REFLECTIONS ON MODULE LITERATURE

THE WEIRD RULES OF CREATIVITY
BY

ROBERT I. SUTTON

With Which I Agree:

The success record of consistently creative organizations, historical and current, suggests there is significant benefit from managing organizations that are creative and innovative. Every company wants innovation, but few have developed methods for managing the process. That's because the normal rules for rational management don't apply, suggests author Sutton. In this excerpt on "managing for creative sparks," he describes the seemingly contradictory rules for getting creative people to be creative.
Also Sutton has pointed very briefly that for creation people need an environment where physical experimentation with emerging ideas and the documented learning from such experimentation is possible. It engages people in quick testing and experimentation that taps embodied knowledge All of these factors then contribute to sustainable creativity and innovation.
For creativity anyone being CEO or head of the company should hire people who make you feel uncomfortable, with odd talents and abilities that may not be immediately useful. And people with different perspectives, so that new vision comes into the company. Although managing such people is tough, which suggests team leaders should be well compensated and must abide what they most of time do. Those people from different background and unrelated you’re your company’s goal often identify projects that you expect to fail, and convince yourself and others that they will succeed, and mostly identify or let the management to focus on those goals which are almost impossible. But in longer run they are useful for the organization.
Sutton also identified a very important point for creativity that management must also have to do the interviews of the current and sometimes of the new employees not just the sake of hiring but for newer ideas and creative technique which might prove helpful for the organization in the later stages.

With Which I Disagree:

Although what is mentioned by Sutton is a matter-of-fact but probably few companies can function under these rules all the time. But note that weaving even some of these norms into the company culture helps to expand and complicate the knowledge base sustain critical and collaborative communication. And the main difficulty with creativity is failure. Creative acts are those never tried before, and they stand to not succeed at a rate many times greater than almost any other act. This is devastating for many people. No one likes the failure. We hate it so much that after only a few times, we apt to give up altogether. At the same time though, the rewards will always be significantly higher than the rewards we might reap from succeeding using the old patterns. If the management can digest many losses in search of great gains, then this technique is exceptional.

What Make Me Think:

Most of the people and especially those in management think that for innovation and creativity they require people with knowledge that is rich, accessible, and constantly being renewed and expanded. Also they think that people comfortable with constructive dialogue and there should have an environment conducive to experimentation.

IMPROVING THE CREATIVITY OF ORGANIZATIONAL WORK GROUPS

BY

LEIGH THOMPSON

With Which I Agree:

Creativity is an integral part in today’s varying and turbulent environment in order to gain a clear cut advantage over the competitors. In order to improve the creativity among the groups or in the organization it is important to use techniques that are not only suitable for the culture of organization but also bear out its significance for the future.
Most of the group techniques like ‘Brainstorming’ and ‘Divergent Thinking’ has been discussed by to improve the quantity and quality of ideas produced by groups during idea generation. Similarly, creative techniques may be used to increase creativity. Therefore, the use of creative techniques together with team creativity may help groups think more creatively.
Brainstorming is the most studied and widely used technique. However, to further increase creativity, other types of creative techniques should be used. Analogies produced fewer but more creative ideas.

With Which I Disagree:

Leonardo Da Vinci said “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Although Leigh explained thethings very briefly but sometimes it is the simple technique that can make what happen that cannot be done by all the techniques which he discussed in his article.
A number of our lateral thinking tools have been refined to meet this specific business needs. Simplicity process using creative techniques like: reframing, historical review, bulk-and-exceptions with the intention of shifting group thinking to a “challenge” mode. This process naturally leads to less complexity and more simplicity in work tasks, procedures, systems, and processes.

What Make Me Think:

This article examines the influence of the quality of teamwork on the performance effects of a creative-thinking and domain related skills in innovation teams. As the quality of teamwork is an important moderating condition facilitating the application of domain-relevant skills, while obstructing the application of creative-thinking skills. Although everyone has a potential to generate something that is creative there might exist some hurdles (varies with person to person) which can just stop them to be creative. And this is the responsibility of the management to let everyone free atleast when it comes to the creativity which can be highly beneficial for the organization.

And of course from all the reading modules the best one is the one by Sutton as its obvious that it is not always the seeing right way that is right, sometimes in the normal life and most of the times in the business world it is the so called ‘peculiar way’ that can lead for a better solution to a problem or can escort to create something that is inimitable and rare.