The Best Practice

What sets innovative organizations apart from the rest?

Creativity is an individual trait. Some people have developed this ability to communicate them clearly. Others have outward creativity limitations and blame traditional forms of education for rewarding rational thinking and solutions over creative approaches. Still others place more emphasis on natural creativity.

Put creative people together in small groups within departments and you get originality. Put similar small groups into organizations, and you get innovative organizations. That’s what Bill Gates did at Microsoft, becoming the richest man in the world at age 40. In a Fortune magazine survey of senior US executives, 39 per cent of the respondents indicated that Microsoft was the most innovative organization in the US. A very distant second was GE, with slightly less than half the votes that were earned by Microsoft.

What sets these highly innovative organizations apart from the rest of the population? On reviewing the way these organizations are managed, the best practices for an innovative organization appear to be:
- Respect for individuals
- Aggressive performance-related measurements for everyone
- Encouragement of constructive dissatisfaction
- Low level of fear, organization-wide
- Failure viewed as a learning process
- Technology used as an enabler
- Innovators being encouraged and recognized.

Recently, a cover story on Wipro in a business magazine reported that the company has an innovation framework that could put 3M’s fabled skunkworks to shame! If this is true, it merits being benchmarked by all Indian industry. After all, 3M is perceived to be the third most innovative organization in the US. I wonder how Wipro also stands up to Sony and Nokia?

Thai Acrylic Fibre (an Aditya Birla Group company) winner of the Deming Prize 2001, and the Qimpro Benchmark 2001, has recently updated its vision statement to include the term “innovation”. They have come to realize that innovation means offering things in different ways, and creating new combinations. Also, that every person needs to contribute his or her experience and creativity. In addition, they understand that innovation is about new ways of combining things generally.

At Thai Acrylic Fibre, creativity tools are being learnt and used to harness the creativity that exists within everyone, in their multi-culture business environment. These tools provide a structured way for their managers (individually), and teams to combine intuition, imagination, and personal experience to create interesting, and eventually, breakthrough ideas. These revolutionary ideas are aimed at a range of target subjects: reducing cost and waste; developing new products and services; resolving long-standing customer complaints; dramatically cutting down cycle-time; developing new processes; and dramatic process improvements.

Yes, the term “creativity” and Edward de Bono are synonymous. De Bono coined the term lateral thinking. He uses the idea of wearing different coloured hats to denote a particular thinking mode, so that in a group situation it becomes easier to think in a different way. All the views can be considered, including the far-fetched creative ones. The white hat: facts and figures; the red hat: emotions and feelings; the black hat: what is wrong with it; the yellow hat: speculative and positive; the green hat: creative and lateral; the blue hat: control of focus. For this process to become a habit, management must create a creative environment.

In a creative environment there is freedom from criticism people can experiment and take risks without embarrassment. Further, ideas are constantly shared so that each person can see unusual and powerful new combinations, like children inventing a new game to play. Finally, all ideas are recognized and acknowledged, as well as humour is encouraged.

Creativity, at the most basic level, is the process of generating many ideas. Innovation is the process of selecting, combining, refining, and turning the best creative idea(s) into reality. Both are equally important for organizations to be competitive. Imagine an India (courtesy the future pioneering efforts of Dhirubhai Ambani) where innovation is central to educational institutions and industry. If this were to happen, Michael Porter, author of The Competitive Advantage of Nations, would be very pleased. According to Porter, the only way to have an advantage is through innovation and upgradation. But this innovation, this upgrading, has to involve a consistent strategic direction with a vision.