I was just reading an article in this month’s Fast Company which asked some very senior creative people from hundreds of companies around the world, big and small, “Who would you bring back from the dead and have on your creative team?”
Interestingly enough, Leonardo Da Vinci pipped Steve Jobs by one vote. Apparently Leonardo’s areas of creativity were wider than Steve’s, so he added greater potential of lateral thinking.
Creativity has always fascinated me: why some people are seemingly more creative than others and where ideas come from.
Some people can be brimming with ideas and so artistic, and yet never do anything with them. I met a guy named Mathew via a mutual friend once. Mathew was an inventor, and I saw some of the inventions he had made; mainly playthings for kids. They were good, but he just never did anything with them. When I suggested that he should ring McDonalds and see if he could get one of his puzzles (which was quite ingenious) into a kid’s meal, he looked at me as if I had just told him that his child should try for being a builder rather than an orthopaedic surgeon – not that he had any children.
There are other people who are good at business and they are just looking for that unique idea to come along that they can take all the way to the top. Ray Crock, founder of McDonalds, was able to capitalise on the idea and prototype invented by the McDonald brothers in California in the late 50’s. His business acumen made a good idea great. (Not sure who came up with the concept of putting a toy in a kid’s meal though.)
Businesses know that they need to be more innovative and creative to compete, and to gain and maintain customers. The problem is that they often don’t allow the space and time for creativity and innovation to happen because they are too busy doing what they do – getting their products and services to customers. Also, they are measured on how efficiently they do what they do and they have invested a lot of money in doing what they do. So, if ideas complement what they do, they will often be encouraged, but if they are great ideas but are not in keeping with what they do, they may be dismissed. This further tells an employee to stay inside the lines.
John Cleese, perhaps better known as a member of Monty Python or Basil Fawlty, spoke at a conference on creativity a number of years ago. In this talk, he superbly articulates the difference between Mathew, the inventor, and Ray Crock. He explains how most of a business works in the ‘closed’ space. It is a space where we put our heads down and get on with the process of making things happen (to schedule). This would be Ray Crock’s space (for the most part); making ideas work efficiently. The ‘open’ space, according to Cleese, is where Mathew would mainly be. This is where you are open to thinking about new ways without boundaries and constraints, before you have made a decision that you need to proceed down a particular course of action, in order to produce an outcome. This is the space a child often occupies. They have not learned to close off to future possibilities.
Unfortunately, as adults we can close off too quickly, or even worse, not enter the open space at all.
If businesses are to encourage creativity, they need to strike a balance for staff being in the open and closed space. As individuals, we need to be open to new ideas, ways and possibilities but we also need to be pragmatic and start commercialising our ideas. The trick is, according to Cleese, just not ‘deciding’ too early and closing off from the open space before we get the optimum benefits from this mindset. Check out the John Cleese’s video here.
