Corporate Entrepreneurship: Building the Entrepreneurial Organization by Paul Burns

PART 4

CREATIVITY AND

INNOVATION

CHAPTER 14

Encouraging Creativity

Corporate Entrepreneurship: Building the Entrepreneurial Organization by Paul Burns

Creativity

• Creativity is a right brain activity

• It involves lateral as opposed to vertical

thinking.

• It is intuitive, imaginative and rule breaking

• It requires interpersonal and emotional skills

and is people focused.

Corporate Entrepreneurship: Building the Entrepreneurial Organization by Paul Burns

Creative v Logical Thinking

Seeks questions Seeks answers

CREATIVE LEFT BRAIN LOGICAL RIGHT BRAIN

Diverges

Explores different views

Restructures

Seeks ways an idea might help

Welcomes discontinuous leaps

Welcomes chance intrusions

Open ended

Converges

Asserts best or right view

Uses existing structure

Says when an idea will not work

Uses logical steps

Focuses on what is relevant

Closed

Corporate Entrepreneurship: Building the Entrepreneurial Organization by Paul Burns

Creative Types

• Conceptual fluency - They are able to produce many ideas

• Mental flexibility - They are adept at lateral thinking.

• Originality - They produce atypical responses to problems

• Suspension of judgement - They do not analyse too quickly

• Impulsive - They act impulsively to an idea, expressing their ‘gut-feel’

• Anti authority - They are always willing to challenge authority

• Tolerance - They have a high tolerance threshold towards the ideas of others

Majaro (1992)

Corporate Entrepreneurship: Building the Entrepreneurial Organization by Paul Burns

The Creative Process

Generating knowledge and awareness

Incubation process

Generating ideas

Corporate Entrepreneurship: Building the Entrepreneurial Organization by Paul Burns

Sources of Commercial Ideas

INTERNAL

Awareness and ideas

R&D

Engineering

Purchasing

Production

Marketing and sales

EXTERNAL

Distributors and agents

Competitors

Suppliers

Customers

Universities,

consultants,

exhibitions

Awareness

& ideas

Corporate Entrepreneurship: Building the Entrepreneurial Organization by Paul Burns

The Creative Process

Generating knowledge and awareness

Evaluation and implementation

Incubation process

Generating ideas

Feedback

loop

Corporate Entrepreneurship: Building the Entrepreneurial Organization by Paul Burns

Techniques to aid Creativity

• Brainstorming

• Analogy

• Attribute analysis

• Gap analysis

– Perceptual mapping

– Non-metric mapping

– Repertory grid

Corporate Entrepreneurship: Building the Entrepreneurial Organization by Paul Burns

Drucker’s Sources of Opportunity

• The unexpected

• The incongruity

• The inadequacy in underlying processes

• The changes in industry or market structure

PLUS

• Demographic changes

• Changes in perception, mood or meaning

• New knowledge

Corporate Entrepreneurship: Building the Entrepreneurial Organization by Paul Burns

Why? Why?

Deliveries

unreliable Transport

problems

Production

bottlenecks

Quality is

suspect

Price not

competitive

Materials not

consistent

Lost best

salespersonSales are

falling Inadequate

checking

We use ‘cost

plus’ pricing

Inadequate

rewards

Why?

Why?

Why?

Why?

Why?

Why?

Why?

Why?

Why?

Why?

Why?

Corporate Entrepreneurship: Building the Entrepreneurial Organization by Paul Burns

Approaches to Innovation

• Have a problem & seek a solution

• Have a solution and seek a problem

• Identify a need and develop a solution

Corporate Entrepreneurship: Building the Entrepreneurial Organization by Paul Burns

Drucker’s 5 Stage to Innovation

1. Analyse opportunities, internal and external. Innovate for NOW - timing is everything.

2. Innovation is conceptual and perceptual, so look at financial implications and analyse whether it meets the opportunity.

3. Keep innovation simple - KISS!

4. Start small, take an incremental approach.

5. Aim at leadership and dominate the competition as soon as possible.

Corporate Entrepreneurship: Building the Entrepreneurial Organization by Paul Burns

Blocks to Organisational Creativity

• Lack of organisational slack

• Too much bureaucracy

• Tight financial control

• Poor communication

• ‘Not invented here’

• Too much criticism, not enough praise

• Over-tight planning

• Promoting too many like minded people from within

• Hoarding of problems

• Insufficient training

• Banning of brainstorming

Corporate Entrepreneurship: Building the Entrepreneurial Organization by Paul Burns

Encouraging Organisational Creativity

• Valuing and rewarding creativity

• Trusting culture

• Freedom - not over-control

• Slack in resources

• Open communication

• Exposure to new ideas

• Tolerance of mistakes

• Tolerance of divergence/difference

• ‘Creative abrasion’

Corporate Entrepreneurship: Building the Entrepreneurial Organization by Paul Burns

Technology, Talent, Tolerance and

Economic Growth

Innovation

Tolerance

Creative

class

Technology

Talent

Economic

Growth

Florida

Corporate Entrepreneurship: Building the Entrepreneurial Organization by Paul Burns

The Creativity Matrix

CREATIVITY LEVEL

CR

EA

TIV

ITY

TR

EN

D

Ireland Finland

Denmark

USASweden

Netherlands

UK

GermanyItaly

France

Spain

Portugal

GreeceAustria

LAGGARDS

UP & COMING

LOSING GROUND

LEADERS

Corporate Entrepreneurship: Building the Entrepreneurial Organization by Paul Burns

Michael Dell

We learned the importance of ignoring conventional wisdom and doing things

our way....It’s fun to do things that people don’t

think are possible or likely. Its also exciting to achieve

the unexpected.