Three Ways Managers Can Improve Creativity
Big Idea Group (BIG) was a small company, founded by Mike Collins, that collected ideas for kid’s products (mostly toys) and pitched them to major toy companies, retailers, and investors. BIG enjoyed a significant amount of success from 2000-2015, until Collins moved on to another project.
BIG’s process was innovative: Instead of relying on labs to generate product ideas, they sourced ideas from “back yard” inventors through a variety of venues. In addition to reviving orphaned or dying products from toy companies, they also operated a website and newsletter that covered market trends, highlighted new products, and most importantly, allowed inventors to submit their ideas. But perhaps their most interesting source of ideas was their BIG Idea Hunts. These hunts were similar to the infamous American Idol auditions: They were hosted in major metropolitan areas, were advertised heavily beforehand, and allowed inventors to pitch their ideas to a panel of industry experts.
From this broad assortment of ideas, BIG would begin their “winnowing” process. From the 1,000+ ideas that they were presented in a year, about 100 were chosen. Feedback was provided to the inventors, improved prototypes were developed, and the product was refined. Out of these 100 or so refined ideas, BIG would select 20-30 that they felt were truly marketable products, and they would be pitched to toy companies, retailers, and investors. About 5-6 of those ideas would be monetized.
So, out of roughly 1,000 independent ideas, 5-6 became successful products. That’s a 99.5% "failure" rate.
This week I was pondering the idea of fostering creativity within engineering teams, or any team that is tasked with solving a problem. I think it is safe to say that most leaders and managers understand that great innovation requires great risk, but how often is that concept associated with problem solving? Generally, words like “creativity”, “ingenuity”, and “innovation” carry positive connotation with respect to solving a problem. Yet, in practice, creativity is often stifled.
Allow failure. For a variety of reasons, it is realistic to assume that your team will have a success rate higher than the “0.5%” described above! However, to foster creativity, failure must be allowed. Don’t denigrate teams or individuals if their creative solution doesn’t pan out. This only discourages future ventures outside of the proverbial box. Instead, recognize the positive aspects, capture any lessons learned, and move on. Praise success when it happens, and highlight the new path that was traveled to get there.
Set your team up for success. At even the lowest levels of management, enabling your team may be one of the most important things you can do. BIG provided inventors with tremendous support and resources during the “winnowing” process. Expert feedback, professional marketing, and high quality prototypes helped refine a primitive concept. In contrast, unrealistic deadlines, staffing deficiencies, and restricted access to organizational resources can destroy creativity. If a project needs a creative solution, do everything in your power to enable your people. This may be a fine line to walk. Projects tend to use all of the time allotted to them, and not every project warrants top priority of staffing and resources. However, if a team feels pressured and ill-equipped, they will nearly always take a “safe” and easy path.
Tap into individual passions. Mike Collins, along with nearly all of his panelists, had an incredible passion for toys. Some people truly love their work. Most others do not. So how do you motivate your people to be passionate about THEIR work? You don’t. But you CAN tap into their passions and match them to the right tasks and projects. This requires a manager to really KNOW their people. Often, an individual may not even recognize what type of work they enjoy. They volunteer for a project and end up hating it, or resist joining a particular team and end up flourishing. Pay attention to individual successes. Find patterns. Does the task require acute attention to detail? Does it require troubleshooting? Is it “people facing”? Is it technology-centric? Even seemingly unrelated tasks can share facets that will make them a good or bad fit for one of your team members.
In what ways do you foster creativity? Please share your thoughts and success stories in the comments.
