Creativity In Business

One of the main problems in business today is that there are too many ideas, not too few. Dozens of solutions appear and disappear in chaotic piles of data, crowds of experts’ opinion and a jumble of contradictory statistics and reports on every aspect of every issue.

The pressure of limited time is increased by indecision and, beneath it all, the nagging suspicion that others will find your efforts insufficient and the results poor. The solution to this problem lies in cutting through the chaos to reach the underlying answers, and the key is the creativity of the individual person.

Masters of Business Administration courses specifically, and business generally, has become too analytical, too dependent on numbers, too conservative, unconcerned with people, shortsighted, and as whole shamefully uncreative. Can creativity be taught? Should the non-analytical aspects of management be emphasized? Can creativity techniques related to the underlying human quality of intuition (involving some very deep personal sources of creativity) complement, if not supplant, the scientific, analytical approach and find a place in business? Can a course in creativity be designed that awakens students to their inner creative source (by going directly to what helps people bring out useful creativity in business without necessarily solving the basic mystery of the physiological, cognitive, and social processes that underlie the creative act) and show them how such creativity applies to their daily business lives thus confirming that an ever present creative source ‘essence’ is available to each of us.

Creative experience

Asking successfully creative business people to be ‘retrospectively introspective’ and recount their own personal experiences gives them an opportunity to interact with intelligent students and to help them to produce synergy and to get to the most important aspect of life: the creative experience, and to recognize the inner power we all possess but too seldom use. You can contribute creatively, and by developing your own inherent creativity, you can lead a completely fulfilling and valuable life, both in and outside of business. You can live your life as a work of art.

For most people the word creativity is more easily applicable to art than to business. But art is basically the production of order out of chaos, and is not chaos the natural environment of business? The highest art form is really being able to run a business successully. In business, the tools with which you are working are dynamic: capital and people and markets and ideas. Successful business people approach their problems creatively. They become totally immersed in expressing their inner vision, knowing that their chief challenge is to organize familiar materials in a fresh way. They are curious, adventurous, experimental, willing to take risks, and they are absorbed in meeting challenges of their working day.

However, fear, negative personal judgement, and the chattering of the mind inhibit creativity. Your creative essence is often blocked by what is called the ‘false personality’, the ego or the external self. And the key to personal creativity in business is in eliminating the conflict between false personality and your essence.

Conclusion

Four elements need to be developed in order to manifest your creativity (that inner power that we possess but too seldom use) fully:

Learn to have faith in your own creativity. If at first you do not succeed, surrender to your creativity.
Absence of negative judgement. Destroy judgement, create curiosity. Make an all-out attack on the barriers to your creativity.
Precise observation. Pay attention – sense, look, and listen.
Penetrating questions. Ask ‘dumb questions’, thereby finding you own wisdom.

By following this approach we develop confidence and faith in our creative abilities.

This article has been extracted and modified from Ray, M. & Myers, R. (1995). Creativity in Business. Lecture delivered in the Department of Management., Faculty of Business and Economics, Monash University, March, 1995.

George Tanewski is Research Fellow in the AXA Australia Family Business Research Unit at Monash University. Dr Tanewski writes extensively on family business issues and also sits on the board of a prominent Melbourne family business. For further information please contact George Tanewski on 61-3-9903-2388 or george.tanewski@buseco.monash.edu.au
First published: 11 September 2001.
Last updated: 5 October 2005.