1. Building an Innovative and Creative Culture
Product Creative-Thinking Workshop for Executives, Part 1
Building an Innovative and Creative Culture
Michael Harmelink
Vice President, Gartner Executive Programs June 13, 2018

2. Discussion Premise
Digital Business is moving forward at an accelerated pace.
Industries and products once viewed stable have been, and will continue to be, under siege from competition – both traditional and unexpected.
Cost pressures are only escalating. In order to win and/or survive, every organization must innovate.
Innovation must be customer focused – both internal and external.
Creativity is essential to customer focused innovation.
An innovative culture is built intentionally and is driven by teams. 1

3. Digital Business
The creation of new business designs by blurring the digital and physical worlds

4. 7.4B Personal Devices 30B Things 250M Businesses People Things
Digital Business: A Vast Integration

5. The Innovation Imperative
Major Digital Disruptions:
Internet of Things
Smart Machines and Robots
3D Printing
Reimagining Organizations and Industries
Experimentation as Strategy
Increasing Speed: Agile Development
Lean Startup
Crowdfunding
Innovation as Culture
Quest for Digital Talent:
Employee Engagement
Crowdsourcing
Balancing Human/Machine Contributions
Google car image:

6. What Is Creativity?
Every executive knows the value of that “lightbulb moment” of creativity that solves a stubborn problem or launches a new opportunity. Given that these moments don’t happen frequently or predictably, it’s tempting to write them off as luck, accident, genius or even the work of a capricious muse — anything but the stuff of corporate programs and management competencies.
But the ability to think and contribute creatively can be encouraged and improved on, even in traditional corporate cultures that have emphasized productivity and efficiency over creativity. Creative muscles that have atrophied through lack of use can be built up, and then applied to generate breakthrough outcomes.
The recommendations in this presentation are based on four principles:
Anyone can be creative, and individuals can improve their creativity and that of their organizations through a range of techniques. Creativity need not be limited to artistic endeavors and professional “creatives.”
Creativity is an essential but underused approach to solving complex technology, management and business challenges.
Creativity does not depend on insights that come out of nowhere; its context is broader, and often subconscious, mental priming, focus and follow-up. Developing the context requires management time and attention.
A culture of creativity is best developed by designing specific situations and environments where creativity can flourish, and embedding creative habits into everyday activities.

7. What Is Creativity?
Working definition: The act of generating something novel that is perceived as valuable by a community.
Original
Unexpected
Advances current state
Practical, intellectual or aesthetic
Sharable
Contextual
In the definition above, "novel" implies that the idea, approach or artifact is not one that most people would have produced — it is original and unexpected. "Valuable" stresses that the thing created offers practical, intellectual or aesthetic value to others. An original way of opening a door that takes five minutes instead of two seconds would not be viewed as creative by the person waiting on the other side.
We can view value as orienting us to the right side of the oft-cited fine line between creativity and insanity. Everyone comes up with novel, valuable ideas in various facets of their life. The CIO’s goal is to ignite and sustain this creativity in the efficiency-oriented world of organizational bureaucracy — to rekindle the fearless kindergartner who designed, painted, invented and performed without worrying about perfection or what others would think.

8. Is nature or nurture the biggest driver of creativity?

9. Can Minds Switch Modes? Nature: Nurture:
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Nature:
Innate personality, predisposition and traits
Mode 1
Mode 2
Reliability
Agility
Consistency
Ambiguity
Nurture:
Expertise
Creativity
External environment, context and influence
Best Practices
Innovation
Business as Usual
Experimentation

10. Nature Matters

11. "Big Five" Personality Traits Overall Job Performance
Nature Matters
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"Big Five" Personality Traits
Overall Job Performance
Teamwork
Innovation
"Maverick" Behavior
Extraversion X x ü
Emotional Stability
Openness to Experience
Agreeableness ▬
Conscientiousness
Key: Significant Correlation x Minor or No Correlation ▬ Negative Correlation ü
Sources:
E. Gardiner and C.J. Jackson. "Workplace Mavericks: How Personality and Risk-Taking Propensity Predicts Maverickism." British Journal of Psychology. 22 November 2011.
S. Yesil and F. Sozbilir. "An Empirical Investigation Into the Impact of Personality on Individual Innovation Behaviour in the Workplace." Elsevier
M. R. Barrick, M. K. Mount and T. A. Judge. "Personality and Performance at the Beginning of the New Millennium: What Do We Know and Where Do We Go Next?." International Journal of Selection and Assessment. 15 April 2003.

12. Creativity Can Be Measured
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How many uses can you think of?

13. Creativity Can Be Measured
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J.P. Guilford Alternative Uses Test:
Fluency – number of uses
Originality – how unusual
Flexibility – range of ideas
Elaboration – level of detail
A great way to measure divergent
creative thinking
Personality is 40% to 60% genetic.

14. So, What About Nurture?

15. What Drives a Person to Innovate at Work?
Personality
Creative Personality
Openness
Demographic
Education
Tenure
Motivation
Intrinsic Motivation
Extrinsic Motivation
Job Self-Efficacy
Creative Self-Efficacy
Job Characteristics
Job Complexity
Autonomy
Role Expectations
Context
Climate for Innovation
Positive Climate
Resources
Supervisor Support
Leader-Member Relationship
Transformational Leadership
17 predictors
5 categories

16. Nature Is Not the Most Important Factor
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Level of Correlation With Innovation
Job Characteristics
Role Expectations
0.44
Motivation
Creative Self-Efficacy
0.33
Job Complexity
0.32
Autonomy
Context
Leader Member Relationship
0.29
Resources
0.27
Job Self-Efficacy
0.26
Personality
Creative Personality
0.25
Openness
0.24
Intrinsic Motivation
Positive Climate
0.23
Supervisor Support
0.21
Climate for Innovation
0.18
Demographic
Education
0.15
Extrinsic Motivation
0.14
Transformational Leadership
0.13
Tenure
0.05
creative self-efficacy can be  viewed as the belief that one is able to develop  creative ideas
Source: M. Hammond, N. Neff, J. Farr, A. Schwall and X. Zhao. "Predictors of Individual-Level Innovation at Work: A Meta-Analysis." Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 2011, Vol. 5, No. 1.

17. And Creativity May Just Be Hiding
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"What we have concluded is that non-creative behavior is learned."
— George Land and Beth Jarman, Breakpoint and Beyond: Mastering the Future Today

18. DNA Is Not Destiny.
You Can Nurture Creativity.

19. Adobe Kickbox: A Tale of 59 Intrapreneurs
Kickbox: Everything you need to innovate
Two-day workshop and limited time allocation
Process for experiments and evidence
Ideas pitched to any executive
Available at kickbox.adobe.com
Source: Adobe

20. Provide Opportunities
If you want to ...
Then try this approach …
Envision future states/models/values
Workshop or workshop series
Solve a tough problem
Competitive design
Surface unrecognized opportunities
Idea challenge/jam
Energize a team
Innovation day/hackathon
Generate breakthrough ideas
Internal venture capital program
Tap intrinsic motivation
Personal projects/20% time
Encourage everyday innovation
Innovation training and practices
CIOs can harness proven approaches to carve out the time and attention required to channel creative outcomes. From classic brainstorming workshops to companywide "innovation jams," these approaches should be a part of every CIO's toolkit. Based on your creative goals, use this graphic to identify the best approach for a given situation.

21. What should you do to increase your vertical leap?
Goals
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What should you do to increase your vertical leap?
What if we wanted to increase by an additional 25 feet?
Stretch Goals

22. Trigger Creative Thinking
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Technique
Examples
Set stretch goals
Shorten cycle time from two hours to two minutes.
Explore what-if scenarios with a new technology
What if all our IT was "cloud first"? What if we embedded facial recognition in every system?
Add, remove or invert a constraint or assumption
Find a solution that costs less than $20 or that delivers benefits in under six months.
Cannibalize your organization
How would a private startup reinvent your organization?
Consider adjacencies and connections
Who is great at balancing the needs of multiple stakeholders?
Inhabit a different world
Observe the people you help in their "natural habitat." Create stories about a day in the life of a key user of the future.
Play games and engage the senses
"Gamify" idea generation and selection with a virtual currency. Build a model of a process with cardboard and string.

23. Protect the Big Ideas Through Separate Selection and Incubation
How can these ideas be made more realistic?
How can these ideas be made more inspiring?
Wow!
Idea 1
Idea 8
Idea 2
Idea 3
Idea 4
Idea 5
Idea 6
Idea 7
Idea 9
How Inspiring
Boring
Hard
Easy
One of the first danger points in an idea’s development comes after the first flush of creativity. Thirty ideas may be on the table, but you don’t have the time or resources to pursue them all. How do you pick which ones to move forward?
In prioritizing and selecting options — that is, moving from divergent to convergent thinking — the questions you ask will significantly affect the ideas you choose. Asking which ideas you could implement in three to six months will lead to different choices than asking which ideas will have the biggest impact over the next three years. If you keep the question vague — “Which of these ideas is best?” — then stakeholders may feel more comfortable with safer, lower-cost and easier-to-implement ideas. Safer ideas may indeed offer value, but they tend to drive out the more novel ideas that were the goal of the creative endeavor in the first place.
The best way to keep novel ideas in the running is to create distinct tracks or streams in the evaluation process. For example, you might have one track for "quick wins" and one for "potential disrupters." A number of companies run 10x programs for ideas that will drive tenfold (or higher) improvements.
If you need to converge on a single idea, you might want to deliberately balance two perspectives. After a brainstorming workshop, Institute for the Future, a U.S. research organization that describes itself as "helping people imagine the future to make better decisions today," asks participants to rate ideas on a two- axis evaluation matrix: "how realistic" and "how inspiring." This approach could also lead to a discussion on how to make a provocative idea more realistic, or a realistic idea a little bolder.
How Realistic

24. Culture Is Critical to Innovation
Innovation is more complex than in the past:
The business world is connected, networked, integrated, and uncertain;
More innovation initiatives connect or involve multiple processes, products or services;
And, organizations have let the outside in.
Cross-organization change requires complex, adaptive cultures — people must be willing to adapt to the new culture in terms of how they think and how they behave.
To give you a sense of the importance of cultural change, here's a sampling of quotes from Gartner research. Note the diversity of initiatives that depend on a culture that embraces change: 
"IT leaders must create a culture of innovation and change their assumptions about how IT is managed.
"Raising security awareness requires a change in enterprise culture, and this will fail if it is not supported enthusiastically by executives."
"Most Web 2.0 business value concepts, such as open innovation, customer co-creation and crowdsourcing rely on culture change and participation more than complex technology implementation projects."
"Thriving companies embrace a culture of constant change and use BPM as part of a continuous process improvement program."
"Culture change costs are a result of needing to change the organization's knowledge of, attitude toward, and affinity for, or resistance to, SOA." 
These examples merely scratch the surface. In fact, from July through December 2010 in our Gartner research, there were more than 300 references to culture with innovation also mentioned; in addition, there were more than 600 references to culture in conjunction with all initiatives. From CRM to enterprise architecture to application development — all depend on cultural change to socialize next-generation processes.

25. Innovation Is Defined by a Cultural Shift
The Blind Spot of Innovation …
The Sweet Spot of Innovation …
Innovation is being first
Innovation is ideas that are new to us
Competitors will discover our ideas
Our competitive advantage is design and execution, not just ideas
We don't know how to manage innovation
We should start now and experiment to build competence
We know what customers want and need
Our customers (and prospects) have great ideas
If it's "not invented here," it probably won't work for us
We can multiply our innovation capabilities through innovation
Pursuing open innovation is almost always a cultural shift for organizations. For example, the decision to involve customers in ideation events may threaten already established processes, such as focus groups or market research. Many of these processes have scientific, mathematical or other analytics associated with them — the idea of having customers offer ideas and letting the "crowd" vote on the best ideas flies in the face of established market analysis.
A second cultural barrier is that members of formal R&D programs may believe their efforts are being displaced or are not important. Open innovation leaders should address this issue directly and early in the program.
Organizations must intentionally analyze the challenges to open innovation. They must recognize the required changes and overtly manage the cultural shifts.

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"Figuring out how to build a sustainable creative culture … was a day-in-day-out, full-time job. And one that I wanted to do." — Ed Catmull President of Pixar Animation Studios and Walt Disney Animation Studios, in "Creativity, Inc."

27. Source: American Express
Establish New Habits
Schedule "white space" time for yourself and your team.
Start or end every staff meeting with an "innovation moment."
Plan one lunch a week to meet with someone from another department to exchange ideas.
Take the first 30 minutes of every Tuesday to search for innovation bright spots in the company.
Organize team field trips inside and outside the company.
A recurring theme among the most successful creative leaders is the importance of focusing on creativity- igniting behaviors. Formal group and individual activities are a critical part of the equation, but developing everyday habits also requires a firm time commitment.
For example, Melissa Brandebourg at American Express sends her team invitations to take time to think deeply and innovate, whatever that means to them. In her view, the value of this goes far beyond the actual time involved. "Even if people choose not to take the time, or if they use it for other things, we're stating that we support them in doing what they need to do, which increases the likelihood that they will think outside of their day-to-day routine and get involved in something innovative — to make an impact and a difference."
Source: American Express

28. Where will ideas come from? Who will test them out?
Who will make key decisions?
Note: Statement Sample. Colored text uses the same orange color as the Indicator arrow (RGB: 225, 102, 0)

29. Recommended Gartner Research
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Create a Research Engagement Plan to Advance Your Innovation Culture and Processes Jackie Fenn (G )
What a World-Class IT Innovation Charter Should Contain and Why You Need One Mary Mesaglio (G )
Drive a Creative Culture Through Activities, Education and Attitude Jackie Fenn and Mary Mesaglio (G )
Driving the STREET Process for Emerging Technology and Innovation Adoption Jackie Fenn (G )
Overcoming Innovation's Measurement Problem Mary Mesaglio (G )
For more information, stop by Gartner Research Zone.