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 What
is Innovation?
Management
expert Peter Drucker calls innovation,
“change that creates a new dimension
of performance” (Hesselbein, et al
2002).
Innovation
could not exist without creativity. To
create new dimensions of performance,
we need new ideas and new criteria. And
we need to be personally involved, working
from our restlessness with integrity.
Why
Is Creativity Important in Innovation?
Creativity is the foundation of innovation—it’s
the source and expression of new ideas
and new solutions. We create when we feel
a restlessness to improve or change the
status quo—meaningfully, responsibly,
wisely, and with impact. Innovation, on
the other hand, is the successful implementation
of a new idea with agreement from others.
Demands for innovation are increasing
in each industry sector and area of personal
concern. You, your colleagues, and your
children will be challenged to revise
your decision-making criteria to fit the
future you want given the resources at
hand—and to have faith and confidence
in your ability to meet new challenges
and recognize new opportunities.
What
Does Creativity Involve?
Creativity involves transformation—a
thorough or dramatic change in form, structure,
process, appearance, or character—of
a person, a process, a product, or an
environment. In other words, when creativity
is involved, movement away from a less
desirable present toward a more fulfilling
and engaging future occurs.
Creativity is a condition of our species;
it is natural. From creativity, new life
begins. In business, you express your
creativity by imagining, wondering, planning,
reasoning, and communicating new ideas
and solutions. You discuss, analyze, structure,
and prove why these new ideas will work
to yield greater returns.
Why
Do You Create?
Restlessness prompts you to create—to
contribute to making the world and your
place in it more purposeful, beautiful,
efficient, sustainable, and comfortable.
Sometimes you create to experiment with
new ideas because your perceptions have
shifted to embrace new viewpoints and
learning. Sometimes your create because
external environmental conditions have
changed. In essence, you create when you
decide to or are moved to look for and
invent new pathways and new solutions.
Do
We All Create the Same Way?
How one person identifies creativity may
not match how another does. We all experience
restlessness as a source of creativity.
What each of us is restless about and
how we go about dealing with that restlessness
is personal and patterned according to
our temperament pattern. How each of the
four temperament patterns approach creativity
is highlighted in this book.
How
Does It Feel to Create?
How you feel about yourself, risk taking,
and your influence on the environment
impacts how you create. When you engage
in a creative act, you enter uncharted
territory. You may feel intrigued, confident,
engaged, curious, and eager to explore
while others may simultaneously fear abandonment,
loss of security or social status, and
being overwhelmed with more work. How
you feel about proceeding and your attitude
toward success impacts your actions. Emotions
are part of the system of creating. Positive
emotions support new actions more than
negative ones.
You
can promote positive creative experiences.
Choose to make a difference. Rather than
focus on what you feel you lack, appreciate
your desire to move forward. Replace skepticism
toward risking with a curiosity to learn
from successes and failures. Generate
enthusiasm for the good you might find.
Promote your sense of self worth by devising
a new dimension of performance for yourself,
your team, and your company.
The
Bottom Line
Creativity is personal and results from
a restlessness to improve current or future
conditions. Innovation is societal. It
results from applying creativity to meet
the established criteria for success.
For success in innovation, others’
needs and values must be met.
This
book was written to help you experience
more of the positive aspects of your creativity,
to bolster your awareness, to build on
your abilities and skills, and to help
you generate new ideas to propose for
innovation.
Creativity
results from restlessness. Innovation
results from creativity.
How Temperament Influences
Creativity
You have the capacity
to more fully express your true nature
when your temperament pattern’s core
needs and values are being met. When they
are not met, you will do what you can
to balance your energy to create equilibrium.
Becoming
aware of your temperament pattern and
those of the people around you gives you
freedom to choose, act, and generate and
consider ideas from many different viewpoints.
It’s a gift to the creativity equation—four
sources of knowledge, four sources of
imagination, and four sources of evaluation
from which to choose to invent and implement
surprisingly relevant and new solutions.
The
Four Temperament Motivations for Using
Creative Thinking
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The
Idealist
Championing a
cause, encouraging others, unifying
diverse factions, improving relationships
among people, inspiring others,
revitalizing morale, interpreting
trends from a human dimension, empathizing
with others, developing human potential,
seeking common ground, mediating
disputes.
Idealists want
to make a difference in meaningful
ways. They synthesize and harmonize
the human spirit to maximize group
synergy and output.
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The
Guardian
Assessing situations
for safety and security, sequencing
processes, getting the right amount
to the right people and not the
wrong amount to the wrong people,
enforcing procedures, stabilizing
chaos, specifying resources, protecting
group accord and progress, organizing
people and things, making plans
more efficient.
Guardians effectively
structure and standardize to maximize
group cohesion minimize chaos
in the human experience.
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The
Rational
Analyzing systems,
building prototypes, defining challenges,
searching for systemic inefficiencies,
designing models, conceptualizing
potentials, classifying competencies,
questioning ideas, forecasting,
exploring probabilities, envisioning
futures, hypothesizing, deducing
rudiments of global truths, inventing
strategies.
Rationals understand
the human experience from a conceptual
base. They identify the variables,
systems, and ideas used to model
theories for consideration.
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The
Artisan
Adapting
to the needs of a situation, performing
with skill and panache, negotiating
agreements, entertaining others
through speech and action, making
things happen, responding to the
needs of the moment, improvising
and troubleshooting, varying applications.
Artisans
manipulate opportunities in the
immediate environment to produce
impactful and simple solutions.
They cater to the sensual experience
of the human spirit.
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