creativity

Regaining Creativity

Posted on 03.03.21

It’s sometimes difficult to remember while we are filling out forms, responding to bureaucracy, and going about our daily routine, but we are all creative and innovative beings. Each of us has good ideas, sometimes great ideas. And each of us can generate unique and novel ways to address customer needs and to troubleshoot problems.

Why is Creativity Lost?

Kids have lots of creativity. They color outside the lines and make cats purple. They imagine themselves as swash-buckling pirates and as famous movie stars. My friend, Karen, and I used to act out our favorite books in our backyards with no props at all. The walnut tree served as the deserted island and our dolls were the orphaned children. We understood the story and, well, we just had fun!

Then, our parents and teachers taught us that we needed to stay inside the lines, cats are never purple, and it was more important to do chores then pretend to be surviving on coconuts and palm leaves in a snow-covered backyard in Idaho.

Learning is very, very important and without understanding how mathematics and science work, we cannot become engineers, scientists, or project managers. We must learn the right way to solve an algebra problem and we need to know the correct answers. As chemical engineers, the safety of our co-workers and communities relies on us calculating the right answers and using the right formulas.

Yet, another piece of finding the right answer uses our creative problem-solving skills. And many of us have relegated creativity to the back burner. We don’t have time to “play” and we don’t want to look dumb by not coming up with “the right” answer.

Build Creativity through Experimentation

Edison is famous for saying he didn’t discover how to make a light bulb. He had, instead, found 10,000 ways to not make a light bulb. As innovation and engineering professionals, we strive for creativity through experimentation. We learn, just as Edison did, by failing. Each failure tells us what won’t work, but each failure also frames a hypothesis for the next experiment.

We often go about experimentation by changing one variable at a time. This can take a long time to find a novel answer to a problem, yet it provides accurate and detailed data and information about the problem. We should also experiment with “outside the box” solutions. These are problem solutions that come from other industries or analogies from radically different systems.

Legend has it that the inventor of Velcro watched a lizard climb the side of the building and wondered about its sticky feet. Another industry legend illustrates that rotating vessels with brushes used for oil spill clean-ups came from the observation that sea otters’ fur was highly absorptive. Applying a biological analogy to a static process can unleash creative hypotheses. And we can test these ideas in a controlled way to learn from failure.

Creativity Exercises

it’s hard to be creative by ourselves. We need to share ideas – sometimes crazy ideas – with others to generate better ideas. Often, just looking at a problem from a different perspective can stimulate creativity. A simple exercise to help you focus on new concepts is to drive to work by a different route. You will observe different landmarks and patterns. Strike up a conversation with a stranger in the queue at the supermarket. Who knows? You might leave with a new recipe.

At work, seek out the opinions and impressions with those you don’t normally share assignments. Learn what challenges face the structural and electrical engineers, IT and HR professionals, and supply chain specialists. Talk to technicians about their workflows. All of these unusual conversations will give you creative fodder for solving the next problem when it arises. Download a handout on creativity here.

Creativity is Lifelong Learning

Anyone who has followed my blog for any time knows that I’m a huge believer in lifelong learning. Of course, as an experienced and safety conscious process engineer, I know that there are “right” answers. We cannot defy the laws of gravity or of thermodynamics. We know that a material balance is fixed by the laws of nature.

However, when we experiment and lose our fear of judgment, we can test hypotheses to find better and more creative ways to solve problems. We can share a stream between systems that need heating and cooling in a plant to save water and energy. We can push chemical reactions to increase efficiency and reduce material usage with the clever application of temperature, pressure, or catalyst. Whatever your field of expertise, look for new ways to do things, especially by trying an approach that comes from a biological system or another industry.

What can you do, today, to create a novel hypothesis and test it to learn?

Learn More

Check out my presentation on creativity and design thinking with the Houston ATD chapter here. Register for our online workshop 29 and 30 March 2021 here. Contact me at info@simple-pdh.com if you want to implement effective tools for innovation team communications.

A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple.

Questioning for Creative Leadership

Posted on 11.28.19

We are always told to be good listeners. Our moms and grade school teachers often told us to “shush and listen.” And as adults, as many of us think we are good listeners as we think are good drivers. (By the way, that’s a lot more than 50%, leading to an irrational conclusion.)

Active listening is more than just hearing what someone says. Listening involves silencing our own thoughts and opinions, connecting empathetically with the speaker, and providing feedback. The best way to provide feedback and to gauge if you really, truly understand what someone has said is through questioning. I’ve observed that there are two general forms of questions: transactional queries and questions for reflection.

Transactional Questions

In a market economy, we exchange money for a product. Just as in a commercial exchange, conversation and dialogue can be transactional. If there are multiple product choices with comparable features and functions, a rational consumer selects the least expensive product. The decision is based on logic and the transaction is designed to minimize time, effort, and resources.

Some conversations are transactional in nature and should be. “What time does the meeting start?” and “Where is the restaurant?” are responsible transactional questions that allow us to increase our efficiency and productivity. The responses are typically used to complete the exchange, just as handing money to a cashier completes the purchase. “The meeting starts at 10 am” and “The restaurant is at 123 Main Street”.

We use transactional queries to obtain data. Remember that data and information are different. Information allows us to make decisions, create opportunities, and to expand our knowledge of a given situation. In a transactional conversation, we exchange impersonal data and the individuals may translate that data to information on their own.

For example, if I know that the meeting starts at 10 am and is held at a restaurant on Main Street (data), I will plan to leave my office at 9 am since I also know it is a one-hour drive. Converting the transactional conversation to information also tells me that I need to take dimes and quarters with me to put in the parking meters on Main Street.

Reflection

While my decision to leave at 9 am and carry small change with me is not necessarily creative, it does explain another level of communication. Questions for reflection use “right-brain” thinking to analyze the conversational feedback, to draw conclusions, and to offer alternatives. For instance, I could have countered the restaurant location with a suggestion to meet at a different place that allows me to take a shorter drive.

It is through questions for reflection that we build creativity. Innovation is enhanced when we look at things from a different perspective and try to envision a unique outcome. Transactional queries normally limit the participants from seeing alternatives but can support incremental improvements and operational efficiencies.

Leadership Questioning Skills

How do you know if you’re asking transactional or reflective questions? As an innovation leader, you want to drive creativity and encourage alternatives in new product development (NPD). You want to empower your team to listen and to learn.

Transactional questions, potentially hindering radical innovation, are easily rephrased to “yes” or “no” inquiries. We could easily have said “Is the meeting at 10 am?” instead of asking what time the meeting is scheduled. This gives us a strong clue that the question is purely transactional.

Another indication is that the response to a transactional query is quick. The meeting time is known so there’s no hesitation in providing the answer to the question. At most, people will need to check their calendars to confirm the data.

On the other hand, reflective questions introduce a pause in the pace of the conversation. A person has to stop and think about how s/he might respond. The response provides information and not just data. And, information allows us to take on different perspectives and to generate alternative solutions. An indication that a question is designed for reflection is that a “yes” or “no” answer would be totally inappropriate.

Creativity is driven by viewing problems from different perspectives. Those viewpoints should include all potential stakeholders, including designers and developers, functional organizational representatives, customers, and end-users. Understanding the entire ecosystem of innovation lays out the scope of a new product development effort.

Customers and Open Innovation

When customers are involved in innovation, we call it open innovation. While customers cannot tell us what features and specifications they want in a new product, they can answer our questions and we gather both data and information. It’s important, however, to focus customer interactions on qualitative data, such as that gathered through reflective questions. Market research and open innovation are driven by understanding and empathizing with customer needs. And only when this information is collated, can a development team go into the labs and pilot plants to design a new product or service.

While questions for reflections are best used in gathering customer impressions and feedback, there is a place in innovation for transactional questions. Of course, these are often limited to setting pricing parameters and in A/B market testing. You’ll also want to collect and analyze demographic and geographic data about potential customers since this can frame future marketing efforts.

Questioning for Innovation Leaders

Leaders set the tone for the culture and climate of an organization. Restrictive, distrustful environments hamper creativity and are often characterized by strict boundaries and constraints. In these situations, questions are largely transactional. Managers are tracking directives for scope, budget, and schedule metrics.

In open, creative cultures, leaders provide freedom and autonomy for innovation teams. Questions seek knowledge building and deeper understanding. Open-ended questions without right or wrong answers can stimulate perspective-taking and novel approaches to solving problems. Involving customers and end-users in creative questioning can improve innovation exponentially.

Summary and Learn More

Learning to ask good questions and to fully listen to the response are skills that can be honed and grown through training and coaching. We can each practice creative leadership questioning by converting transactional queries into questions for reflection.

Learn more at our complimentary webinar on 13 December 2019 at noon CST (1 pm EST, 10 am PST). We will discuss the Transition from a Technical Role to Leadership. Register here.

About Me

I am inspired by writing, teaching, and coaching to build innovation leaders. I tackle life with an infusion of rigor, zeal, and faith. I am an experienced professional with a passion for lifelong learning with a PhD in Chemical Engineering and an MBA in Computer and Information Decision Making. My credentials include PE (State of Louisiana), NPDP, PMP®, and CPEM, and I am a DiSC® certified facilitator. Contact me at info@simple-pdh.com or area code 281 + phone 280-8717 for more information on coaching for entrepreneurs and innovators.

Increasing Creativity by Creating Boundaries

Posted on 11.29.18

Everyone talks about creativity today. Businesses want to increase creativity to generate new products and services, to solve problems, and to remain ahead of the competition. Yet, creativity is often elusive.

Why are We Not Creative?

Most adults say they are not all that creative. Why? We were creative and imaginative as children. My friend Karen and I used to read novels and then play-act the stories in our backyards. We didn’t say whether we were creative, but our imaginations took us well beyond the authors’ original content.

Often, we blame the school system for the diminishing creativity people experience as they advance from childhood to adulthood. There are certain materials we all must learn, though, to become successful participants in a society – reading, writing, and arithmetic. These subjects have certain rules that we do need to learn and without testing, a teacher cannot know if a student has mastered the information.

My family encouraged mastery of school, and luckily, learning the topics came easy to me. But just because I was good at school did not mean I could not be creative. I also took music lessons during my school years and learned to appreciate music as a creative expression from dozens of composers. Karen’s mom was constantly helping her with various art projects – building, painting, and gluing.

Yet when we reach the workplace, we often limit our creative expressions. Perhaps because I am not a good performance musician, I have never shred with my work colleagues that I can play an instrument. I am afraid they would find out that even though I excel at management and engineering, I’m not very good at music.

These are reasons we limit our creative thinking in the workplace – fear, ego, and feelings of inadequacy. However, many studies have shown that simply embracing our own vulnerabilities allows us to view situations from a new perspective. And when we see situations from a fresh viewpoint, we can generate novel and unique solutions to problems.

Good Boundaries to Creativity

While fear, ego, and feelings of inadequacy hold us back from generating creative ideas for new products and services, some boundaries are important to framing and constraining a problem space. For example, in PDMA Essentials Volume 3 (Chapter 1) Calic and Ghasemaghaei describe studies in which chefs are more creative when constrained to only a few ingredients. (Perhaps this explains the popularity of a number of television shows in which chefs compete for various prizes?)

Another famous study demonstrated that shoppers were less likely to purchase a jar of jam when presented with many flavor options rather than fewer. When there are too many choices, we fall back on what we already know; thus, limiting creativity.

Constraints to Increase Creativity

Teams are found to improve the novelty of solutions when given a few boundaries or constraints to an innovation problem. Consider the difference between improving plant throughput vs. improving plan throughput by 10% without purchasing new equipment.

Try it yourself. Take out a sheet of paper – right now! – and list five places you’d like to visit. [Imagine the must from Jeopardy playing…] Now, right down five places you’d like to take vacation within the next year and that are within a $5,000 travel budget. [More Jeopardy music…]

Which list is more creative? Now, try the exercise with your spouse, family, or friends who will join you on the vacation. My bet is your first vacation list has a lot of traditional travel destinations without much detail – maybe Rome, Paris, or New York City. And, I’m guessing that the list of vacation destinations generated with constraints and using the power of your team is more adventurous – whitewater rafting in the Grand Canyon, renting a houseboat in Alaska, or spending a week at a dude ranch. [Please share your ideas in the comments!]

Using Constraints to Generate New Ideas

We’ve all herd of writer’s block from famous novelists like Stephen King. Yet, when they have boundaries of characters’ personalities and story locations, these same authors tell us that the story writes itself. This is the epitome of creativity!

So, the next time you are faced with a new innovation challenge, don’t pull out a clean white sheet of paper. Draw some boundaries that force the team to increase creativity. In new product development (NPD), you may constrain the problem with market demographics, product size and shape, or service category. And, put aside fear, ego, and feelings of inadequacy. We can all be creative in the workplace!

For More Information

I recommend PDMA Essentials Volume 3 as a great resource to learn about innovation constraints in several categories, including managing virtual teams for NPD. You might also like a companion blog post on Innovation, Curiosity, and Questions.

Then, to continue building your creativity and leadership skills to address your toughest innovation challenges, please contact me about membership in the Innovation Master Mind (IMM) group. IMM is a 6-month peer coaching group that allows you to extend your NPD knowledge beyond NPDP certification and to collaborate with other CIOs and innovation managers. I also offer one-on-one coaching and New Product Development Professional (NPDP) training to help you target specific innovation knowledge areas. So, feel free to contact me at info@simple-pdh.com or 281-280-8717 to learn more. I love helping individuals, teams, and organizations reach higher strategic innovation goals!

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple.

A division of Global NP Solutions, LLC

Design Thinking is NOT Creativity

Posted on 09.06.18

The new cell phone is a sleek, thin device with a beautiful metallic case. The new car has sexy lines and a wide, open grill. The new kitchen appliance is smooth with only one start/stop button to preserve its modern look.

We often consider design as the element that brings form to product function. In times past, designers were called into projects after all the technical specifications were completed. Designers were told to make the product “pretty”, maybe put it into a nicer box or color it according to current fashion trends.

Design thinking, however, is not the same as design. Design has largely been the purvey of graphic artists and specialists who create shells to surround products so that the ugly, functional guts are concealed from the user. In contrast, design thinking is a human-centered activity that translates customer needs into product or service offerings within business constraints. In other words, design thinking is more than just creative design.

What is Creativity?

Creativity is defined by dictionary.com as “the state or quality of being creative,” and “the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns…” We view an artist’s interpretation of a landscape in an oil painting at “creative”. When kids act out stories and make up games, we say they are “creative”. My family and friends love my handmade greeting cards and tell me that I am “creative”.

In innovation, we seek creativity to generate alternative problem solutions. We intentionally practice divergent thinking exercises for creativity these include things like brainstorming, brainwriting, and role-playing. Our goal is to generate a lot of ideas, quickly.

In divergent thinking, we accept crazy ideas, even ones that defy known scientific boundaries and constraints. It is possible to convert a nugget of a wild idea into a true product solution. For example, most of us know the famous story of how a worker at 3M tested a not-so-sticky adhesive on slips of paper in his Sunday hymnal. Form a nugget of an idea (a not-so-sticky adhesive) was born a billion-dollar brand for a mining firm.

Yet, the problem with divergent thinking is that it limits innovators to only making lists of creative ideas. Brainstorming sessions end with flip chart paper covering the walls, hundreds of ideas written down, and the new product development (NPD) team feeling pretty darn good about the quantity of ideas generated.

Unfortunately, many, many firms stop at this point.

Convergent Thinking

Divergent thinking must be followed with a convergent thinking exercise. Long lists of ideas are useless to an innovation team unless they know which ones to develop further. Convergent thinking draws together similar ideas and concepts so that the NPD team can test assumptions. Methods used in convergent thinking include mind-mapping, multi-voting, and affinity diagramming.

Results of convergent thinking provide a set of new product or service concepts that can be developed and tested.

Design Thinking

Both divergent and convergent thinking are subsets of design thinking. Yet, design thinking is more collaborative and human-centered than simply generating prioritized lists of good ideas. Design thinking is based on customer empathy and seeks first to understand a customer’s need.

Successful innovators use design thinking tools throughout the product development process. First to identify customer needs, then to generate potential solutions, and finally to prototype and test functionality. Companies embracing design thinking bring customers into the product development process by observing them and questioning their emotional engagement with a given problem and existing solutions. As Clayton Christensen says, people don’t buy drills because they want a drill; they buy drills because they need a hole.

Innovators use design thinking tools to dig beyond the surface of a problem and then continue the conversation with a customer well beyond the idea generation stage. The product functionality is tested with prototypes and customers validate the form of the packaging as well. Usability tests dictate the inclusion of only a minimum number of functions so that the product is simple and attractive.

Design Thinking is More than Creativity

Successful innovators recognize the need to generate lots and lots of creative ideas during the product development process. However, creativity often ends when a team brainstorms a bunch of potential solution ideas.

Design thinking goes deeper through creativity with customer empathy to understand the true problem. Then, we use design thinking tools to test and validate solutions with those same customers. Following a customer’s needs and emotional engagement with a potential solution leads to faster time-to-market and better long-term profitability. You can’t afford to ignore your customers!

To Learn More

To learn how to apply design thinking to enrich innovation, please join us in Life Design Master Mind (LDMM), Innovation Master Mind (IMM), or New Product Development Professional (NPDP) certification. LDMM is designed for your personal growth by applying design thinking tools to finding the next step in life. IMM is a 6-month peer coaching group that allows you to extend your NPD knowledge beyond NPDP certification and to collaborate with other CIOs and innovation managers. You will realize improved efficiency and growth from LDMM, IMM, or through NPDP certification which entails a deep dive into strategy and NPD processes, including design thinking. Feel free to contact me at info@simple-pdh.com or 281-280-8717. At Simple-PDH.com where we want to help you gain and maintain your professional certifications. You can study, learn, and earn – it’s simple!

Speaking on Design Thinking

7 September 2018 at Texas Association of Change Management Professionals Conference

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple.

A division of Global NP Solutions, LLC

A Culture of Creativity

Posted on 08.23.18

Many organizations today seek to improve their innovation project efforts to bring fresh ideas to their most valued customers. Creativity is the engine that drive new product development (NPD) with opportunities to increase revenues and market share. Companies today rely on ideas to generate new product commercialization.

But, what is creativity? Can organizations create cultures that stimulate good ideas? Or do corporate cultures just stifle innovation?

A creative culture thrives at the intersection of searching, collaboration, and experimentation. Each of these characteristics must be nurtured by managers, team leaders, and project directors in order to cultivate a culture of creativity. Let’s take a look at each creative trait in turn.

Searching

Organizations that are successful in innovation and NPD know their customers. Technology and marketing capabilities are important, but developing the greatest insights of your customer needs, wants, and desires leads to the highest rates of success.

Customer insights don’t come from simply analyzing survey data in your office. Instead, new product development practitioners learn how people interact with product solutions through observation. We must shadow consumers to understand their challenges and how they use products today. The most successful new products are designed to meet customer needs that are visible but unarticulated. Thus, highly effective innovators build creativity by searching and exploring the customer’s environment.

Collaboration

Once an appropriate customer problem is identified, the NPD team must work to find the most creative and value-added solution that will address that need. The most impactful new products are designed and developed by cross-functional teams collaborating across business lines. Collaboration means working with people different than ourselves.

For example, most products today exist within an ecosystem of auxiliary and complementary products and services. A software tool requires compatible hardware and business models to deliver upgrades throughout its life cycle. Diverse departments must interact to create a holistic product solution addressing customer and end-user needs as well as corporate HR, IT, finance, and legal requirements.

Moreover, collaboration among diverse team members leads to better product solutions at a lower cost and with quicker time to market. Creativity increases when a group of people with varied experiences work together to design a common outcome. Collaboration among unlikely partners and team members yields interesting approaches to addressing customer needs.

Experimentation

Finally, a culture of creativity is enhanced by an ability to experiment and not fear failure. I recently read about a study in which engineering students are challenged to build structures to protect an egg as it is dropped from ever increasing heights. Two groups of students were given the same materials and same amount of time to devise a solution. However, the first group was given only one egg while the second group was given a dozen eggs. The first group of students used their development time collaborating and designing the best protective structure they could imagine. The second group tried stuff – they experimented. Yes, they cracked a lot of eggs but, ultimately, the second group of students were able to double the dropping distance (about 6 feet) as compared to the first group (about 3 feet). We did a similar exercise during my presentation on “Wagile for NPD” at the Houston PMI Conference (brief clip here).

Hands-on learning clearly enhances creativity and problem-solving. Combined with a diverse team of developers, a culture of creativity is built upon rapid experimentation to learn what customers really need and to ensure you’re solving the right problem.

A Culture of Creativity

Organizations can stifle creativity with overly bureaucratic policies and procedures. Functional reporting systems and divisional silos can prevent diverse NPD team members from communicating with one another and with the customer. A culture of creativity is supported by organizational practices that drive gathering of customer insights by searching for the customer need, even when the end-user cannot state his/her challenge.

Collaboration among diverse team members allows varied experiences and tacit knowledge to come together and allows the team to identify unique solutions. This diversity of experiences generates new product concepts around a full ecosystem of services and auxiliaries that increase the revenue of a product line. Finally, NPD teams must be free to conduct rapid experimentation without organization retribution if they fail. Cracking a lot of eggs led to the most successful engineering solution and highly effective innovation organizations recognize the value of learning from failure.

To Learn More

To learn more about innovation processes, please check out our self-study and other NPDP Workshops. In particular, the Agile NPD course builds on the idea of fast failure. Check out our on-line tutorial on Design Thinking, also, to learn more about rapid experimentation. Feel free to contact me at info@simple-pdh.com or 281-280-8717. At Simple-PDH.com where we want to help you gain and maintain your professional certifications. You can study, learn, and earn – it’s simple!

Speaking on Design Thinking

7 September 2018 at Texas Association of Change Management Professionals Conference

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple.

A division of Global NP Solutions, LLC