Author: Charlie Curnow

Jazz isn’t all about improvisation. In fact, most tunes you’ll hear on the radio will actually start with a pre-composed melody, or “head.”  And then there will be improvised solos after that, typically based to varying degrees on the chord changes of the original melody.

Many of the great jazz musicians, while almost universally master improvisers, have also been notable composers in their own right. Miles Davis, as well as Wayne Shorter and John Coltrane, who both played in different iterations of Davis’s quintets, spring immediately to mind.

And really, jazz wouldn’t be the same without the contributions of all three on both the composition and improvisation fronts.

Classical music has a similar dynamic at play, although somewhat in reverse. Compositions and composers are at the center of classical music. But it’s almost the point of many classical recordings that different performers will have sometimes deeply singular and contrasting interpretations of the same pieces.

There’s a similar balance that happens within businesses that are successful at innovation.

On one hand, there tends to be a more hierarchical side of an organization—the structure that gets things done. That tends to be called “process.”

But on the other hand, there also tends to be a side of a business that emphasizes the implicit coordination and exploration that produces things to do. That’s called “practice,” according to John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, who published an article called “Creativity Versus Structure: A Useful Tension” in MIT Sloan Management Review in 2001.

At the time of the article’s publication, Brown was chief scientist of Xerox and chief innovation officer of 12 Entrepreneuring in San Francisco. And Duguid was a research specialist at the University of California, Berkeley.

Practice without process tends to become unmanageable, according to Brown and Duguid. Meanwhile, process without practice can result in the loss of creativity needed for sustained innovation.

This tug of war between how companies generate knowledge in practice versus how they implement it through process is necessary, Brown and Duguid say. It’s a tension that reflects the countervailing forces that, on the one hand, spark invention. And on the other, introduce the structure that transforms those inventions into marketable products.

In isolation, these forces can destroy a company, Brown and Duguid say. But conjointly, they produce creativity and growth.

At a certain point in the development of many companies, establishing business processes becomes important, Brown and Duguid say. Process helps coordinate different communities within an organization—such as marketing and engineering—so that their practices, while allowed to flourish, don’t grow out of touch with one another.

On the other hand, aware that process can be suffocating — and seeking to foster creativity outside a process-driven structure —corporations will also often try to loosen the ties that bind them, according to Brown and Duguid.

The researchers point to AT&T’s Bell Labs, Lockheed’s Skunkworks, General Motors’ Saturn plant and Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) as initiatives of this kind.

These experimental “sandboxes” try to provide a safe environment for knowledge creation, Brown and Duguid say. But they can also run the risk of isolating new practices from essential process. Consequently, reintegrating ideas back into the organization can be remarkably difficult.

Companies that fail to manage the conflicting forces of practice and process thus at best alternate between attempts to foster creativity and attempts to exert control, Brown and Duguid say. And at worst, they pull apart or atrophy.

Meanwhile, productive companies, by contrast, yoke the two forces together, seeking so-called “creative abrasion,” according to Brown and Duguid.

The researchers point to Apple Computer, Adobe Systems and Microsoft as companies who have pulled this tension between process and practice off successfully. Including through their integration of ideas that were originally developed at Xerox’s PARC, such as precursors to the PC, the mouse and the Windows interface.

Brown and Duguid also point to the trek of early semiconductor ideas from AT&T’s Bell Labs to Shockley Semiconductor. And then to Fairchild and the so-called “Fairchildren”: Intel, Advanced Micro Devices and National Semiconductor. Which were other places where the researchers say places process and practice came into balance.

Overall, Brown and Duguid consider companies that can maintain forward progress to be the best-managed. Favoring neither practice nor process, but managing both.

And now, the news.

We all know the story of the tortoise and the hare. To cut to the chase, the tortoise won. But what were the real differences between these two competitors, other than that the hare was fast but erratic, and the tortoise slow and steady?

For starters, we might say that the hare was almost completely inspiration-driven, waiting for flashes of energy to come to them. While the tortoise, on the other hand, was more methodical.

Going another level deeper, however, we might even surmise that the hare was a victim of its own past success. And of its own high status as a hare in the realm of animal footraces.

While the tortoise, never endowed with the same natural gifts as the hare, was almost forced to become more systematic and process-driven in the months or years leading up to their storied competition.

There’s a similar dynamic that can play out in real-world business innovation.

In fact, sustaining creativity can come down to your ability to stay focused on the challenge at hand, rather than on your identity as a “creative professional.” That’s according to Dirk Deichmann and Markus Baer, who published an article in MIT Sloan Management Review called “Mix Creativity With the Right Mindset to Serve Up Innovation” in 2023.

And in many cases, focusing too much on the outcome—or the thing that is being created—rather than on the process of creation itself can actually be counterproductive, Deichmann and Baer say.

At the time of the article’s publication, Deichmann was an associate professor at the Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University. And Baer was professor of organizational behavior at the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis.

First-time inventors, film directors and novelists often have a hard time replicating their early success, according to Deichmann and Baer. And as found in a study published by the researchers in January 2023 in the Journal of Applied Psychology, first-time cookbook writers can also suffer a similar challenge, and for similar reasons.

There are a few steps that people from cookbook writers to individual business professionals and leaders of teams that need to innovate can take to sustain creative work, however, Deichmann and Baer say.

The first is to use a systematic creative process. Most of the cookbook authors Deichmann and Baer interviewed for their study, for example, seemed to lack a systematic approach for developing and refining new ideas. And instead relied more on moments of insight to drive their creativity.

Innovation experts have suggested, however, that it’s helpful to have a systematic process for idea development. Deichmann and Baer say that design thinking offers one such way in.

Emerging over the last half century or so from studies of innovation processes, problem-solving and creativity, design thinking methodologies take an iterative, experimental approach to problem-solving.

One that involves gaining a deep understanding of customer needs; defining a problem area; and ideating new solutions. And then prototyping, testing and refining them, to use the definition of researchers David Dunne, Theresa Eriksson and Jan Keitzmann, writing in an article for the MIT Sloan Management Review in 2022.

A second step identified by Deichmann and Baer for sustaining creative productivity is to collaborate. Working with collaborators can make the creative process feel much less threatening to the individual, according to the researchers.

In a study published in 2018, for example, Deichmann and Baer found that once people had developed ideas on their own, they found teamwork to be a helpful way to sustain their creativity.

Finally, a third step Deichmann and Baer identify is to lower the stakes. Many studies have found that having a sense of psychological safety can enhance creativity, the researchers say. Indeed, developing a nurturing environment in which risks can be taken and failures are seen as opportunities for learning can help make the stakes feel lower.

For Deichmann and Baer’s cookbook writers specifically, this meant seeing failure and the lessons that can be distilled from it as an inevitable aspect of a creative life.

Ultimately, success in creative endeavors seems to come down to cultivating intrinsic motivation for the process of creation, according to Deichmann and Baer. And that’s irrespective of the success of the outcome, which is much less under the control of the individual creator.

Sort of like the weather on marathon day.

The Iron Chef franchise of cooking television shows, which started in Japan in 1993, saw its most recent U.S. reboot in 2022 with a series on Netflix called “Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend.” Like other entries in the franchise, the new series showcases chefs with extraordinary culinary creativity, able to transform seemingly disparate ingredients into gourmet dishes.

However, the key to the structure of these shows is that the chefs who participate must operate within strict time limits and use a designated “secret ingredient.” Which in turn forces them to channel their creativity within specific constraints.

Constraints that might be in turn be thought of as extreme versions of the limitations that chefs might face in real-world operating kitchens. Where time, budgets and equipment are also finite.

It isn’t just great chefs, however, who must do this type of problem-solving.

Indeed, many people make an intuitive connection between creative ideas in business and unconstrained, blue-sky thinking. And yet, many executives aren’t clear enough about what they would consider a good idea and what’s a non-starter in light of an organization’s strategic priorities.

That’s according to Joseph V. Sinfield, Tim Gustafson and Brian Hindo, who published an article in MIT Sloan Management Review called “The Discipline of Creativity” in 2014.

At the time of the article’s publication, Sinfield was an associate professor of civil engineering at Purdue University. And a senior partner at Innosight, a global strategy and innovation consulting firm based in Lexington, Massachusetts. Gustafson was a principal at Innosight, and Brian Hindo was a manager at the firm.

Although thinking divergently is critical to idea generation, it’s important to delineate boundaries around both the business problem (exactly you’re proposing to solve) and the solution (what types of answers you seek and find acceptable) Sinfield, Gustafson and Hindo say, based on a decade of research and client work.

Once the problem and solution space are defined, a subsequent preparation step before brainstorming can be breaking down the problem into component parts to reduce complexity.

Teams can then take other preparation steps such as examining stakeholder needs to achieve greater empathy with solution end-users. And gaining additional perspective on the problem by consulting creative minds from both inside and outside the field.

When it comes time to start actually generating ideas, before leaping into a traditional group brainstorm, it’s instead helpful to ask participants to write down as many ideas as they can individually for five to 10 minutes, the researchers say.

One benefit of this approach is that it gives introverts — who may be shy about sharing their suggestions in a larger group setting — a chance to maximize their contribution. And a second is that having many ideas already on paper prevents the group from rallying around any specific solution too soon.

Once individuals have made their own idea lists, teams can then review the ideas and sort them into categories (for example, big picture, finer details). To ensure that the output is fully developed, teams can then detail ideas in one-page “idea resumes” that are customized to the problem at hand.

These resumes should describe the main solution features. Including how customers will learn about it or access it; what resources or processes are needed to make it a reality; and how the solution will achieve economic sustainability.

Examining business ideas in such a structured and consistent manner facilitates “apples-to-apples” comparisons, the researchers say. And ensures that ideas are evaluated on their merits rather than on how well they are pitched.

As a final step, teams can then make lists of the most important ideas to validate and design tests for each of them.

This can include spelling out exactly how much money and time each test would require, what the team hopes to learn from them and how they would reshape the platform based on the results. Sinfield, Gustafson and Hindo call this collection of assumptions and tests a “plan to learn.”

By following such an approach, teams can weave a deep understanding of the marketplace, business model generation and emergent strategy into their creative processes, according to the researchers. And thus increase chances that the thinking they generate can lead to real business impact.

And assumedly, more delicious strategic results.

Who invented the light bulb? If this were a game show, the correct answer would likely be “Thomas Edison,” in 1879. But the full history is actually more complex.

British inventor Humphry Davy demonstrated the electric arc lamp in the first decade of the 1800s. And Warren De la Rue enclosed a platinum coil in a vacuum tube and passed an electric current through it in 1840, creating an early “light bulb” as such.

But it was Edison’s research team in Menlo Park, New Jersey who first created a commercially viable incandescent light bulb that implemented a carbon filament.

The Edison team’s first models lasted 13.5 hours. After another year of tinkering, they then produced a version using carbonized bamboo in 1880 that could last as much as 1,200 hours. And this model would become the commercial standard for the next 10 years.

As Edison demonstrated, there’s a difference between creativity—the ability to come up with brilliantly novel ideas—and innovation. Or the ability to implement these ideas in a commercial or other context.

And when it comes to business settings, it’s easier to convert creativity into viable innovations in some industries than it is in others. That’s according to Theodore Levitt, who published an article called “Creativity Is Not Enough” in Harvard Business Review in 2002.

Levitt was a professor emeritus of marketing at Harvard Business School and former editor of Harvard Business Review. He died in 2006.

In advertising, for example, visual or auditory ideas can sometimes be almost synonymous with their implementation, Leavitt says. But for a steel producer or similar operating company with elaborate production processes, long channels of distribution and a more complex administrative setup, for instance, the situation can be much different.

For critics and advisers to U.S. industry who repeatedly call for more creativity in business, it’s therefore well to try to first understand the profound distinction between creativity on one hand and innovation on the other, according to Leavitt. And then, in many cases, to spend a little more time calling on creative individuals to take added responsibility for implementation.

After all, in addition to the particular industry, the productive potentials of creativity also vary with the climate of the organization and the organizational level of the idea originator, Leavitt says. And with the kinds of day-in, day-out problems, pressures and responsibilities of the executive or other person to whom the originator addresses their ideas.

As a first step, Leavitt says creative people within organizations could try to include at least some minimal indication of what their ideas involve in terms of costs, risks, manpower and time whenever they propose them. And perhaps even specific people who ought to carry the ideas through.

That’s just responsible behavior, Leavitt says, because it makes it easier for an executive to evaluate their idea as a possible course of practical action.

Meanwhile, going beyond a mere “suggestion box,” larger organizations might also take steps to form specialized groups whose function is to receive ideas, work them out and follow them through in the necessary manner.

Leavitt points to a successful example of this type of group in the Marketing Department of Mobil Oil Company. A well as at Schering Corporation (now part of Merck & Co.) under the name Management R&D. And at Nationwide Insurance Company, whose president Murray D. Lincoln made plea for the notion of a company having a “Vice President in Charge of Revolution.”

Contrary to popular perceptions shaped by their more conservative tendencies, large organizations actually have some important attributes that facilitate innovation, Leavitt says.

Their ability to distribute risk over a large economic base and among the many people involved in implementing newness is significant. They make it easier both economically and, for the individuals involved, personally to break new ground.

But on the other hand, a vast machinery does exist within big organizations to get a specific job done, Leavitt says. And that job must continue to get the toughest kind of serious attention no matter how exotically revolutionary a big operating or policy change might be.

The hope, however, is that the built-in stabilizers of bigness and group decision making can be used as powerful influences in encouraging people to risk rocking the boat when innovation is strategically necessary.

All just things to remember, perhaps, the next time a light goes on in one’s head.

It’s hard to read much about 21^st-century sports history at this point without eventually seeing some reference to Moneyball. Which is, of course, the approach adopted by Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane starting in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Under it, Beane used sabermetrics-style data analysis to identify undervalued baseball players. And to build an overperforming MLB team on a smaller budget. With a 2002 season opening payroll of $40 million, for example, even as other teams, such as the New York Yankees, had payrolls of as much as $126 million in the same season.

Situations like these aren’t just limited to professional sports, however.

Indeed, fostering business creativity can be in the hands of managers as they think about, design and establish work environments. Furthermore, creativity often requires that managers radically change the ways in which they build and interact with work groups. That’s according to Teresa M. Amabile, who published an article called “How to Kill Creativity” in the September-October 1998 issue of Harvard Business Review.

Amabile is the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration, Emerita at Harvard Business School. More recently, she’s also the author of “Retiring: Creating a Life that Works for You.” A 2024 book that explores how the process of retiring involves a reconstruction of both the person and their life structure.

In many ways, this type of transformation can call for conscious culture change on the parts of business managers, Amabile says in the 1998 article, based on findings from 22 years of research. But it can be done, and the rewards can be great.

Meanwhile, the risks of not doing so may be even greater, Amabile says. When creativity is killed, an organization loses a potent competitive weapon: new ideas. It can also lose the energy and commitment of its people.

But even if organizations seem trapped in organizational systems that kill creativity, Amabile says, it is still possible to effect widespread change.

As an example, Amabile points to a transformation at Procter & Gamble that began in mid-1990s. Once a hotbed of creativity, P&G had in recent years seen the number of its product innovations decline significantly.

In response, P&G established Corporate New Ventures (CNV), a small cross-functional team that embodied many creativity-enhancing practices. Members of P&G’s new CNV team, for instance, were allowed to elect themselves. Which helped ensure intrinsic motivation on the part of participating professionals.

CNV team members were also given a clear, challenging strategic goal: to invent radical new products that would build the company’s future. On the other hand, however, the team was additionally given enormous latitude around how, when and where they approached their work.

Undeniably, the changed environment inhabited by P&G’s CNV team resulted in more creative output. Three years after its inception, the team had handed off 11 projects to the business sectors for execution.

And as of early 1998, those projects were beginning to flow out of the pipeline. The first product, designed to provide portable heat for several hours’ relief of minor pain, was already in test marketing. And six other products were slated to go to market within a year. Given the team’s success, P&G began to expand both the size and scope of the CNV venture.

In a marketing or advertising context, it seems reasonable that organizations could adopt similar strategies to those identified by Amabile in the P&G case. Including through the formation of small, cross-functional creative teams focused on generating innovative ideas. As well as by empowering team members by giving them the autonomy and resources they need to succeed.

Which might in turn include an environment where they feel comfortable taking risks, brainstorming freely and challenging conventional thinking. Both in terms of physical space design, and virtual communication channels.

Marketing and advertising teams could also bring more focus to radical innovation by encouraging their members to think outside the box. And develop truly groundbreaking campaigns.

At the same time, teams in marketing and advertising might also beware the risks of stifling or “killing” creativity. Including missed opportunities such as failures to capitalize on emerging trends or technologies. Or the production of ineffective “copycat” marketing campaigns that lack innovation, and subsequently often fail to capture attention or generate results. Or even a loss of talent as creative individuals leave for more stimulating environments.

All of which could make tough to stay above .500, much less win the whole thing.

In the early years of the 20^th century, the “Found Object” movement of artists, including Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, challenged traditional notions of what art could be. By elevating everyday objects like water fountains and bicycle wheels to the status of artworks, these figures demonstrated the potential for creativity to be found in the most unexpected places.

Much like in art, predictions about which business ideas will succeed in the marketplace can also be hard to make.

But on the other hand, commitment to an idea—any idea—can also be one of the only surefire ways to the increase the odds of success. That’s according to Robert I. Sutton, an organizational psychologist and Professor Emeritus of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University.

Sutton published an article called “The Weird Rules of Creativity” in Harvard Business Review back in 2001. More recently, he also published “The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder.” A 2024 book that digs into the causes and solutions for some of the most common and damaging friction troubles within organizations.

In the 2001 article, Sutton points to Apple’s Steve Jobs and his widely touted “reality distortion field” that reportedly cast a spell on those around him. Convincing them that the success of an idea, project or person was virtually certain.

But do cases like these mean companies might as well use a random process to generate possibilities to explore? In fact, it might, according to Sutton. Random selection is actually one of the best ways to ensure new business ideas won’t be biased by knowledge of past successes, Sutton says.

Sutton points to a random selection process used by Reactivity, a software company he advised. The company’s software designers had been concerned that their ideas discussed at brainstorming sessions were getting too narrow.

To help break their product innovation rut, Reactivity employees subsequently participated in an exercise in which they were given index cards and told to jot down on each a technology (one stack of cards) or an industry (a second stack). The stacks were then used to create random pairings of technologies to industries. And the group then brainstormed for five minutes on the possibilities of each pair.

Some of the index card combinations seemed hopeless (how could XML programming reshape the funeral industry?). But others, such as an idea about dynamic risk management in the shipping industry, seemed well worth researching in more detail.

Companies that want to avoid getting stuck in an innovation rut should additionally be especially wary of opinions from customers who use their current products or services, Sutton says. As well as from internal stakeholders who represent their views.

In practical terms, this could mean handling audience or customer research with a healthy dose of skepticism (Disney CEO Michael Eisner even called most of this research—and especially the prospective kind—“useless” in an interview published in the January–February 2000 issue of Harvard Business Review).

Most of the mainframe computer users that IBM surveyed in the 1970s couldn’t imagine why they’d ever want a small computer on their desks.

And according to 3Com founder Bob Metcalfe, the success of Etherlink, a high-speed way to connect computers released in 1992, happened because he ignored reports from salespeople that customers were clamoring for a slight improvement in a popular product.

The lessons to draw from all of this? Doing routine work with proven methods is the right thing to do most of the time, according to Sutton. But if part of your mission is to explore new possibilities, then your goal must be to build a culture that supports constant mindfulness and experimentation.

As well as, perhaps, a healthy dose of Dada.

There’s a key, often overlooked difference between the traditional jigsaw puzzles we solved as kids (or adults), and the newfangled PC games and mobile apps meant to replace, or at least mimic them. The digital versions always have all their pieces.

No matter how hard you try, when several pieces have gone up and disappeared from a traditional jigsaw puzzle’s box to who-knows-where, it’s simply impossible to ever truly complete the thing. Much less see the whole picture it’s meant to present.

Something similar can occur with business teams and professionals when they engage in creative problem-solving.

Often, it’s the questions that leaders and teams fail to ask in the first place that get them into trouble, according to research from three scholars from Switzerland’s International Institute for Management Development (IMD) detailed in Harvard Business Review. What’s more, these questions don’t come spontaneously. Indeed, they require prompting and conscious effort.

Arnaud Chevalier, the first research author, is a professor of strategy at IMD Business School. Frédéric Dalsace, the second author, is a professor of marketing and strategy at IMD. And Jean-Louis Barsoux, the third, is an IMD term research professor.

Barsoux is also the coauthor of ALIEN Thinking: The Unconventional Path to Breakthrough Ideas. A 2021 book that emphasizes the importance of five thinking patterns—Attention, Levitation, Imagination, Experimentation and Navigation—in leading to a fresh and flexible approach to problem-solving. Including among people such as inventors, scientists, doctors, entrepreneurs and artists.

Strategic questions for business leaders can be grouped into five domains, according to Chevalier, Dalsace and Barsoux: investigative, speculative, productive, interpretive and subjective.

Investigative questions clarify the purpose leaders are facing, the researchers say, including what they want to achieve and what they need to learn to do so.

This part of the process can be fueled by successive “Why?” questions. As in the “Five Whys” developed by engineering managers at Toyota Motor Corporation as a root cause analysis tool during manufacturing. Successively asking “How?” can also help leaders transcend generic solutions and develop more sophisticated alternatives.

Speculative questions, on the other hand, help leaders consider a problem more broadly, according to the researchers. To reframe a problem or explore more-creative solutions, leaders must ask things like “What if…?” and “What else…?”

The global design firm IDEO popularized this approach with its systematic use of the prompt “How might we…?” An approach first coined by the educator, consultant and researcher Min Basadur when he was a manager at P&G to overcome limiting assumptions and jumpstart creative problem-solving.

Productive, or “Now what?” questions help leaders assess the availability of talent, capabilities, time and other resources. Influencing the speed of decision-making, the introduction of initiatives and the pace of growth.

Questions such as “How can we get it done?” “How will we synchronize our actions?” and “How will we measure progress?” can help leaders identify key metrics and milestones—along with possible bottlenecks—to align people and projects, and keep plans on track. They also expose risks, including strains on the organization’s capacity.

Interpretive “So, what…?,” or sensemaking questions enable synthesis. Pushing leaders to continually redefine the core issue. And go beneath the surface to ask “What is this problem really about?” Natural follow-ups to the other types of questions previously mentioned, they draw out the implications of an observation or idea.

And finally, in contrast with the other categories, which deal with the substance of a business challenge, subjective or “What’s unsaid?” questions deal with the personal reservations, frustrations, tensions and hidden agendas within a team or among employees. All things that in turn can push a decision-making process off course.

Team members may be reluctant to explore emotional issues unless a leader provides encouragement and a safe space for discussion, the researchers say. Furthermore, they may fail to share misgivings about an idea simply because no one else is doing so.

Business leaders must therefore invite dissenting views and encourage doubters to share their concerns, according to Chevalier, Dalsace and Barsoux. If they don’t, they risk the consequences of “pluralistic ignorance”—a social dynamic in which people mistakenly others predominantly hold an opinion different from their own.

Now just try and piece something like that one together.

Good gardens—the kind that get written up in Boston or New York magazine lifestyle and travel articles—aren’t simply grown. They’re cultivated. Before even planting anything, much less harvesting, you must prepare the area by removing any debris or rocks. You need to loosen the soil with a tiller, or by digging by hand. If necessary, you should add in materials like fertilizer or lime. You might also need to aerate the soil to blend in the nutrients. You must remove any weeds so they don’t compete with your plants for water, nutrients and sunlight.

And then, once the seeds are planted, you have to water them regularly. All while also protecting your growing plants by, for example, avoiding digging too close to them and damaging their roots.

It’s similar when we’re trying to cultivate business innovation for ourselves, or our own teams.

Coming up with creative new ideas usually isn’t just a one-step process. It takes getting into the right mindset to innovate in the first place. And then once you’re there, preserving those conditions so you can keep reaping the benefits month after month, year after year.

In an article for Harvard Business Review, Soren Kaplan outlines the elements of what he calls an “innovator’s mindset.” Kaplan is author of “Experiential Intelligence.” A book released in 2023 that emphasizes the importance to business success not merely of what people have learned over time but how they perceive challenges, view opportunities and tackle goals.

Kaplan is also the founder of management consultancy InnovationPoint, and an affiliate at the Center for Effective Organizations at USC’s Marshall School of Business.

An innovator’s mindset can be achieved through three steps, according to Kaplan: embracing curiosity, fostering continuous learning and encouraging open collaboration.

Curiosity fuels innovation, Kaplan says, by encouraging you to question the status quo and explore new possibilities. Proactive inquiry and a sense of wonder when approaching tasks, including tedious ones, can lead to novel solutions to existing problems. And result in process improvements, product innovations and new business models that can significantly advance your organization’s success.

An example Kaplan points to is Netflix. Todd Yellin, while still a relatively unknown analyst, took on the seemingly mundane task of enhancing the platform’s user interface.

But instead of simply tweaking visuals, Yellin got curious. He started tracking customer behavior, including what they watched, how long they watched, what they watched next and what time of day they were watching.

The insights ultimately led Yellin to reimagine how users interact with the Netflix platform. He would later spearhead the development of an algorithm that predicts and suggests content to people based on viewing history.

Another habit Kaplan recommends is continuous learning, whether in or outside of work hours. Dedicating time regularly to this purpose, such as an hour a week, can help ensure your skills and knowledge remain cutting edge. And enhance your ability to contribute to your organization, while also making you a more attractive candidate for advancement.

To foster this type of learning, professionals can explore news relevant to their area of expertise, Kaplan says. They can also attend networking events or conferences, or take online courses to complement current projects and extend skill sets. The more tools you have at your disposal, the easier it will be to adapt, shift directions and think creatively about how to problem solve when confronted with new challenges.

Outside of work, exploring new hobbies and gaining new experiences can also prove useful, according to Kaplan. Research shows that dabbling in creative activities can help us build new skills and boost our creativity on the job.

A third and final step Kaplan encourages is open collaboration. Professionals can create, for example, a monthly brainstorming session with their team or peers. Instead of hoarding ideas and working solo on projects, they can take the lead to help facilitate dialogue and feedback. Which will in turn set them apart as bridge-builders who recognize the importance of collaboration for innovation.

Keeping a weekly innovation journal to jot down ideas and reflections can also help in this area, according to Kaplan. Reflection allows you to assess your experiences, understand your thought processes and identify areas for personal and professional growth. This introspection can in turn reveal patterns, opportunities for innovation and areas where a change in approach could lead to better outcomes.

And when combined with other steps, just might help unlock more fertile courses of action.

A key first step toward greater innovation might be getting on the same page about evaluation criteria for new business ideas in the first place.

In a 2024 paper published in Nature Human Behavior based on five studies, Wayne Johnson, a researcher at the Utah Eccles School of Business, and Devon Proudfoot, an associate professor of human resource studies at Cornell’s ILR School, explored the question of why people disagree about an idea’s relevance and usefulness.

The researchers found that as ideas become more novel—that is, as they depart more from existing norms and standards—disagreement grows about their potential value.

Furthermore, people interpret greater variability in others’ judgements about an idea’s value as a signal of risk, Johnson and Proudfoot say. Which in turn reduces their willingness to invest in the idea.

Overall, these tendencies highlight one reason creative ideas might fail to gain traction in the social world, according to the researchers. And one important barrier to innovation for leaders to consider in realms from the arts and science to business.

Luckily, there are ways to build consensus around new ideas, however, as outlined by Johnson and Proudfoot in an article for Harvard Business Review.

One is to stop thinking that conflicting feedback about an idea is a sign that it’s a bad one and should be rejected. Imagine, for example, the contention that must have come into the 3M conference room when company chemist Spencer Silver proposed creating a product with an extremely weak adhesive (Silver would go on to invent Post-It notes).

Instead, Johnson and Proudfoot say, looking at disagreement as a signal that an idea features ambiguity rather than negativity could help leaders see hidden opportunity in addition to risk.

Johnson and Proudfoot further propose that leaders look at conflicting feedback as a sign that they need to explore the criteria upon which evaluators are making decisions about an idea’s worth.

The newer an idea is, after all, the harder it is to compare to what already exists. And the less likely it is there will be a common reference point or criteria on which to evaluate it.

Johnson and Proudfoot further encourage leaders to ask a new idea’s evaluators questions such as:

• “What ideas are you comparing this new idea to?”
• “On what grounds did you find those reference points successful or unsuccessful?”
• “What would success look like with this idea?”
• “What would failure look like?”

By finding out what criteria evaluators are using, leaders can better judge how well it maps onto the new proposal, the researchers say. And also assess whether some judgements are biased, such as by evaluators’ moods or other factors that are irrelevant to an idea’s value.

Additionally, by identifying strengths and weaknesses in different perspectives, leaders can use discussion to build consensus around the most pertinent factors to use in evaluating new ideas.

An alternative approach might be to create and disseminate criteria ahead of time, according to Johnson and Proudfoot. Asking evaluators to judge ideas based on specific factors such as logistical strengths and weaknesses, or advantages compared to existing offerings, for example.

Shared reference points such as case studies that relate to the strengths and weaknesses of the new idea could also help bring focus to discussions.

Finally, leaders can also hold separate meetings meant to anchor conversations on specific criteria for evaluating a new idea rather than opening them up to wide-ranging examination.

Focusing one meeting on logistical feasibility or the potential costs of a new idea, for example, and another on efficiencies and client relations impacts could help make feedback more refined and useful.

And might help make your next effort to achieve business innovation even less of a roll of the dice.

Could one of the keys to greater workplace productivity and innovation be more playfulness on the job?

According to Duncan Wardle, formerly vice president of innovation and creativity at The Walt Disney Company, and currently an innovation keynote speaker and creativity consultant at iD8 & innov8, it probably is (no joke).

In an article for Harvard Business Review, Wardle offers some of his tips for shifting a busy mind state at work to a more creative one. In the article, Wardle cites a 2023 study from researchers at the National Central University in Taiwan finding that fun at work was positively related to employees’ creative behavior.

Wardle’s recommendations include introducing short, playful activities into workplace routines that he calls “energizers.” An example he describes is having a participant draw someone they know without looking at the paper. An activity that can generate laughter and shift someone from a busy, conscious brain state (beta) to a more relaxed and creative state (alpha or theta).

The moment laughter is heard, Wardle says, it indicates people are a little more relaxed. This state allows for more informed decision-making while still enabling creative thought processes to flourish. Other activities that achieve similar objectives, according to Wardle, could include a quick walk, a playful question during meetings or even a five-minute mindfulness exercise.

Another practice Wardle recommends is to design physical spaces to encourage play. At Pixar, for example, Steve Jobs designed the campus around the concept of unplanned collaboration, with playful elements around the environment to promote creativity. And spontaneous interactions between people who wouldn’t normally meet. Specific rooms, like the ones Pixar’s BrainTrust use to give feedback on creative work, are deliberately set aside from main areas and designed to signal they’re safe spaces.

While not every company can match Pixar’s substantial investments, Wardle says, transforming a boring meeting room into a “laboratory” or “greenhouse” with some artistic touches could provide a physical signal that the space is meant for nurturing ideas and fostering a playful mindset.

Finally, Wardle suggests that leaders incorporate playfulness strategically into routines and at the right junctures to make them habits. Making short, playful breaks part of the daily routine, for example, can shift employees’ mindset from busy beta to relaxed and creative alpha or theta states.

Additionally, incorporating energizer activities into the beginning of a brainstorming or ideation session as people enter the room or immediately after breaks can counteract the return to a beta state induced by checking emails or other routine tasks.

And that’s some serious business.