A642.6.3.RB_BorutyAlan_Practicing Creative Thinking Skills

Practicing Creative Thinking Skills

Each of the readings this week provided good examples of strategies that would help me lead innovation projects.  Mckeown (2014) gave me his innovator’s toolkit with eight models and tools that cover most if not all of the innovation life-cycle.  Canfield & Smith (2011) devoted a chapter to Dr. Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats.  But I was most impressed by the Harvard Business Review article, “Special Forces” Innovation: How DARPA Attacks Pproblems.  Dugan & Kaigham (2013) led DARPA from 2009 to 2012.  In the article, they dissected the organization to uncover important interdependent pieces that enable the DARPA model.  Armed with the information they collected, they rebuilt the model in their new organization, Motorola Mobility, and established the Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) group.  They discussed each element they installed, why they installed it, and how it contributes to breakthrough innovation for the organization. I found it quite interesting.  It is as much about creating an environment conducive to innovation as I have read to date.

Unfortunately, I must admit that, until I read the article, I had never heard of DARPA and had no idea anything like it existed.  To me, it sounded like an organization you might learn about while watching Get Smart reruns on television.  But, these are the good guys and they actually exist.

Over the past 50 years, the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has produced an unparalleled number of breakthroughs. Arguably, it has the longest-standing, most consistent track record of radical invention in history. Its innovations include the internet; RISC computing; global positioning satellites; stealth technology; unmanned aerial vehicles, or "drones"; and micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS), which are now used in everything from air bags to ink-jet printers to video games like the Wii (Dugan & Kaigham, 2013, p. 76).

Identify five strategies that can help you lead innovation projects

I selected the following five strategies from the readings this week to help me lead innovation:

1. Employ Dugan and Kaigham’s ATAP ‘Special Forces’ model for innovation.
2. Utilize Burgelman and Seigel’s Minimum Winning Game.
3. Use Osborn and Parnes’ Creative Problem-Solving (CPS)
4. Incorporate Amabile’s Internal and External Motivation
5. Learn Dr. Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats, apply it regularly in the work center.

I believe each of these strategies will serve to keep creativity and innovation fresh during non-innovation periods and make the organization an innovation machine when it counts most.

Include in your discussion the reason these five elements are important and how you would apply them from your current position.

Innovation is a complex process.  To lead a complex process, the leader must create an environment in which the process can thrive.  Nick Obolensky (2014) describes this environment as having eight elements in place and understood by all.  The elements are: implicit purpose, explicit objectives, freedom to act, clear boundaries, people’s skill/will, few simple rules, ambiguity/chaos, unambiguous feedback.  The model that Dugan and Kaigham (2013) extracted from DARPA goes a long way towards establishing that environment.  This environment will operate in concert with and follow the rules of the culture that is still taking hold. 

Employing Dugan and Kaigham’s ATAP ‘Special Forces’ model for innovation will do a couple of important things for the organization.  First, it will allow me to tie the eight elements needed for complex process operations in with innovation.  It will be my job to share the underlying meaningful purpose, provide objectives, set boundaries and write a few simple rules.  On a regular basis I will verify the that the elements are still in place.  Second, people will actually begin seeing the changes in action.  They will be working together in a different way as the DARPA-like model is implemented.  The people are getting to know each other.  More importantly, the people are learning to trust each other.  Many things will be different and more will be expected of the front-line members.  The DARPA model has three elements and they will carry over to my organization.  The elements are ambitious goals, temporary project teams, and independence.  Ambitious goals define the projects the organization takes one.  DARPA’s “projects are designed to harness science and engineering advances to solve real-world problems or create new opportunities….The problems must be sufficiently challenging that they cannot be solved without pushing or catalyzing the science” (Dugan & Kaigham, 2013, p. 76).  Dugan and Kaigham recommend dedicating a small team to use inspired basic research, which I will do.  I will also use temporary project teams in order to keep collaboration high and a strong sense of urgency (Dugan & Kaigham, 2013).  I will allow the team the autonomy to select the projects they pursue.  My organization is not a full-time innovation facility.  But we will have people working innovation full time and I will shuffle the right people in and out as necessary to keep momentum going.  I believe the new model and environment will soon begin to change people’s thinking towards a more innovative mindset.  Other four strategies I chose are meant to feed the mindset and make innovative thinking the norm within the organization. 

Employing Burgelman and Seigel’s Minimum Winning Game (MWG) will teach the group how to keep balance between business strategy, product development, and technology development in innovation.  It will also serve to reinforce strategy development from the beginning of the project.  It is fact that uncertainty and risk are part of innovation.  This should keep innovators on their toes and asking smart questions.  It is not time to make reckless assumptions that could lead to products or services being developed that are not needed, wanted, or profitable (Mckeowm, 2014).  As with other strategies, I will routinely bring teams together to practice, discuss, and evaluate applying the concept to ideas.

Answering questions like who will be using the innovation, what will have to happen with the product or service before the product will be useful or popular, and will technology have to be developed to support the product, will keep the team’s efforts focused on what needs to be done without spending too much on one area and neglecting another.  The idea is for the team to understand what the minimum acceptable result has to be.  Once that is known, the team can determine other minimums.  Mckeown (2014) explained that “everyone benefits from finding out the lowest threshold for performance, design, or anything else that will shape the future success or failure of the innovation” (p. 154).  MWGs will be accomplished on each of the strategy drivers.  Continuously knowing what has to be done (at minimum) every six months for all of the MWGs allows the team to orchestrate their work and bring everything together in the best possible way.  Mckeown (2014) believes this is how success is shaped. 

Osborn and Parnes’ Creative Problem-Solving (CPS) process also benefits the organization in more than one way.  Members get to practice using each stage of the three-stage process: 1) explore the challenge, 2) generate ideas, and 3) prepare for action.  The stages are well titled and, for the most part, self-explanatory.  However, it would be a mistake to underestimate this simple process.  Likewise, it would also be a mistake to add complication to the process.  This is a creative thinking process.  It is a framework that focuses creative thinking on a specific problem.  We want ideas to be generated from the passionate, playful, dissatisfied, and creative minds of the participants.  Then we want those ideas to interact with the same type of thinking from the other participants.  The more the better.  The leader may have to initiate this stage with a suggestion or questions, but then should step back and let the activity develop on its own according to the participants.  Adding rules, complicated steps, or conforming behaviors can restrict creativity (Mckeown, 2014).  The benefits I spoke of earlier are significant.  The process takes away the mystique and magic stigmas associated with creative thinking yet allows the event to remain magical and mystical.  Participants will enjoy the experience, come up with the kinds of ideas that can be nurtured into useful solutions, and want to do it again.  The process in its simple form will generate many ideas that can be used immediately or cataloged and stored for later use.  Finally, the entire team will understand how important ideas are to the process and more importantly the collaboration an idea needs to encounter to become a really powerful idea.

Creative people are generally motivated by the possibilities associated with a great idea.  The work, individual expertise, and individual creativity skills are all motivators.  This motivation is intrinsic or comes from within.  Intrinsically motivated people approach the work in a positive manner; they are engaged with the work (Mckeown, 2014).  Intrinsic motivation is, indeed, very strong.  However, intrinsically motivated people can fall prey to the demotivators they face every day in the organization.

Some people are more motivated by extrinsic rewards.  “Dragging a new idea kicking and screaming into the real world needs different kinds of motivation.  The best motivation depends on the person, situation, timing, and task” (Mckeown, 2014, p. 169).  As is the case in every leadership scenario, the leader is charged with providing the motivation needed to influence the people to want to do the work.  To do that, the leader must know the people not only as individuals, but also as team members that create the unique personality of the team.  The leader must then skillfully apply that motivation to the good effect of everyone.  This is no different than in any situation that requires leader intervention for motivation; the same rules apply.  It is, however, more important (arguably) to get it right with innovation teams.  Innovation is practical creativity which can only be achieved through creativity.  The creative process can be viewed as a dream and think activity.  Not in a judgmental way, but in a connecting way.  Dreams are easily forgotten and in my completely layman opinion, this is because dreams are abstract and disconnected.  To bring a dream into the real world, it needs to be connected to something concrete, even if just temporarily and loosely.  Getting back on track, this dream and think process is hard work and mentally exhausting.  To achieve this high level of creative thinking, the people must be motivated.  The leader has to make sure all of the organizational demotivators have been addressed and each individual is motivated at a level and in a way that motivates the entire team.  The good news is that motivation is catching.  Motivation has a way of sustaining itself.  The bad news is if the leader fails to motivate the people toward a task, creativity will not reach the mystical and magical level I previously discussed and the ideas will not reach the quality level needed to be of any benefit (Mckeown, 2014). 

Amabile’s Internal and External Motivation Model takes some of the guess work out of motivating innovators.  It illustrates the work environment with three interlocking circles which create one area where all circles intersect each other. Where the circles remain independent of the other circles are labeled resources, organizational motivation, and management practices.  Where they all intersect is called innovation.  The output is labeled impacts and feeds a set of circles physically identical to the one I previously described.  This set represents individual/team creativity.  The circles are labeled task motivation, expertise, and creativity skills. The intersected area in the middle is labeled creativity.  You have to view the model as two independent models then as a single model.  The work environment consists of resources, management practices, and organizational motivation.  Each of these have an effect on the others and they all have an effect on innovation in the center.  The output is called impact.  The other circles follow the same logic with different labels.    What this shows is the connection between the work environment and individual/team creativity.  It shows how forces both internal and external can affect motivation.  It further infers what the leader can do to address motivation issues (Mckeown, 2014). 

It is not a complicated process although mastery takes dedicated effort by the leader to know and understand everyone on the team, but it is a critically important process.  The team may be able to determine the amount of work to do and may understand the creative thinking process, but if the leader cannot motivate the team and its individuals properly, the work will not get done or worse it may be done and produce sub-quality ideas.  Without motivation, the buck stops with the first person that no longer cares.

Canfield and Smith (2011) introduced the final strategy I will discuss.  They introduced Dr. Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats.  According to Dr. Bono, people utilize six types of thinking every day.  To each of these types Bono attached a different color hat and used that hat color to describe the characteristics of each thinking type.  The hats are as follows: (Canfield & Smith, 2011)

1. White – Neutral and objective thinking, facts, what we know and want to know.
2. Yellow – Optimistic thinking, explains why it will work
3. Black – Judgmental thinking, devil’s advocate, why it will not work, assess risk
4. Green – Possibilities, alternatives, and new ideas
5. Red – Feelings, hunches, intuition; “this is how I feel”
6. Blue – Managing the thinking process, control hat, problems and questions boss

Six Thinking Hats has potential.  It can be used to develop an individual’s awareness of their own thinking and therefore improve their ability to rationally think through an issue to an objective solution.  As team members, individuals will get to see different points of view as the group sequences through the different hats.  The benefit would be that individual thinking expands and becomes more understanding of other points of view.  The benefit to the organization is better decisions, more thorough solutions, and greater teamwork. 

The process seems more in line with critical thinking, if group critical thinking is even possible.  Canfield and Smith (2011) emphasized the proper use of Six Thinking Hats several times and spoke about the consequences of improperly using Six Training Hats.  I think I understand how it should flow, but they convinced me of the importance and I will pursue training and certification prior to using this process.  If it proves to be what I think it will be, I will make it required training throughout the organization. 

Briefly, the process is used to consider one issue at a time with each person in the group figuratively wearing the same color hat at the same time.  Going through Six Hats is basically sequencing through the six questions associated with the different color hats and gathering data from all the participants then move to the next hat , next question and so on.  The questions are as follows: (Canfield & Smith, 2011)

1. White - What do we know and what do we want to know?
2.  Yellow – Why might the idea work?
3. Black – Why might the idea not work?
4. Green – What are some alternatives to the idea?
5. Red – What is your intuition about the idea?
6. Blue – Knowing what we know now, what should we do next?

It seems simple enough, but there are some techniques that are not as straight forward and are less intuitive.  As I stated earlier, this tool has potential; I look forward to the training.

What does this tell you about the process of innovation?

All of these strategies to innovation tells me that the innovation process is dynamic.  Tools may work well in one situation and not at all in a different situation.  The good innovator will fill his toolkit so that he or she can adapt the approach to fit the situation.  More now than ever, I see innovation as a group collaboration process in which every idea is important and meaningful to the process.  However, there are a number of tools that are not specifically innovation tools that can be used to help the innovation process along.  Training should be considered to further team members understanding of innovation.  Innovation is, indeed, a complex process and often innovation emerges in a way that cannot be easily explained.  Understanding as much as possible would help individuals contribute more to the process and gain confidence in their innovation skills.  Innovation has risen to the top of priorities and is a source of discomfort for many companies.  It is time to look hard at how business operates, the types of questions they ask, and how they see and prepare for the future.  My guess is that many companies that do not currently have innovation as part of their strategic plan will change their minds in the very near future. 

~Pete

References:

Canfield, J., & Smith, G. (2011). Imagine: Ideation skills for improvement and innovation today. Holland, Michigan: Black Lake Press.

Dugan, R. E., & Gabriel, K. J. (2013). "Special Forces" Innovation: How DARPA attacks problems. Harvard Business Review, 91(10), 74-84.

Mckeown, M. (2014). The innovation book. Harlow, United Kingdom: Pearson Education Limited.