April 1, 2008 by Cynthia Sifonis.

This month Wired posted an interesting article -  “How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong.”

The author of the article discusses how Apple does everything that companies are not supposed to do if they want to be a creative company. As stated in the article, Apple’s organizational structure and business culture more closely resemble “an old-school industrial manufacturer like General Motors than the typical tech firm.”
Apple is a hierarchical organization with the top dog (Steve Jobs) micromanaging every aspect of the company. Supposedly, this micromanaging includes even little details such as the number of screws to place on the bottom of a laptop or the amount of curve in the corners of a monitor. There is little or no individual autonomy.
This top-down management style isn’t implemented in a soft and fuzzy manner in which employees are reassured about their value to the company and their role in the development and future success of the Apple brand. Oh No. It is of the in-your-face, do it, do it well, or do it somewhere else style.
Extreme secrecy is one of the cultural values. Of course we knew this as it regards telling anyone outside of Apple about Apple’s game plan or in-the-works projects. However, this secrecy extends to individuals and units within the organization as well. Employees only have access to certain areas of the workplace. Teams working on different aspects of the same project do not communicate with each other or are even aware of what the other teams are working on.
What the author of the article points out is really surprising though is that this strategy is actually working for Apple. The secrecy increases the excitement at the unveiling of new products and actually adds to the mystique of the Apple brand. With a visionary such as Steve Jobs leading the company,many of the products are changing the paradigms for that class of product. And Jobs’ managerial style? Well, it appears that people try even harder to please the big boss and earn his approval.

So…does this mean that all the suggestions for making your organization an organization capable of innovating and adapting to a fluid variable marketplace are wrong?  We DON’T need flat organizations that emphasize teamwork and open communication?  Knowledge workers and innovators don’t need autonomy?  We don’t need transparency both within the organization and without?   I doubt it.

I think this type of organizational structure works BECAUSE Steve Jobs is at the helm. Have Jobs manage a company such as Google with an organization that is designed to promote creativity and I don’t think creativity and innovation will result.  Similarly, put someone else in charge of Apple with it’s current culture and organizational structure and I don’t think you would see the level of success the company has exhibited since Jobs took the helm.  I believe that this would be the case even if the CEO managed in a fashion to how Steve Jobs currently manages the organization.

I am just hypothesizing at this point but I think the reason that traditional organizations have trouble with innovation and creativity is because they need a visionary such as Steve Jobs at the helm to be innovative.  These people are few and far between.  So what do you do if you don’t have a visionary at the helm?  You need to fully utilize the resources of the people you do have in an environment that has been shown to promote creativity and innovation.

Posted in Organizational Creativity, innovation, Creativity | No Comments »

China set to lead innovation

April 1, 2008 by Cynthia Sifonis.

This article taps into the fear of all U.S. entrepreneurs. We know that China can manufacture more quickly and more cheaply. It might even be able to do it better.
We acknowledge that China’s advantages are no longer in just the manufacturing realm and are now moving to the technology domain.
However, we have always held onto the idea that we excel at innovation. The current cultural emphasis on creativity and innovation is the direct result of our belief that our competitive advantage now lies in our ability to generate new ideas and to turn those ideas into innovations.
This article argues that this advantage might soon be disappearing:
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-04/bz_china

Posted in innovation, Creativity | No Comments »

Novelty + Value = Creativity???

November 6, 2007 by Cynthia Sifonis.

I am still looking over books to use as textbooks for my Creativity and Innovation course next semester. Right now I am reading through Weisberg’s book “Creativity: Understanding Innovation in Problem Solving, Invention, and the Arts.” This book is a likely candidate for a required text for several reasons.

It does not assume any knowledge of psychology on the part of the reader.

The author takes a cognitive approach to creativity but also discusses other approaches to the study of creativity.

I agree with a lot the author has to say but also disagree with some of his beliefs and assumptions. I am hoping this disagreement will result in some good discussion fodder in the class.

One of the first topics addressed in his book is the definition of creativity.

The standard definition of creativity is that the product/process/idea needs to be both novel AND useful/appropriate. There is some debate of what it means for something to be novel. However, most concede that for something to be novel it has to be novel for either the individual generating the idea (”mundane” or “psychological” creativity) or it has to be novel with respect to all human history (”historical” creativity).

There is more debate about the second component; that the novel idea be useful or appropriate to the domain in which the creativity is occurring.

What this means is that a creative poem must be a poem. It must satisfy poetic constraints of meter, rhythm and metaphor.

A creative product must satisfy a need.

Those taking a problem solving approach to creativity might say that a creative solution to a problem must be both novel and solve the problem. “Solving the problem” is what determines whether a novel solution is useful or appropriate.

Weisberg, in defining creativity, only focuses on one definition. He focuses on Csikszentmihalyi’s definition that a creative product is both novel and has value.

How is value determined? By the gatekeepers of the discipline. A scientific theory or finding has value when it is published in a peer reviewed journal. A piece of music has value when it is performed publicly and people pay to hear the music. A painting has value when it is sold or displayed in a gallery.

At least this is Weisberg’s presentation of Csikszentmihalyi’s definition.

Weisberg has a problem with this view and I agree with him. Many novel works that were considered valuable at inception do not endure the test of time. Does that mean they were creative but became less creative with time? Other novel works were considered valueless at inception but became highly valued over time. Does this mean they also became more creative over time?

I doubt it and so does Weisberg. Though value is an important component of creativity, it shouldn’t define creativity. Perhaps value is what distinguishes creativity from innovation.

As much as I have problems with this definition of creativity, I have even more difficulty with Weisberg’s definition of creativity. He says that novelty alone makes something creative as long as that novelty was intentional (it can’t have occurred by accident). It doesn’t have to solve a problem, or be appropriate to the domain or be useful. It just has to be intentionally novel.

This suggests that failed attempts to solve a problem are just as creative as the novel solution to a problem. A grocery list could be a creative poem as long as someone says it is a poem.

Where Csikszentmihalyi’s definition might be too dependent on context, Weisberg’s definition is too inclusive. I feel that, at the very least, a creative product needs to be both novel and a member of the domain in question (it has to be a poem, a theory of evolution, a painting…).

Having said that, Weisberg brings up some good points in defense of his definition. He points out that Watson and Crick generated several incorrect solutions to the problem of the structure of DNA. For example, for a while they considered a triple-helix model of DNA. Weisberg’s definition states that this incorrect solution is just as creative as the correct solution (the double helix). He argues that the same creative cognitive processes produced the double helix solution as produced the triple helix solution. The fact that one solution was correct and the other incorrect does not alter the fact that the act of generating the solutions was a creative act.

I had to concede that point (even though I didn’t want to).

So how do I reconcile this point with the intuition that Weisberg’s definition is too inclusive?

Perhaps Weisberg intends to define creativity in terms of the processes that result in the creative product. The creative processes that generate incorrect solutions and failed attempts are the same creative processes that generate successes. Hence, if a novel idea is the result of a creative process then it must be creative.

However, the cognitive approach to creativity assumes that creativity results from normal cognitive processes operating on normal knowledge structures. Sometimes the result of the processes is something ordinary. At other times, the result is novel and creative.

Weisberg subscribes to the cognitive approach. Consequently, he must not be making the claim I think he is - that it is the use of special creative cognitive processes that determine whether or not the novel product is creative.

Frankly, I’m not sure how he would reconcile this issue.

I would reconcile this issue by suggesting that part of the creative process is rejecting unfit solutions or alternatives and persisting in working towards the “appropriate” or “useful” solution to a problem. Consequently, a novel but incorrect solution is not creative. Creativity is achieved by continued work towards a goal until the product is both novel and appropriate or useful.

The degree of creativity of the product is related to the degree to which the creator tweaks the creation until it satisfies both criteria of creativity: novelty and usefulness.

Posted in Creativity | 1 Comment »

Mac Vs PC Analogies

October 30, 2007 by Cynthia Sifonis.

Since I am already on my commercial soapbox, I might as well continue with the discussion of the 20 year advertising war between Mac and PC. This is a Mac driven war and, to give the company credit, it has generated some great commercials. An amazing number of these commercials rely on analogy to communicate the superiority of the Mac to the PC.

The first of these commercials was the 1984 “Big Brother” commercial. It is considered to be a groundbreaking commercial by many in the advertising industry.

Beautiful! The analogy? That PC clones created a clone-like hive mentality with Big Brother IBM setting the standards for a monotonous and bleak computer experience. Ground-breaking, liberated, unique Macs would save us from this and bring color back into our world.Subsequent Mac vs PC commercials over the intervening years continued this theme using a range of analogies to communicate the superiority of the MAC over the PC. For example, the analogy of the PC Intel Pentium II chip to a snail:

And this one comparing the PC 2000 bug to 2001: Space Odessey’s HAL:

What I haven’t liked are the current slew of MAC vs PC commercials, mainly because the analogy doesn’t hold up for me. Now don’t take me wrong. I like both Macs and PCs. I’ve used both over the years and think they are equally useful, each in their own way. The reason the analogy in the new set of commercials doesn’t work for me is that the idea being communicated by the commercials through a variety of analogies (the bloated PC commercial, the PC that can’t speak to the Japanese “camera” commercial, etc) is that Macs are “fun” and PCs are for work. My experiences with both is that it is just the opposite. Most MAC users I know are in the arts or advertising and they appear to spend all their time slaving at their computers. If they want to play, there are precious few games they can play with. The “fun stuff” pushed by Mac just appears to be tools for artistic professionals to do their jobs. Kind of sad.This is actually relevant to the use of analogy for communication. By using an analogy to tap into user’s existing knowledge, you tap into ALL of that knowledge. This is actually one of the problems with using analogy to communicate and why it is so important to choose the correct analogy to describe an innovation or to make a point. All the conceptual baggage comes packaged in an analogy - the good with the bad. By activating that knowledge in the audience, you run the risk of them making some unwanted inferences (should any exist). In my case, the knowledge of how Mac users actually use Macs runs counter to the message implied in the commercials and just rubs me the wrong way.

This is not a good way to win friends and influence people.

The clip below illustrates several of the current Mac vs PC ads strung together for those unfamiliar with the commercials just discussed:

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Analogy for Communication

October 30, 2007 by Cynthia Sifonis.

I ran across this great commercial for EDS that draws an analogy between the services offered by EDS and cat herding.

Where is the analogy? At the very end when the announcer says “In a sense, this is what we do. We bring together information, ideas and technologies and make them go where you want.“

This is an excellent example of how analogy can be used to communicate about innovation. One of the problems with trying to sell an innovation or even describe it to others is that, by definition, an innovation is new and people’s lack of knowledge of the innovation prevent them from fully understanding its benefits and function.

Analogy, by its very nature, uses the familiar to explain or make sense of the unfamiliar. This is why it is a common tool of educators.

By describing an innovation in terms of knowledge people already possess, it is possible to convey the essential characteristics of the innovation with a minimum of effort. This is done by tapping into the audience’s existing knowledge. This is absolutely essential for a company such as EDS that deals in intangibles…innovative intangibles at that. The customer is going to need a concrete concept to relate to in order to understand their services.

As EDS’s commercial demonstrates, a little bit of humor also helps.

Posted in Communication, Analogy, Creativity | No Comments »