CRN Network, October 8, 2009, 1200 hrs
“Should we wait for the apple to fall on our heads?” The opening line by Shiva Subramaniam, Founder, The Paper Clip, at the CRN creativity workshop, set the ball rolling for an engaging session on structured creativity.
Held at Interop Mumbai today, the session saw Subramanian—an expert in Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats, focus on innovation, creativity, Six Thinking Hats, lateral thinking and cross-cultural skills.
“It’s time we have Chief Creativity Officers,” Subramanian insisted. According to him, for the IT industry to truly prosper there needs to be a conscious effort towards formalizing creativity. “Creativity should be a compel, a mandate”
Subramanian emphasized that the line between innovation and creativity is actually a blurry one. “For a company to innovate, it needs to inculcate creativity. And creativity is all about defining problems and arriving at their solutions.”
According to Subramanian, the answers to several problems can easily be arrived at by observing the nature and multi-cultural diversity around us. Easiest way to innovate, he said, is to put ourselves in somebody else shoes and think like them.
Citing several examples, Subramanian offered that an onset of problem is usually a good enough trigger for creativity. After pin-pointing the exact source of a problem, CEO or the executive in charge can take on the role of a Sponsor (of the problem) or don the Blue (Process Control) hat himself and head towards group discussion on how to solve it.
The organizational head can also appoint a trainer to take charge of thinkers. By customizing and utilizing thinking tool like Six Thinking Hat, organizational head can get the solutions or information he needs to base his decisions on. For example, in case just the information on process and solutions to its problems are needed, the trainer can conduct a White and Green Hat session, assimilate and compute the data, and present it to the Sponsor (the organizational head).
Talking about another creative thinking tool, Lateral Thinking, Subramanian presented an innovation to prosper business. Instead of working on ideas to better the core, thinkers could focus on the peripherals around and work out creative solutions. So, in addition to the necessary innovations, there would also be a plethora of ideas on how to improve the secondary. This will then give the business a boost in the arm.
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