Creativity and innovation are definitely the buzz words these last years. And not only in the field of Apple-like technology.
I just googled creativity which gave me 177,000,000 search results: from the obvious Wikipedia over advertisement, TED talks and Amazon to creativity in schools, at work and at home.
Which used to be referred to in relation with children or artists has now entered all doors. Blog posts, newspaper articles, business studies, employee coaching, educational experiments, yes even job postings mention creativity.
It is required of us to be creative. Whether we are a CEO, a nurse, a computer specialist, a gardener or administrative assistant. Whether it’s at work or at home, we are constantly asked for new ideas: to launch a new product or entertain the kids.
And I am sick and tired of it.
Because the creativity hype is getting it all wrong as far as I am concerned, because:
- Creativity has become a label. But as soon as you label something, you close any doors to anything else – and that’s the opposite of creativity.
- We are requested to be creative all the time . Besides being statistically impossible, it’s not how creativity works. Creativity is a process. It needs a certain environment, structure and input. If we’re creative all the time we’re just pushed to make our crappy output look creative.
- We are required to be creative in every field. That is technically not possible. We all have our own unique knowledge, passion, interest. That is the field where creativity naturally grows. Ask us to be creative in an excel spreadsheet when our passion is clearly in people and communcation, it’s a creative dead end. So get your people to be creative where their strengths are. If you lack those, hire new creative talent and allocate the one you have where they are most useful instead of firing them…
- People are being labeled as ‘creative’ and ‘not creative’. This is fundamentally wrong. We are ALL creative. Just not all the time and not at everything either. But we are all excellently creative at something. And we should be given the opportunity to find out where or what that is.
- Creativity is needed NOW! How many times are we asked to come up with our best ideas by 5 o’clock that same day? That’s like saying: make this tree grow 10 meters tall by the end of the day. It’s just impossible. You can’t force creativity, it needs to grow. Os instead of fire-fighting for creative input, get the environment and structure for it right and it will grow before you need it.
- The innovation bonus does not work. Holding a bonus-carrot in front of someone so that he’s more creative most of the time has the opposite effect (see this video for more insight).
- People are not given the necessary tools. We need to be creative, but many of us don’t know that you can actually learn how to be more creative. And if we are not given the tools to improve, the results will not improve either. So send your people to creative thinking trainings. Yes, even (or should I say, especially!) the accountant or receptionist!
- Creativity does not equal innovation. Creativity is the generation of novel and useful ideas. Innovation is the successful commercialization of those ideas. And there is a long, rocky road between the two. Management can’t just assume that once you have the idea, you will pull the finished product out of your hat. It takes time, money, effort, accepted failures. Most companies are not set up to allow for that.
- Every business calls itself innovative. Most are definitely not. But it looks and sounds good on a show or website. It’s hip and makes you belong to the hype. But it’s not sufficient to adapt an existing product a little every year or to copy and alter the competition’s product to be innovative. Innovators are leaders. They take risks. They are not afraid to fail.
So let’s not get all worked up about creativity and innovation and the hype that has been created around it.
Do you want to be part of the hype or be creative?
So, let’s just get on with our work, create when it’s the time to, use the tools we have and send this blog post to the one’s who need to read it… 