Creativity in Business
Notes by David E. Goldberg
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
deg@uiuc.edu
The Text
• Ray, M. & Myers, R. (1986). Creativity in
business. New York: Doubleday.
• Created for course at Stanford B-school:
Creativity in Business.
• Myers: Artist, Musician, and Consultant
• Ray: Social psychologist and professor.
Motivation
• Overly analytic approach of the 70s and 80s
(MBAs run amok?) partially responsible for
Japanese invasion?
• Renewed interest in creativity and
innovation.
• Recalls creativity spurt of the 50s.
• Garbage-can model of management.
Business as Art
• Van Dyck, W., founder of Windfarms, Ltd.
• The highest art form is really business. It is an extremely
creative form, and can be more creative than all the things
we classically think of as creative. In business, the tools
with which you’re work are dynamic: capital and people
and markets and ideas. [These tools] all have lives of their
own. So to take those things and to work with them and
reorganize them in new and different ways turns out to be a
very creative process.
Amabile’s Definition
• Theresa Amabile, Social Psychology of
Creativity.
• Creativity: A response will be judged as
creative to the extent that (a) it is both a
novel and appropriate, useful, correct, or
valuable response to the task at hand and
(b) the task is heuristic rather than
algorithmic.
Your Creative Experiences
• Exercise:
– Sit comfortabl.y
– Breath deeply.
– Think of a time when you had a great idea.
• Remember
– How it felt to have the idea.
– Specific problem? How long a struggle? Emotions?
– Eureka moment? What happened next to idea? Was it
used.
Inner Creative Resources
• Essence is 5-fold:
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Intuition: Interrelationship with design.
Will: compelling vision or mission.
Joy: Bright shimmering quality.
Strength: To breakthrough resistance.
Compassion: Kindness for yourself and others.
Where is the Essence?
• Technique cannot overcome the stumbling
block.
• Inhibited by
– Fear
– Inner judgment
– Chattering of the mind
• Conflict between false personality and
Essence.
Preparation
• Four steps:
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Surrender.
Destroy judgment.
Pay Attention.
Ask Dumb Questions.
Pay Attention
• The obscure we see eventually, the
completely apparent takes longer. Edward
R. Murrow.
• Buddhism’s mindfulness: attention without
conscious thought.
• Listening without opinions. Asking
questions without slant.
Ask Dumb Questions
• Judge questions by the fruit they bear.
• Non-judgmental, open.
• 12 standard issue
– What is my aim? What’s going on?
– What is VOJ saying? Is this me or someone else? What
is it that this person provokes in me.
– What is objective reality? What is emotional truth?
What pain am I avoiding? What stubbornness do I cling
to?
– Is this choice my real choice? What don’t I yet
understand? Who said that, my mom or dad?
Inspiration and Implementation
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Do the easy, effortless, and enjoyable.
Don’t think about it.
Ask yourself it is a yes or a no.
Be ordinary.
Be in the world but not of it.
3 E’s: Easy, Effortless & Enjoyable
• Time flies when you’re having fun.
• Make an EEE list, right now.
• Living out your own life purpose:
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Rank tasks in EEE order.
Decompose larger tasks into smaller ones.
Do one thing at a time.
Change your attitude.
Know when to quit.
Be good to yourself
Use a mantra.
Reap your rewards..
Don’t Think About It
•
•
•
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Zen koan: Pouring tea.
Is it a yes or a no?
Be ordinary. What does this mean?
Be in the world and not of it.
Surrender
• Leavitt’s categories of knowing:
– Proactive, reactive, enactive
– Enactive: Work on specific problem until right
path found.
• Stop striving: anxiety, tension, competition.
• Apply yourself to task:
– Maintain spirit of inquiry.
– Acknowledge uncertain in outcome.
Steps in Surrending
• Letting go:
– Physically: Tense muscles and release.
– Mentally: Imagine thought as article of
clothing, then remove.
– Sleep: Ask question before going to bed. Stay
in bed upon waking
– Water: Contemplate water in sink, shower,
seaside.
– Inner guide: Ask Einstein or Buddha or ?
VOJ: Voice of Judgment
• Critical self prevents you from realizing
your visions.
• Types:
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Self-judgment.
Judgment from others.
Collective judgment: clique, society
Judgment judging the judgment.
Creation Implies Destruction
• Every act of creation is first of all an act of
destruction. Picasso.
• Eggs must be broken to make an omelette.
• If you remain constrained by convention,
you will not create something new.
• First create, then criticize.
• Attack the judgment. Make it seem
ridiculous.