Cashing in on Creativity at Work

For the past 25 years, I have studied organizations that provide stimulating work climates and found that while some of the best, most creative ideas are often spontaneous, in general, creativity is not random. Certain organizational structures can foster greater innovation--not just the generation of great ideas, but their implementation as well.

The process of establishing structures that enhance creativity is one I have termed positive turbulence. It is characterized as an energizing climate, one that upsets the status quo and impels organizations toward renewal.

Turbulence--chaotic, bubbling, swirling, frenetic, threatening to drown us all--is the breeding ground for personal, team and organizational renewal. It may seem only like disruption and chaos, both inevitable facts of economic life, but the challenge is to seize it and make it work for you. By creating positive turbulence, organizations can not only survive change but prosper from it.

Learn to Look Around

Companies that are well-known for their traditions of innovation--3M, Bell Laboratories, Xerox and Hallmark--know the secret to nurturing and maintaining creativity in the workplace. And it's more than "thinking outside the box."

"The way forward is paradoxically not to look ahead, but to look around," explains John Sealy Brown, the director of the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) for Xerox.

Sealy Brown has learned that innovation comes not from the top competitors, but from those outside the mainstream, those on the fringes of the industry, whose small, initial steps will ultimately herald meaningful change over the next three to five years. We need only look to the periphery, where people have the freedom to explore new possibilities, to get a glimpse of the future. Just consider the runaway success of Gap, Intel and FedEx, all small companies turned multibillion-dollar conglomerates on the strength of a few good ideas.

Valuing the periphery requires a seismic shift in organizational thinking. Instead of considering any deviation from standard operating procedure to be irrelevant, excessive or unnecessarily expensive, companies must begin to view such variances as portals to the future. With wide eyes and an open mind, they must actively and systematically extend the range of observation outward, beyond the comfort of the known. Those who do not pay attention to the periphery are soon overcome by the demands of change.

Commit to Creativity

It is the responsibility of creative leaders to provide their organizations with opportunities for exploring the periphery. It can be done on both the individual and organizational levels, and can involve either internal or external resources.

Internal sources for positive turbulence at the individual level include foreign assignments, membership on ad hoc cross-functional task forces, and the dubious luck of being present when a crisis occurs. New stimuli from these events are a natural source of novel and useful ideas and frameworks that would otherwise go untapped.

At the organizational level, sources for positive turbulence include developing cross-functional teams or inviting outside experts, whose specialty does not exist inside the company, to speak to employees on a matter of interest.

For nearly three years, the senior management team of Nortel Networks' Broad Band line of business has been devoting 10 percent to 15 percent of each of their quarterly management meetings to a variety of presenters, readings and videos from the outside world. For example, the group tracked venture capitalist spending through the periodical Red Herring, and venture capitalists spoke to the group to advise them of where investments for the future were being made and who was making them. "Positive turbulence changed our culture and our receptivity to novel ideas," says Ian Craig, president, Broad Band, Nortel Networks. "As an organization, we changed because the information from outside indicated that we needed to."

Sweden's $7 billion insurance giant Skandia has created a strategic planning unit comprised of people from three distinct generations. Members of this "3G" planning team use their differences to spark dialogue on medical realities such as death, aging and disease, as well as their impact on younger generations. Such trends have implications for actuarial decisions, future selling strategies, product development, market-niche choices, and even qualification procedures for future customers. By considering these implications from different angles, the 3G group helps Skandia better address complex challenges.