درگیر کردن ذهن، جسم و دوستان: مدیریت که موجب خلاقیت می شود

Based on the careful observation and interviews of employees at three companies, and supplemented by cases from the popular business press, a discovery approach is used to derive four management principles that engender creativity and innovation in organizations: (1) manage organizations so that their knowledge base is more diverse than what would occur naturally; (2) encourage employees to embrace a collaborative and non-complacent attitude towards work and the organization; (3) make it possible for organization members to engage in the quick testing of ideas and solutions as they emerge; (4) reward employee and supervisor behaviors that support these principles and punish resistance to their implementation. The principles work in companies even if creativity and innovation are not stated organizational objectives, and do not require large investments or disruptions to work processes to yield valuable results.

Creativity and innovation are generally recognized as vital to commercial success in the 21st century, and also as critically important to the effective solution of tough organizational and social problems. Creativity is typically defined as the recombination of existing knowledge into novel configurations, and innovation as the value generating application of such novel configurations (Amabile, 1996 and Davila et al., 2006). Calls for creativity and innovation have multiplied in recent years, giving rise to management practices such as chief innovation officers (CIOs) and the hiring of innovation consultants, to a proliferation of self-help books on the topic, and to multiple articles and Internet sites that highlight innovative practices at different companies (e.g., www.businessweek.com/innovate). Levels of news coverage and investments on creativity and innovation management can lead managers to believe that engendering innovation and creativity in organizations is costly and hard to achieve. The present research suggests that this is not the case. Based on direct in-depth observation of three companies, and supplemented by the publicized accounts of other organizations, its is argued that the consistent application of four management principles can engender creativity and innovation in organizations regardless of size, industry, and access to financial resources. The four principles are: • Manage organizations so that their knowledge base is more diverse than what would occur naturally. • Encourage employees to embrace a collaborative and non-complacent attitude towards work and the organization. • Make it possible for organization members to engage in the quick testing of ideas and solutions as they emerge. • Reward employee and supervisor behaviors that support these principles and punish resistance to their implementation. The present research suggests that the implementation of these principles does not need to involve large investments or high levels of organizational disruption, although wise investments and management may enhance the expected outcomes. Moreover, it suggests that creativity and innovation arise when the principles are applied consistently even if not consciously, and that the principles need not be applied across the full breadth of the organization, but can unleash creativity and innovation in teams as long as they can function autonomously. The exposition begins by describing the companies involved in the research, the circumstances that gave rise to the application of the listed principles, and the outcomes they achieved as a result. Because of company concerns with confidentiality, the names of the focal companies are disguised. Published examples of companies that have engaged in similar behaviors and realized equally beneficial outcomes are also included. Actual company names are used for examples drawn from the business press. The company descriptions also point out how the companies' actions embody the suggested principles, and are followed by a short exposition of the theoretically-substantiated mechanisms that give rise to these principles and the observed results. The exposition concludes with a short discussion of management lessons from the research. The objective is to contribute in two ways to contemporary managerial thought and behavior about creativity and innovation. First, illustrate that creativity and innovation can be harnessed by organizations across all size and resource support levels, provided they are willing to apply these principles consistently. Second, argue that creativity and innovation are not mysterious outcomes invoked through cabalistic practices, but are instead natural outgrowths of human nature that can be unleashed through straightforward management practices. It is not argued that engendering creativity and innovation is effortless or cost-free, but the companies studied herein illustrate that both are achievable by organizations in pursuit of everyday business objectives without a need for disruptive change and significant investments.

There are admittedly other factors in each of the focal companies that contributed to creativity and innovation. The companies, for example, are leaders in their home markets. Moreover, all three are pursuing stronger learning environments as a way of improving responsiveness to internal and external forces. Given the sharing of antecedents between organizational learning and creativity (e.g., diverse knowledge, knowledge sharing, documenting unexpected outcomes), it seems safe to argue that the principles uncovered may not have come together had the companies not been trying to elevate internal learning capabilities. It can be argued that creativity and innovation are subsumed by organizational learning. Not all learning organizations are creative and innovative, however, with many becoming more efficient and cost-effective operators through the learning process. Learning organizations that are also creative and innovative are ones where the renewal and recombination of knowledge happen spontaneously and continually regardless of whether the company is doing well or poorly — a disruptive state-of-affairs that can only be sustained when reward systems are focused on its sustenance. Another limitation is that the focal companies differed in how they implemented diversity of knowledge, collaborative and non-complacent work environments, the quick testing of ideas, and the rewarding of compliance with these principles. The operational examples of these companies are highly constrained by industry and nation of origin factors, and not as valuable as the more abstract management principles articulate herein. Not even within the mining, salmon, and cement industries would it be possible to adopt these companies' practices entirely, given factors such as labor/management relationships, trade constraints, and corporate governance (e.g., private equity ownership) that also factor into how the companies are managed. Nevertheless, at a more general level it appears that the psychological and sociological mechanisms that make people creative and innovative in one setting can be transferred to other setting. Diversity in the knowledge base of groups or teams charged with solving problems and developing ideas is valuable, be the group in a factory, a product development lab, a medical center, or a university. Moreover, the value of such knowledge rises when it is shared by group or team members, and the sharing of knowledge cannot be tightly controlled, but must be allowed to follow the sometimes indirect pathways by which humans and organizations seem to learn and develop. This freedom is particularly important when the desired outcome is novel recombination of existing knowledge. In addition, it is clear that creativity and innovation can benefit from knowledge that is unleashed by the quick testing of new combinations alongside knowledge made accessible by thoughtful conversation. This is an area where management research is in its infancy, and where future scientific advances are likely to reveal an intricate and fascinating array of interacting sub-mechanisms that can be further explored for managerial implications. There is enough evidence in the examples of globally recognized innovators and the companies in this study to argue that the quick physical testing of ideas is fruitful, and complementary to knowledge diversity and conversation. One specific contribution of this research is to show that it can happen in organizations other than those focused on new product development. Another contribution of this research is showing that these principles can engender creativity and innovation even when companies do not set out to achieve such outcomes. In the case of the companies here studied, the objective was quicker responses to internal and externally induced problems. In the pursuit of these goals the companies created environments where the identified principles generated valuable results. Now that the companies are aware of the principles, they are seeking ways to systematize their application and generate even better outcomes, but also struggling with how to reward support for the first three even if it means reduced managerial control. It seems clear that some control must be sacrificed. Managers must transition from the idea that they are good managers because they know more than employees to being good because they can oversee employees who knows more. Moreover, it is an approach that demands being comfortable with spending resources in the pursuit of knowledge that will not always be directly applicable to the problems at hand. Building creative organizations seems to be at odds with management focused on control and efficiency, both popular metrics in modern organizations. Finally, the focal companies illustrate that having creative and innovative problem solving environments is possible for companies of various sizes and working in diverse industries, and not solely the purview of large organizations in high technology industries.