Creativity of Corporate Excellence

                                                                          

Creativity of Corporate Excellence

According to Henry Ward Beecher “The ability to convert ideas to things is the secret of success.”

                                         

Creativity is the set of attitudes, abilities and mental processes that increase the probability of hitting upon solutions that seem to the well informed both novel and appropriate.  Creative persons tend to have a lot of curiosity and sensitivity. Curiosity and sensitivity get them excited about unusual happenings. They also tend to be risk taking. The risk taking ability is useful because creative work is often risky, with uncertain outcomes.  Creativity can be defined in a simple manner in terms of the output of creative effort. 

            Creativity may be defined as the discovery or production of something that is novel and also useful or economical, or valuable.  Change is the essence of creativity. Creativity has person ability to restructure problems in interesting ways. Flexibility is a key to creativity related ability. The ability to guess the causes of problems. Making accurate forecasts is the ability to guess. Consequences are also creativity.

            The central values of creativity are curiosity, sensitivity, complexity, entrepreneurship, independence, reality contact, experimentation, persistent striving for distant goals, etc. Mindset change or work culture change is frequently essential in a traditional organization trying to become innovative. Creativity is a resource of high competitive value, but is underutilizing in most organizations. ‘The corporations that will survive, and thrive in the future, are those that foster creativity today’.  

Dimensions of Creativity

·         Originality: Originality is the crown of creative intelligence. There is research evidence that ideational fluency and flexibility frequently yield original solutions.  An advantage that enjoys over the individual is that management can seek original solutions by inducing several persons. Today, in the hyper competitive corporate sector, competitive advantage belongs to the companies that develop unique business strategies and internal operating systems. Thus, originality is an important competitive advantage. It can be secured through teamwork that taps the full spectrum of creative intelligence.   

·         Conceptual Flexibility: Flexibility is a key to creativity-related ability, for as someone has put it, the eye altering alters all. Flexibility can be cultivated. In human interaction problems – such as dealing with an annoyed customer or a colleague – putting oneself into the shoes of the other can provide a new understanding of what the problem is. The so-called 360 degree performance appraisal of managers, when shared with the managers, can provide the manager with multiple eyes to see how he or she performed.   

·         Guessing: The ability to guess the causes of problems or situations is, of course, the ability that distinguishes a first-rate scientific mind from a mediocre one. Guessing is nothing but forming hypotheses about how or why a phenomenon has occurred.  Equally important is the ability of guessing correct consequences in ambiguous situations. In human resource management, too, good guessing ability is quite an asset, for if the causes of why a management system like an incentive system works better than another can be more accurately guessed, remedial action could be faster and more accurate.    

·         Elaboration: Taking an idea or a thing and bending and stretching it in interesting ways is elaborative ability. Creative elaboration can yield uniquely designed end products. Human resource management is full of tools and techniques. Each of these is an elaboration of an insight. The idea that if management gets vital information about the employee performance, and operation of the organization then remedial action can be faster has led to computerized human resource information system.  The idea that money is a motivator of effort has led to all sorts of elaborate incentive systems.  Goal-oriented thinking is useful in elaboration.

·         Creativity Training: There are substantial evidence  that creative training ‘works’ it enhances the abilities associate with creativity, particularly the capacity for divergent or lateral thinking. Through training programmes, in many creativity workshops, the personality of the participants is measured before the workshop and at the end, and it is found that a noticeable shift in most participants towards the traits that characterize the creative person.     

·         Visualization: The creative persons also tend to be imaginative and visionary, that is, capable of visualizing alternative orders of things, a trait that enables them to be receptive to the larger meanings and relevance of acts.

·         Convergent Thinking: Convergent thinking consists of those abilities which enable one to reach a right solution to problems which mostly have one right solution. Problems that may potentially have plural solutions require the exercise of convergent thinking mechanism. The mechanisms of convergent thinking may be outlined as analysis, synthesis and optimization, etc.  

·         Divergent Thinking:  It involves approaches or perspectives that may be uncommon or unusual, resulting in novel solutions.  Divergent thinking directs one’s thinking away from the narrow confines or limits of a given problem. It allows thoughts to diverge towards or wander into other related areas. It is characterized by an absence of judgmental or logically evaluative yes-no, correct or incorrect response processes.   

·         Generating New Ideas: The creative thinking process requires the use of systematic approaches for the generation of creative ideas. Owing to high values and often far-reaching significance of creativity, numerous methods for its facilitation have been developed, and continue to be developed in centers of learning and in leading companies across the world. 

·         Brainstorming: Brainstorming is perhaps the most popular creativity technique. It means a group of persons discussion to produce ideas or conclude one idea. Brainstorming has come now to mean freewheeling discussion. But freewheeling discussion is almost the opposite of the technique of brainstorming. In brainstorming, the attempt is to define the problem clearly and make sure that everyone engaged in brainstorming has a shared understanding of what the problem is. Participants in brainstorming are encouraged to build on each other’s ideas. In a brainstorm, a specific problem is first introduced. The problem must be quite specific, and capable of many alternative solutions.     

·         Brainchild: It means an own idea or invention thought up by a particular person. An original idea or plan attributed to a person or group. It means a product of one’s creative thinking and work. After generating an idea we believe is original, we want it to be credited as original and receive recognition for it.      

·         Metaphoric Thinking: Creative persons often redefine problems by using some form of analogy or metaphor. These provide a form of escape from the traditional approaches. Japanese companies imaginatively use the metaphor of tree to define their technological strategy and planning. The roots of the tree are the generic technologies of wide applicability.  

·         Innovative Ideas: Ideas are unpredictable. When would they occur, or flash through one’s mind, is also unpredictable.  Innovative means the creation of new values and new satisfaction for the customers. Innovative describes creating new thinking ideas. Innovation has two distinct phases. The first phase involves the design of the innovation. The design phase is marked by much divergent thinking and creativity, brainstorming, searching for alternatives, and so forth. The second phase of innovation is implementation. The need is not so much for divergent, creative thinking as for putting the chosen innovation to work. Much planning needs to be done, careful coordination and control and evaluation of progress.        

                The key elements of the creative personality are certain traits and motives, and the absence of certain mental blocks. Mental blocks are serious impediments to creativity.  Certain motives play a significant role in the case of creative persons. Creativity in organizations is a continuous activity of findings and solving problems, and creating and implementing of new solutions.

Certain motives play a significant role in the case of creative managers. While managers, particularly human resource development professionals, have a strong desire to succeed, to achieve, to get ahead, to be ahead, to be respected, and  so forth, creative  managers have a strong desire to actualize their potential, do something new, unique, pioneering or innovative. Such motives have, however, landed creative managers in the soup in conservative culture.          

               Creativity that takes the form of new ideas, concepts, principles, break through view points are the essence of creativity. In management, it commonly takes the form of fresh, new core policies, strategies, values and visions. The techniques used across corporations the world over for fine creative solutions to complex and difficult problems associated with technology development innovation, product development, formulation and implementation of company strategies, logistics and work operations. 

            Technologically creativity is well-known in the forms of patents. No management is possible without creative communication like advertisement, sales promotion, packages, public relations, product design, internal décor, landscaping and architecture. In the creative communication visualization is a powerful technique in creative communication. Creativity is about raising the quality of organizational existence enlarging consciousness, actualizing potential, growing and developing in ways that increasingly manifest the inherent humanity.

             Management innovations continued to supplement even accelerate, economic development in the 21^st Century. The American invented scientific management, mass assembly line production, divisionlization, matrix structure and systems of professional management of major business functions such as strategic management, strategic human resource management, financial management, operational management, marketing management. They also invented large number of tools and techniques of operations, human resource management and financial management. Management innovations continued to accelerate economic development in the 21^st Century.

            Creativity is mostly applied creativity, everything we wear, every product we use, the language we are communicating in science and technology our professions arts, crafts and literature, institution like family, schools the state are products of human inventions and creativity.

             

Tools of Creative Interaction:

There are several ways to increase the likelihood of creative;

• Listening:   Lending one’s ears wholly to others is an important factor of listening. Being attentive, not merely to the words, but also to the feelings that underlie words, is also useful. It is extremely useful to help him or her unburden feelings or anger, frustration, anxiety, guilty, etc. 
• Empathy:  A  major barrier to effective interaction is premature evaluation of what a person saying.
• Feedback: Often, at about this stage, the other person may ask you for your feelings and opinions.
• Evocative Questions: Questions can be hostile, designed to ferret out the truth or trap the other person, or they can be creative, evoking from the other person his own ideas and experiences that can lead to creative solutions. 
• Analogies: A  person can see a problem from a fresh perspective with the help of analogies.           

In a dynamic environment, a rigid orthodoxy frequently lands a society into slavery or submission to a more innovative society. Difficult though it is to change one’s personality and make it more creativity-friendly, it is not impossible. Mahatma Gandhi was brought up in a 19^th century in his persistent experiments in the search for truth in South Africa, and his exposure to Indian rural poverty, and decadence led him to develop traits and motives compatible with innovativeness, and to shed his blocks. This self-designed transformation enabled him to emerge as one of the greatest innovative leaders of all time, with huge impacts on the downtrodden, economic activity, social practices like untouchablility, work ethic, and of course, the successful struggle of Indians for independence from British rule.     

Environment also stimulates creative behaviour. A stimulating diverse challenging environment seems to nurture creativity. Creativity can be developed by helping a person develop the traits of the creative personality, such as curiosity, sensitivity, independence, risk training, persistence, etc., by creating in that person the need to innovate and pioneer and create, by helping the person shed blocks like fear or failure and allergy to ambiguity. It can be developed by paying attention to mechanisms of thinking, especially divergent thinking, like listing, associative thinking, far-out analogies, seeking solutions radically different from current solutions, grafting of new properties on existing things, etc. All this can be done not only in training workshops but even on one’s own. And this can be done not just for ourselves but also for others. Indeed, as parents, citizens, and managers, we can create conditions in which children, fellow citizens, colleagues, subordinates and so forth are encouraged to develop their creativity.  

Conclusion

          Creativity requires imagination. Imagination grows by exercise. In this  changed environment throughout the word in the managerial tactics either for profit motive or innovation. Requires creativity if any management requires change. Creativity describe showing originality in their work and gives innovative ideas just like brainchild. Creativity grows through doing.

Reference

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