Seven Creativity Tools

“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them….” – Albert Einstein.

In this age of organizational renaissance and innovation companies are increasingly identifying their primary assets as knowledge-based capital.  In support of this view, I personally feel we have graduated from the “information age” to the “knowledge age”.  More specifically, the “applied knowledge age”.  The way we put knowledge to use, whether it is for generating a new concept or problem solving, is very different (and must be different) from the way we did it five years ago.  Or for that matter even six months ago.

Most executives today look for a magic breakthrough, hoping that one good idea, the idea, will improve their bottom line and speed them ahead of competition.  This is absolutely incorrect!  Competitive breakthroughs, as singular isolated events, are unlikely to have lasting benefit.  These breakthroughs are mortal in a company life cycle.  What is required, or rather demanded, is continuous breakthroughs for company life extension.

To succeed in a business marathon, a company must not look for one breakthrough, but continuous breakthroughs.  The elixir for successful organizations is not to look for one good idea, but several ideas, hundreds of ideas, and yes, thousands of ideas.  This is because individuals or teams do not usually produce breakthrough ideas at first pass.  These ideas are born from the generation of many ideas.  We now understand why Thomas Edison had said, “In order to have a good idea, we must have lots of ideas”.

A different way of thinking is needed for such idea generation.  A kind of thinking that raises new questions….. so one does not get old answers.  To foster this, management needs to develop a compelling momentum for innovation throughout the organization, and not just in Research and Development, Marketing or Planning.  In brief, company-wide-creativity needs to be in place and sustained.

Of recent origin, but of significant success, are the Seven Creativity Tools, developed by Bob King, GOAL/QPC.  Companies that have started to using the Seven Creativity Tools include Kodak, Bosch, Ford, Chevron and Black & Decker.  To illustrate, individual teams at Black & Decker were each able to produce an average of 40 new ideas for new products, in less than 20 minutes, going beyond brainstorming and using only two of the Seven Creativity Tools!

World-class models are currently accenting creativity and innovation in their 2001 criteria.  Closer home, we have popular models, such as, the IMC Ramkrishna Bajaj National Quality Award and International Quality Maturity Model.  Both these models prepare aspirant organizations to successfully leap-frog into the competitive WTO driven global arena.

Seven Creativity Tools

• Heuristic Redefinition is a method of looking at a system in which a problem exists and for picking an approach that promises the greatest effect with the smallest effort
• Classic Brainstorming.  This tool allows team members to pool their knowledge and creativity in an open, non-critical environment.  Brainstorming discourages same-old-way thinking by creating more and more ideas that team members can build upon
• Brainwriting 6-3-5 provides teams with a method for generating and sharing ideas in writing, which differs from brainstorming where ideas are shared verbally
• Imaginary Brainstorming is a tool that provides a team with an opportunity to step out of the real problem, generate ideas for a radically different yet related imaginary problem, and apply the new ideas that are generated to the real problem
• Word-Picture Associations and Analogies expand idea generation through the use of random and seemingly unrelated pictures, words, and biotechnical information to stimulate thinking about new dimensions and solutions for the team's problem
• TILMAG. Through its structured and systematic approach, TILMAG helps a team to define ideal solutions for the problem at hand, create and explore associations based on paired combinations of ideal solution elements
• Morphological Box helps teams to identify all practical solutions to a problem.  Morphological Box presents an exhaustive picture of all the potential solutions to every essential part of the problem.