Success in product and service innovation depends on creativity as a key input. Creativity in business is ‘the thinking of novel and appropriate ideas’. Without a healthy and continuing supply of ideas, most businesses would cease to exist. At the height of the digital revolution and at Sony's peak in innovation performance they produced 1000 new products a year (that's 4 every day). Fundamental challenges facing leaders in the 21st Century are how to encourage 'inventive search' in a busy environment and convert invention into innovation that lasts longer than a fad.
Human Dynamics can help in the following areas:
- Running 'blue sky' workshops to explore new ideas
- Assessing your current creative capabilities, climate and culture with a view to developing strengths and minimising weaknesses
- Analysing the climate for ideas using fully validated psychological inventories
- Designing your company to release more and better creative ideas
- Developing your people's capacity and confidence to think creatively
- Providing a bespoke toolkit of methods and approaches for encouraging personal and team-based creativity
- Professional problem solving, especially for complex, and intractable problems
- Facilitating strategic decision making processes so that options are fully considered before reaching a conclusion
Case Study:
Practical Creativity
Situation
Our client is a major pharmaceutical company that needs to leverage the full brainpower of its employees if it is to realise its ambitions.
The challenge
To develop the capacity and willpower to use creative thinking for the improvement of process chemistry. This was to enable the company to constantly improve its cost profile and generate 'hard to copy' innovations in process chemistry to keep it ahead in the face of mounting competition.
What we did
We designed a bespoke development programme, phased over 18 months, using real life projects as source materials to maximise the relevance to participants. Broad content included:
- The roots of creativity and innovation - examining the thinking behind successful invention and innovation
- Provision of a Creative Thinker's Toolkit - containing a wide range of analytical and intuitive approaches to creative thinking for use in 1:1 and group situations
- Developing a climate where creativity and innovation are business as usual characteristics
- Using real life projects that required the use of creative thinking and creative problem solving
At the same time we provided organisation development advice, guidance and support to help the unit create a micro-climate where creativity was valued, supported and resourced so that good ideas would convert into profitable innovations. We supported the unit in the development of a brand for creativity as part of the development of a 'unique selling point' for the unit. We also provided 1:1 and small group performance coaching to assist the top team in implementing the changes needed.
The result
The programme has delivered a number of tangible business improvement benefits, for example:
- An improved chemical process for an important raw material, with implications for cost saving in the short and long term
- Laboratory design improvements which will lead to better cross functional working between different professional groups
