creativity.

When threatened by a declining marketplace, most business owners and CEOs are afraid to take risks. Yet, it is only through risk, testing new ideas, exploring new products, encouraging inventiveness and inspiring originality that there is a real potential for growth.

When you provide an environment where creativity and imagination are allowed, encouraged, and rewarded, you will find new ways to energize your business or organization and propel it to new levels of success.

Embrace Failure. The risk side of creativity is that there are rarely overnight successes. The tendency to try something and then move on if success isn’t achieved immediately needs to be replaced with a commitment to continue to improve and build on the idea until it reaches its potential.

Thomas Edison claims to have never had a failure, but to have had 10,000 ideas that didn’t work. For most companies the failure to have a commitment to testing of new ideas and new marketing approaches is the biggest contributing factor to lackluster growth and stagnation.

A company with a culture of success is one that looks at a failed experiment or test and sees ways to change it to improve the outcomes. Nearly every indispensable product used by today’s consumers went through years of development failures followed by initial marketing failures before becoming huge successes.

Volkswagen attempted to sell it’s “Beetle” car in the U.S. for six years before a brilliant marketing campaign by New York agency Doyle, Dane, Bernbach launched it into one of the best-selling automobiles of the 1960s. More recently Toyota followed suit when it introduced the popular hybrid, the Prius, to the U.S. market in 2001. For several years sales in the U.S. were slow and unprofitable. But Toyota persevered and today Prius owns the market for hybrid cars. This year dealers can’t keep them in stock.

Impatience and lack of understanding about the importance of the testing and refinement needed to create breakthrough products and strategies prevents companies from being leaders.

Challenge the Status Quo. Leaders of successful businesses frequently get so confident in their success that they fail to recognize the potential of new ideas. Thomas J. Watson, Jr., former CEO of IBM, said he could think of no reason why individuals would ever need computers. Which is probably why IBM turned away a young Bill Gates and his new software. Likewise, both Atari and Hewlett-Packard said “No” to a young Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak who tried to give them the idea for the Apple computer in exchange for being hired.

When your employees, or people outside your business, come to you with crazy ideas, take the time to envision the potential of a breakthrough that can open up new markets. Albert Einstein said “If at first the idea is not absurd, there is no hope for it.” Complacency kills creativity. What ridiculous idea could be the breakthrough you’re looking for?

Solve Problems. Innovation happens when problems need solutions. Great innovation happens when someone solves a problem that hasn’t yet been acknowledged. One of 3M’s most successful products is the Post-It™. The idea came to one of their scientists, Art Fry, who sang in his church choir and used loose pieces of paper to mark songs in his hymnal. They fell out.

Another 3M scientist, Spencer Silver, had accidentally created an adhesive that didn’t stick very well. Art Fry thought about using it on paper, and after some trial and error it stuck just enough to stay in place while being able to be removed later without damage. One man’s minor irritation led to the solution of a problem that no one had ever identified. Post-Its™ are now a mainstay in every office and one of the most prolific communication tools.

It took 3M six years to successfully launch the product. In 1981 sales were about $2 million. Two years later they had grown to $45 million. By 1998 sales were $1 billion a year.

Do Reverse Thinking. One way to stimulate creativity is to challenge the way you think. This is especially effective at meetings. Instead of asking, “what can you do?” ask, “What can’t you do?” Thinking in reverse or opposites lets you see a problem, challenge or product in a completely different perspective.

New perspectives fuel new ideas. Corning Glass Company created Corelle dinnerware as a result of Corning CEO Thomas MacAvoy observing, “Glass breaks. Do something about that.” Instead of accepting the obvious, look for ways to change the obvious.

A similar approach was employed by General Electric. In a quest to be more productive the directive “How can we speed up operations?” was given to managers. It led to no worthwhile results. When the directive changed to “How can you accomplish the work in half the time?” new ideas came pouring forth and the results were achieved.

Another effective way to use reverse thinking is the “What If” scenario. Take the problems that confront your business and create a list of “What If” action points such as “What if I target just 20-somethings?” “What if I combine it with something else?” “What if I make my advertising funny?”, etc. Compile a long list of “What Ifs” and you’ll be amazed at how you change the way you think.

Play Games. Company meetings focused around the playing of games can stimulate creativity. It takes us back to the kind of thinking we did at age 5 when life hadn’t yet killed our enthusiasm for thinking in silly and curious ways.

One of the most well known games for creativity is the baking soda game where people are asked to list all the ways to use this ordinary household product. (Websites abound – some listing as many as 60 – 500 ways!).

Try this game for your product or service and list how many ways it can be of value to potential customers.

Or use metaphor games. Examining your product or service, and looking for new ways to solve problems in management, growth, or innovation through metaphors inspires you to look at things differently.

Some of the most effective metaphors are sports, music, the military, and gardening. Talking about your business in different terms gives you new insights into how it functions, where it has weaknesses, where it has strengths, and why creativity is not flourishing.

Testing shows that we reach our peak of creativity at around the age of 5. From age 5 – 17 there is a drastic drop in creativity. By the time we are adults, only about 2% of individuals are creative.

Why is creativity so important to the success of your business? Financial resources, and people with the proper training and experience are readily available and easy to come by. People with ideas are much harder to find and ideas are the main asset for any business. With them, there are no limits to what you can accomplish. Without them, you are destined to always be a follower.

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