Dennis Sherwood* poses the question: “Is creativity born or made?” If you’re born with it, does that mean that if you aren’t, you’re doomed never to be creative? I personally feel that we’re all born with creativity and then life’s course determines how or if we are able to cash in on it.  Like any skill, you have to keep practising it to get better.

I have worked in a classroom environment with preschoolers (3-4yr olds) and it always amazed me how even the most disruptive child settled down when there was a painting or ‘making’ activity going on (don’t we all get pleasure in creating or achieving something?). The industriousness and unhindered creative thinking would result in a splendid array of interpretations of a given project - even if there was an example to copy. A child’s imagination knows no boundaries, but the school curriculum kicks in and everyone has to start to conform.

When I was studying for my graphics degree I set a project for a class of 6 year olds at the school where my sister taught. It was a problem solving exercise: ‘invent a street cleaner’. I was so impressed by the creativity of these children – all of them – their cleaners did more that just clean streets, one enterprising child had a recycling unit on the back and a drinks dispenser on the side – how forward thinking was that back in 1984! I only hope later in life his lateral thinking was appreciated and rewarded. Luckily for the children at my sister’s school, creativity was nurtured as much as possible within the confines of the three Rs. It’s down to environment, nurture and personal drive to determine if the creative streak is fostered and comes to fruition.

Pablo Picasso:
All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.

On we go into adulthood hopefully with some of our creativity and innovation skills still intact where once again, hopefully, it will be fostered and exploited in the workplace; and exactly how do you recognise creativity if you want to employ the trait? In some cases it’s pretty evident – in the arts related industries it’s generally measured by a qualification backed up by examples of work. In non-arts related industries it can be measured by past accomplishments and attitudes towards problem solving followed up with a product or service which is innovative and marketable, but if there’s not much of a track record then psychometric testing can be used – bearing in mind computer generated assessment may not capture the novelty of creative thinking when picking the perfect creative candidate for your organisation.

Once you’ve got your talent in the door, the next order of business is to do something with it; do you allow a free rein, then rein back in when the output goes beyond original? Too much harnessing of creativity defeats the object, after all that’s what you’re paying for. You have to allow some sort of freedom of expression to come up with exclusive approaches to a problem, and maybe not all solutions will work out. And here’s a thought, perhaps failure should be rewarded, not just success; reserve punishment for inaction.

Edward de Bono:
It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.

Sustained success and growth is dependent upon the ability to innovate and exploit new ideas and new opportunities ahead of the competition, regardless of the sector you are in. But, as anyone who knows anything knows only too well, it is hard enough to get things done at all, let alone introduce a new way of doing things, no matter how good an idea may seem. A powerful concept can kick around unused in a company for years, not because its merits are not recognised but because nobody has assumed the responsibility for converting it from words into action. There are a lot of creative people in business and it’s more about identifying the best ideas and implementing them rather than generating endless supplies of them. Now that’s being creative.

Albert Einstein:
You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.

Creativity is a process involving a mental and social process to generate new ideas or concepts, or a new association between existing ideas or concepts, and creative employees pioneer new technologies, new industries and power economic growth, but the process in which this happens tends to be chaotic and complex…

A. A. Milne:
One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.

… and the Brits aren’t too bad at this: Sir Tim Burners-Lee was credited for originally inventing the world wide web, Jonathan Ive was the principal designer of the iPod and has had the most impact on a company’s fortune, and 80 percent of the chips for mobile phones manufactured in the Far East are designed in the UK. Apparently, top innovators generate over 75 percent revenue from products not in existence five years ago. How creative is that?

We all seem to admire creativity as a culture, just as we admire education and goodness. We know all about the rewards (and the disorders) but too much of it and you might end up chopping off your ear or believing your own press and producing something so off the wall you’re almost certifiable. So I suggest when asked “How creative are you?”, the answer is: “Creative enough, thank you”.

Franklin D. Roosevelt:
Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.

There are several websites out there measuring creativity, but here are a couple or so I found which might be of interest:

32 Traits of Creative People By Robert Alan Black.
http://www.creativity-portal.com/cca/alan-black/32-traits-creative-people.html

Dennis Sherwood – an unusual look at the uses of a rolling pin, but really it’s about a process which can be used to solve real problems, and generate new ideas in practical situations.
http://www.cul.co.uk/creative/how.htm

Creativity & Innovation (this is part of an educational assignment – who knows, I might be putting someone on a new career path (more about that in my next blog – square pegs, round holes…)
http://www.depts.ttu.edu/hs/rhim5200/htm_files/0029.htm

* Who is Dennis Sherwood? Dennis was educated at the Universities of Cambridge, Yale and California, and is a Sloan Fellow, with distinction, of the London Business School. He was for 12 years a consulting partner in Deloitte Haskins + Sells, and, after their merger in the UK, Coopers & Lybrand; subsequently, he was an Executive Director at Goldman Sachs, a partner in Bossard Consultants, and a Vice President of SRI Consulting.

This blog was written by Jackie Poate, Business Development, Cradduck Design Co.

We were recently invited to tender for the production of a school prospectus. Nothing unusual about that, we have done a few and although we don’t usually have to pitch for this kind of work, we didn’t mind in this case as it was a cracking one to have a go at and, after all, we had approached this school a while back as part of a direct mailing to encourage that sort of work.

So far so good, and we received a detailed brief telling us nearly everything we needed to know to do the job properly. I say nearly, because I felt a site visit was worth it to fill in a few gaps and to give me a feel for the place.

We did a thorough job - it is simply not worth doing anything other than a thorough job if you really want to win the work - but this sort of work takes a lot of man hours and resources.

As a slight digression here, it is worth making mention of the merits and morals of pitching: it has become the industry standard to ‘invite’ selected design agencies to pitch for projects along the lines of an ad agency pitching for an account. The trouble is, in an ad agency situation you may be pitching a couple of grands’ worth to win a multi-million pound account; if you are pitching for a one-off design project, exactly what is the prize?

Anyway, to get back to the subject, we assumed - as one would from being in this situation many times before - that we were one of, say, four or possibly five (at maximum) agencies pitching against each other. Why would you assume anything else? Who has the time to invite and select more than that? Perhaps I am being naïve here, but after all these years I have sort of come to know what to expect in these things.

I’ll bet you know where I’m heading with this one.

So, we put together a fab proposal, some really creative stuff with all the bells and whistles, written report and full costings to go with it, perhaps about 75 man hours in total.

No, we didn’t win - again we have been here often enough to know that in a five-horse race, there can only be one winner and four losers. And it doesn’t really matter if you come second, to be honest, because you might as well be at the bottom of the pile when it comes to end results. We’ve won some of these, and lost others; it happens. And we were happy that we had done a good job, even if it wasn’t exactly what they wanted to see.

What did surprise and shock me rather was to hear that we were one of 17 (yes, seventeen) agencies invited to pitch, and this to make the shortlist. I was so dumbstruck that I didn’t have time to even feel sorry for myself before experiencing every other kind of emotion, from anger to frustration and onwards to having a good laugh.

Is this really a professional way to conduct business? A colleague of ours, when told this story, reacted with the following words: “If any major PLC asked 17 agencies to pitch for an account worth millions they would be lambasted”.

I can’t help agreeing with him. Next time, I won’t be so naïve as to not ask the question: “How many are playing on this pitch?”.