doesn't believe creativity springs from special conditions. The Paris-based vice president of the Boston Consulting Group "" and the author of nine books on business innovation "" says creative thinking mushrooms from day-to-day realities and by seeing things from a drastically new viewpoint. angle of thought process. de Brabandere advises that this radical change in thought allows both management and employees to not just change the direction of process in an organisation but, sometimes, even replace it with something completely different and superior.
In India recently to attend BCG's global partners meet, de Brabandere spoke with the strategist on the importance of creativity in business processes. Excerpts:
You emphasise that creativity and innovation are different. But the terms are usually used interchangeably...
Innovation is about changing the world, while creativity is all about changing the way you look at the world. Of course, they are both related to big change, but everything else is different.
These two dimensions are so different that we need different names, different environments and different processes to understand them. But, of course, we need both.
What should organisations be asking of their employees: to innovate or to be creative?
You need both. Mistakes appear in the absence of clear definitions. For instance, you say "this company is creative".
Well, a company can never be creative, only people can be. A company has no perception, a company doesn't think. But a company can innovate "" it can change reality. Innovation is a team challenge, but creativity is single-person challenge. And you need both.
When you merge two companies, say, two banks and you talk about change, immediately people think about building a single network, a single accounting system and so on.
But as long as people within the new entity think of themselves as ex-A or ex-B, C (the new entity) won't exist. You have the change the way people think.
What is the biggest challenge to thinking creatively?
The challenge is not so much to have new ideas, but to change the ideas you have. In 1910, General Motors (GM) designed a car for farmers.
The first thing the farmer did was remove the backseat, because they needed the room. But it took GM 14 years to "invent" the pickup. It had nothing to do with invention -- the idea was there right from the start. The challenge for GM was to change its view of what is a car.
Brainstorming is fine, but first you need to destroy existing ideas. The key word is not "think", but "change". You have to "change" in order to think.
Where should the change begin? At the top or at the bottom?
There are no 10 rules for creativity. It's all about perception: if people realise how important it is, they will start thinking creatively. Creativity is like learning a foreign language. If you want everyone to learn Spanish, you can hire a teacher, buy books... It will work -- a little. But the key is when people realise: without Spanish, we're lost. Efficiency will shoot up.
The head of research at 3M threw a party with champagne, balloons, the works. When he asked the people present if they knew what they were celebrating, nobody had a clue.
He said, "We are celebrating the failure of a project. If there is no failure, there is no risk. If there is no risk, it means there are no new ideas." Imagine the impact. People become more creative when they believe that it's okay to not succeed -- whether it's the CEO or a fresh employee. There is no rule or procedure, but you need a climate where people feel creativity is important.
How does an organisation nurture creativity at all levels?
Changing perceptions happens more at the highest levels. But when the message is disseminated in an organised manner, you can hear the people down the line saying "I can do this". The bold decision may come from the top, but then organise aspiration, which can be fulfilled by everyone.
Google's founders were once asked, what is your business? They didn't say they run a search engine. They said, our business is to know everything.
And then the whole company believes, hey, I can be creative because I can see where we have to go. If they had said we are a search engine and we are going to shoot pictures of the planet from a satellite, you don't see the connection.
Isn't such a strategy risky?
But what is risk, after all? You can't tell people, please send me only good ideas. You have to change your perception of what is a bad idea. One of my favourite philosophers, Immanuel Kant, said that people are like birds. They fly. And sometimes, they tire because of the air resistance.
So they dream that we should have a world without air. But they forget that without air, they can't fly. Air is both the problem and the opportunity. Bad ideas are problems, but they are also a chance to think creatively.
