Creativity as a Practice in Projects

Introduction

Creativity is a concept familiar to most people. Creativity has many different definitions from different scholarly disciplines, however in the last decades two definitions has general been agreed upon:

• “Creativity is defined as the tendency to generate or recognize ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems, communicating with others, and entertaining ourselves and others.” – Robert E. Franken, Human Motivation
• “Creativity is generating new ideas and concepts, or making connections between ideas where none previously existed.” – Mitchell Rigie and Keith Harmeyer, SmartStorming

First definition is focuses on creating novel ideas that are relevant in some way. The second definition emphasizes that a creative idea are either completely new or a new connections between to existing ideas. Creativity and to create was first introduced in 17th century by the Polish poet Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski as the ability to create novel poets. It would take another century before the concept was adapted to something closer to how we perceive it today. Prominent persons like Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei and Sir Isaac Newton all disrupted the existing paradigms, and gave the confidence that everybody could be creative, and it was not just a divine talent. This inspired creativity to be something not only reserved for the artists, but rather an approach to problem solving . In the 20th century creativity got the attention of psychologists who researched the creative behavior and even made a handbook of creativity . Also in the 20th century creativity started to receive recognition by the industry, as the market became more complex and changing, it required a new way of thinking. Neuroscience has emerged this century and has become a new approach to creativity, as technology advances has made it possible to measure brain activity during creative thinking. Neuroscience gives a very scientific notion on what enhances and diminishes creativity, and thus makes a new baseline for how to handle creativity . As mentioned, creativity is a vital part of today’s organizations as it can solve the unsolvable problems and bring competitive advantage. This article will focus on creativity used in organizations, and more specifically projects

Creativity at organizations and projects

Activities at organizations are distributed between projects and departments. Department functions vary in levels of development and daily-operations, production departments are based more on daily-operations while research and development, as the name states, is based more on development. Creativity is a more vital part of departments with a development function rather than a daily-operations function. Projects always develop towards a specific goal, tries to solve a specific problem. This article will emphasis on creativity used in projects.

A project manager faces three categories of challenges, complexity, human behavior and uncertainty(REFERENCE: 42433 - Lecture 01 – Introduction). These challenges can be managed by, among others, system engineering, stakeholder management, risk management and sensitivity analysis, all being very analytical approaches. However the highest performance is achieved when analytical methodologies is linked with creative thinking. Analytical is the safe, straightforward approach to a problem, where creativity is an unclear, random and maybe useless approach. Therefore matching analysis and creativity can achieve the highest performance. Analysis can set the scope, monitor the performance and make incremental improvement, while creativity can “strike gold” by coming up with novel radical ideas. See figure 1, the analytical approach finds incremental changes each increasing performance. The creativity approach finds varying ideas, some very bad, but some uncovering completely new potential. This is all based upon the assumption that the problem is of a high level of complexity and uncertainty. By referring to the Cynefin Framework(REFERENCE) a creativity approach fits very well within the chaotic and complex domain. The complicated domain can also benefit from creativity, but within the simple domain, creativity can easily become a waste of resources and a disturbance of the project current activities.

Creativity is often perceived as only necessary at the initial phase of a project, to facilitate the idea that sparks a business case. However creativity can be used in all phases of the project, from initial concept to finalization. Again, this is only based on very complex and uncertain projects. With very simple projects creativity is often most effective in the first stage. Figure 2 illustrates this situation on Coopers Stage Gate Model. Figure 3 illustrates how ideas could be generated in all different stages of a project and meanwhile identifying new problems. All the ideas seen in figure 3 could be effectively developed through creative processes, since these facilitate open minded, cross-functional, knowledge based ideas. Creativity is the enabler of team based problem solving

Controversies and misconceptions

Creativity is a popular subject and because of lack of scientific evidence it has a number of controversies and paradoxes. Some of the most essential ones are summarized below.

Criticism vs. non- criticism

Especially during brainstorming sessions you are continuously told that you shouldn’t be critical towards other’s ideas. This is mainly because of the fact that criticism is linked to being analytical and thus fitting not in a creative mindset. Jeffry Paul Baumgartner challenges this popular notion and says that criticism, if asked and used appropriately, can great increase the quality of the ideas. The criticism motivates the idea owner to take a defensive position and expanding his idea to overcome the critical question. There is still much disagreement about this controversy, and today most people support the non-critical approach to creativity.

Constraints vs. freedom

Many perceive creativity as something that thrives in a limitless, “everything is possible” environment. However Balder Onarheim found that constrains to creativity is in fact enhancing creativity . Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg who investigated several European companies that had been trying out innovation/creative processes confirms this viewpoint . The more accurate constraints you can add to a problem, the more creative people are when solving it, and the more valuable ideas you get. This gives the project manager the difficult task of establishing clear constraints before any creative process.

Individual vs. group

‘’He is a creative person’’ is often heard at organizations, creativity is something related to a person, not a group or a process. Certainly there is experts that are truly creative and come up with great ideas, but a group can be just as creative, or even more so. Group creativity requires appropriate facilitation and it is a difficult task. Today it is getting increasingly important with creative groups, rather than creative individuals as the environment is getting increasingly complex. A creative group can comprehend more expert knowledge than any one individual. Advantages/disadvantages Creativity is not all good there are advantages and disadvantages. The advantage/disadvantages can be divided into team level and organizational level. Advantages at team level The following benefits the team, assumed that the creative process is handled professionally and appropriately. Creativity can work as a teambuilding exercise. Creativity is happening on a conceptual level, and therefore everybody is able to participate. As everybody can participate, the team develops, and everybody can see his or her contributions to the progress. Working creatively is also rewarding in itself, since generating ideas is making a feeling of fulfillment. Creative processes is also able to open op the minds of more “closed” analytically team members. Leverage of knowledge and experience is also often a benefit from a cross functional creative team.

Summary:

• Building emotional involvement
• Generating new ideas
• Increasing teaming
• Leveraging and increasing knowledge
• Opening minds
• Stretching the performance of people

Advantages at organizational level

The advantages of the organization is directly linked to competitive advantages. Organizations environment, competitors, markets etc. is experiencing an accelerating rate of change, and thus reacting quickly and working with novel technologies requires a high level of creativity. As the environment is in rapid change, it is also getting increasingly complex, and while complexity requires highly analytical skills, the problem solving requires creative skills. The society is becoming more globalized. Globalization both poses a threat, as well as a new field/option to work with creatively.

Summary:

• Build competitive advantages in a market with
  • Accelerating rates of change
  • Rapid technological change
  • Increasing complexity of the environment
  • Globalization of business competition
  • Transition from industrial to knowledge-based society

Disadvantages at team and organizational level The disadvantage of creativity is that it challenges the current situation and progress of the project. A project can take a completely unexpected turn during a creative process. Creativity also challenges the authority, by definition you need to neglect authorities when working creatively. Both of the mentioned disadvantages can cause anxiety and dissatisfaction within the project team. From a manager’s viewpoint, creativity can also be a very inefficient way of operating, since it requires a lot of time and most of the experts. And while it is a very costly process, it is, as mentioned earlier, a very unpredictable process and therefore valuable take-away is not guarantied. This last disadvantages is the main reason why creativity is not seen as much in projects as it could be. The disadvantages mentioned could both be small scale on team level and large scale on organizational level. The disadvantages get to organizational level as soon as the ideas are suggested to the management, a “killer idea” can completely disturb the organization and be a large waste of resources.

*Cause of anxiety

• Challenge authority
• Upset team
• Upsetting the status quo
• Waste of resources

How to facilitate creativity

There are numerous different methods and theories to facilitate creativity. In the book Creative, Efficient, and Effective Project Management Ralph L. Kliem divided the different methods and techniques among the main phases of a project

• Defining
• Organizing
• Planning
• Executing
• Monitoring and controlling
• Closing

Creativity, as mentioned earlier, is relevant in all phases of a project, but in varying ways. Therefore the methods selected fits specifically to each of the six phases. Notice that not all the presented methods are direct incubators of creativity, but some works on the analytical framework around the creativity process.

Below is a list of some of the many theories and methods of creativity. Some of the more novel theories and models have been elaborated in detail. Separate analysis and creativity The frontal lobe of the brain works as the “sense-making” analytical part of the brain. It has been proven that limited activity in the frontal lobe has caused increased creativity. Initially this was realized as patients suddenly started to paint and be very artistically after the frontal lobe was damaged . This argues, together with many other observations, that while being creative, all analytical thought processes should prohibited. This requires immense control by the project team and project manager. Picture cards It has been found that long association connections are facilitating higher quality of creative ideas. The brain develops paths of electrodes as it gets knowledge and experience, however if you need to develop novel ideas you need to take other paths. These other paths are difficult to take without some sort of random inspiration. This has developed the method of picture cards. You pick a random card picturing a person, place or a thing, and from this you try to develop a relevant solution to your problem .

• Lateral thinking
• Brainstorming

Implementation advice

Force creativity

Example

Novo Nordisk & IBM

LEGO