Much like innovation, creativity should happen at every level of your organization. In this series, Ron Price examines the 12 enemies of successful innovation. Enemy #4 is discouraging creativity.
Episode Transcript:
We’re looking at the 12 enemies of successful innovation and enemy number four is discouraging creativity. All too often, this is a missed opportunity. Top management and leaders are usually recognized for their creativity and their innovation efforts and, therefore, most organizations depend on them for ideation, for innovation, for creativity—and they don’t always extend these activities to their teams until after the decisions have already been made, until the opinions have already been formed. It’s just a select few, as a result, in research and development or in innovation departments who are the ones coming up with the new solutions. And yet oftentimes, the greatest solutions to problems come from the creativity of the people who are closest to the activity that’s going on. Or people who are not thinking like experts and therefore they’re more curious, they’re open to more creative ideas, and they will often find ideas that we would have never thought about because we are weighed down by our education or our expertise. So, to overcome this enemy of successful innovation, it’s important to foster a culture of creativity and to encourage it everywhere. Everybody gets thanked. We don’t say, “That’s a good idea;” we say, “That’s an idea—good.” This helps us to overcome the number four enemy of successful innovation: discouraging creativity.
Discover the other enemies of innovation in this 90 Seconds of Innovation series here or by subscribing on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts so you don’t miss an episode. Tweet your innovation questions to @ebaiya. | Header Photo by Thirdman via Pexels.
