Imagine you are being interviewed by a reporter for an article about creativity and innovation in your workplace. You are asked: “Where could you use more creativity in your organisation?”

What’s the first thing that springs to mind? Product innovation? Installing a funky ‘thinking room’?

We tend to narrow down the scope of creativity at work to a few areas, typically involving R&D, an innovation team, marketing and/or creative touches to the office.

This narrowing down of the power of creativity is done at our peril. Every employee has the capacity to think creatively and to develop creative solutions to problems. Every area of the business can benefit from creative thinking.

In this two-part blog, I will use the Business Model Canvas to highlight nine areas of your business where you could apply creative thinking for innovation. We'll start with the customer-facing part of the business this week and cover your internal operations next week. 

Creativity at work has been on the de...

Follow our simple recipe.

Picture the scene:

A blue screen flickers and glows. Faces peer out of little video rectangles. It is the sixth virtual meeting of day. Nineteen pairs of eyes stare wearily at Kevin’s section of the digital vista as he implores his team: “We need to find another way, team. We must make this year work for us. The way we used to do things is just not working any more. We need to think out the box, here. C’mon everyone.” (The eyes blink silently back at him. Sighs are breathed. Tony scratches her head and thinks: How?)

Businesses across the world are under pressure to innovate.

In a study last year, McKinsey concluded that prioritizing innovation today is the key to unlocking postcrisis growth, yet few consider themselves equipped to face the challenge. In addition to the seismic impact of the pandemic, automation is displacing jobs and cutting down on process-oriented tasks. Businesses urgently need to get people thinking creatively to cope with uncertainty ...

Innovation is now an imperative

We used to wonder when or how we should innovate. We are in a crisis and there’s no way out but to reinvent ourselves and our businesses.  

“The enterprise that does not innovate ages and declines. And in a period of rapid change such as the present, the decline will be fast.” Peter Drucker

So how do we do this?

We copy the creative habits of innovators.

Why habits?

Habits make up a way of being. Habits are dependable. By adopting some of the creative habits of innovators, you will be able see real transformation in how you think and how you do things. You will be able to make innovation part of who you are rather than something you did once.  

What innovators do differently

Austin Kleon’s book ‘Steal like an artist’ is beautiful in its simplicity and pertinence. He is a writer and an artist who has distilled the key creative habits that have made an impact in his life. He writes the book as advice to his younger self.

I’ve taken his advice to s...

‘Enable creativity’: a new requirement for managers.

As a manager today, you are now required to nurture creativity and lead your teams to innovate. Where creative thinking used get your team ahead of the pack, now it is a survival skill.

This duty to enable creativity has been placed in your arms which are already carrying: masses of meetings, countless communications, deadlines, deliverables, and the unenviable task of keeping everyone motivated and engaged whilst working remotely.  Eish!

If it is any consolation, you are not alone. You are amongst a throng of professionals worldwide who are doing the best they can in the situation that they find themselves. CEOs are in it with you too. In a recent Financial Times article, it was reported that when it comes to homeworking and productivity, CEOs are saying that “creativity is the biggest single issue.” (Emma Jacobs, Financial Times, 18 Jan 2021)

So as a manager, how can you enable creativity without having to take a diploma in ...

… and how to do better.

None of us want to be left behind. With reality morphing quickly and our business landscape shifting unnervingly under our feet, we need to be able to nurture fresh thinking and enable innovation in our teams.

Dr Roger Firestien, esteemed professor of creativity and author of Create in a Flash, puts it this way:     

“When the rules change, creativity is key.”

In the past, fresh thinking got us ahead of the pack. Now we need fresh thinking just to keep up.

You have most likely seen the need to reinvent some part of your work life this year so far. You probably needed to innovate for how you motivate your team, how you maintain team well-being, how you engage your clients or how you attract customers. There is no getting away from the need to innovate!  Therefore, there is no getting away from the need to develop creativity.

First let’s get clear about our definitions of creativity and innovation.

Before I start, let us get on the same page with our defi...

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a new year should begin with a fresh supply of hope, ambitious resolutions, and the energy to get them going. This is somehow stitched into the fabric of our understanding of how the world should work. We feel entitled to this kind of start to a year. Shouldn’t we be?

It turns out that, no, we are not. It turns out that the world may sometimes twist and turn in wonky, unexpected ways and it is up to us to build the resilience and creativity to deal with it.

Does this sound familiar?

• It’s not even the end of January yet, and I’m already worn out.
• I’m feeling spent.
• I’m so over this year. Can’t we skip forward to 2022?

The mental health charity Mind has found that more than half of adults in the UK (60%) and over two-thirds of young people (68%) said their mental health got worse during lockdown.  This was amplified when people had to go back into lockdown unexpectedly right in the middle of the festive season.

Not only are we deal...

The demand for creativity is growing

It’s hard not to notice all the limelight that creativity is getting in press and on social media lately. The clarion call is sounding ever louder.

• Creativity is first on the list of soft skills that companies need today (Sourced: LinkedIn Learning 2020 Workplace Learning Report)
• Creativity is in the top three most important skills for the workforce, along with complex problem solving and critical thinking (Source: World Economic Forum)
• Creativity is the number one capability that businesses require in order to navigate an increasingly complex world (Source: IBM survey of 1,500 CEOs)

We get it. Creativity is important!

Yet, we are not investing in creativity

Despite the ground swell of demand for this skill, the investment in creativity is lagging. Leaders are not putting their money where their mouth is.

We are still in a creativity crisis.

• Average creativity scores for the total population have been falling since 1990 (Source: Prof.
...

2020 was a sand-paper kind of year

Tha past year was a rough experience but one that made us look at what is beneath our top layers - in every sphere of our lives. It was a character-building year that toughened us up, whilst also somehow simultaneously softening us on the inside with gratitude for what we have. 

I love this quote by the brilliant author Arundhati Roy about the pandemic that hit us in 2020.

Which fears could be killing your creativity and what to do about them

I once had the privilege of hearing Jay Naidoo speak at a business breakfast. Naidoo is a social and political activist who served Nelson Mandela’s cabinet and is a South African national treasure (in my view.) He told the story of his life being transformed one day when, at the age of 15 and he heard the passionate and charismatic student leader, Steve Biko, speak at a rally. Naidoo says he will never forget this line: “The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”

Our minds are so powerful. If we let fear can take hold of our mind it can completely control our lives. Yet most of what we fear is not real. It’s often exaggerated or unrealistic, and even when it is not, the consequences of what we fear are often not as devastating as we imagine. If we don't do these things fear can paralyse us and we can end up living a life of playing it safe.

We can train our minds to leverage the power ...

Lo-tech inspiration from a high-tech conference

I was starting to feel a little bit heavy and somewhat weary of 2020 when Adobe’s creativity conference, Adobe MAX, came along. It came just at the right time to light up the sky of my imagination again and refuel my fire.

If you too need a bit of a boost to get you to the year-end with some sparkle in your eyes, I highly recommend these surprising, eye-opening, and inspiring videos.

Now, let me start out by saying, I’m not the primary audience for this conference. The purpose of this annual software conference is to share the latest releases of Adobe’s wide range of graphic tools with its users and build community.

I’m not a graphic designer, artist, illustrator nor 3D creator and the only Adobe tool I currently use is Adobe Acrobat PDF reader! Nevertheless, this conference has way more to offer than software. The company put a huge emphasis on the human creativity that not only drives each creation using their products, but that dri...