the power of unexpected……………

7/29/2019 The power of unexpected

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The power ofunexpectedBy Alan G Robinson

Presentation by Mohammed Akbar Gani

NCRDS Sterling Institute of Management Studies .

Roll no 35 MMS 1

st

year


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Review

The True Nature of Corporate creativity.

The Six Element of Corporate creativity.

AlignmentSelf initiated activity.

Unofficial activity.

Serendipity.

Diverse stimuli.

within company communication.


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A company is creative when its employee do something new and potential

useful without being directly shown or thought.

Corporate creativity leads to improvement and innovation both of which

are essential for long term survival and success of a company.

Most creative acts are improvement.

Creative acts are not planned for and come from where they are least

expected.

Nobody can predict who will be involved in them?, what they will be?,when they will occur? Or how they will happen.

Company can enhance their creative performance by recognizing the

nature of their creativity and learning how to actively promote

unanticipated improvement and innovation.

The Nature of Corporate Creativity


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The Six Essential of Corporate Creativity

There are six essential element that play a key role inpromoting corporate creativity.It is not possible to predictthe specific creativity acts that will be the result, but thelikelihood of their occurrence gets vastly enhanced whenall these six elements are present. Managing creativity isabout raising probability

These six elements will help company in increasingfrequency with which creativity acts occurs.

They are Alignment, Self-initiated activity, unofficialactivity, serendipity, diverse stimuli and within companycommunication.


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Alignment

This ensures that the interests and actions of all employees are directed

toward a companys key goals, so that any employee will recognize and

respond positively to a potentially useful idea.

Its effects on corporate creativity are visible only if the company is

either very strongly aligned or completely misaligned.

This is because this requires discipline, persistence, and hard work.

There are three factors that make up strong alignment. First of all, the

organization has to be clear about its goals.

The second factor is commitment to initiatives that promote the key

goals.

The third and last factor is accountability for actions that affect the keygoals.

Corrective actions should be taken if these decisions are not in

alignment with the goals.


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Self-initiated activity

Self-initiated activity ensures that the intrinsic motivationis much higher than if the project had been planned orgiven to them by someone else such as the management.

Every person in the company should be confident that her

ideas would be considered in a timely and fair manner.

The system must be based on intrinsic motivation.Rewards must be minimized in the long run so that theinherent motivation of employees to think and generatewinning ideas is tapped.


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Unofficial activity

This is activity that occurs in the absence of direct officialsupport, and with the intent of doing something new and useful.Resistance and opposition to new ideas are quite common in anyorganization.

Unofficial activity provides such new ideas a safe haven toincubate till such time that they are strong enough to overcomesuch resistance. According official status to any new idea alsostunts its progress by setting up barriers to creativity.

Almost every creative act has an appreciable period of unofficialactivity. Companies need to provide employees the space toconduct unofficial activity.


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Serendipity (The happening of things by chance in a good manner)

Serendipity helps in bridging this distance. Companies canpromote serendipity in three ways.

The first approach is to increase the frequency of accidents thatcould turn out to be fortunate. This can be achieved by adopting abias for action, toward tinkering, toward empirical research work.

The second approach is to increase awareness of the accidentsthat do occur. Companies must educate employees not tooverlook exceptions.

The third useful approach is to increase the companys domain ofsagacity to turn more accidents into fortunate ones.


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Diverse stimuli

A stimulus may help in providing fresh insight into somethingthat a person is already set to do, or it might show him somethingvery different. It is impossible to predict how an individual willreact to a stimulus; another may not even notice what provokesone person.

Companies can leverage this element by providing employees theopportunity to communicate with each other about variousstimuli that they encounter at their place of work.

This may help some of the stimuli to have an impact on suitableindividuals. Companies must identify stimuli and provide them toemployees. Rotation of employees into every job they are capable

of doing should be common practice. Companies must alsoarrange for their employees to interact with those outside thecompany who are likely to be the source of their stimuli.


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Within-company communication

Planned activities in organizations are carried out with thesupport of well-knit lines of communication. But such networksdo not facilitate corporate creativity.

Unanticipated within-company communication helps individualsin getting the needed knowledge and information to pursue theirnew ideas.

There are three ways in which an organization can promotewithin-company communication.

Firstly, it should provide opportunities for employees who do notnormally interact with each other to meet.

Secondly, the company should ensure that every employee has asufficient understanding of the organizations activities to be ableto tap its resources and expertise.

The third and most important point is to create a neworganizational priority: all employees should know theimportance of being responsive to requests for information orhelp from other employees.


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Glance of the book

These six elements offer a way to realize the tremendous creativepotential that each company possesses. They also serve asbenchmarks against which other companies and their practicescan be evaluated in order to learn and improve an organization.

These elements will force people to question their assumptionsand to realize the enormous possibilities that exist within eachcompany.

The above book review from Corporate Creativity, by Alan G.Robinson, published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc. SanFrancisco, 1997. All rights of the authors and publisher arereserved.

the power of unexpected……………

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