Creativity and innovation in management

Lead-in

1. Show your creativity and innovation skills. Below you have a list of objects. Choose any of them and try to enumerate as many spheres/places/fields where these objects can be used. Try to be creative. You may work either in pairs or alone. Report your findings to the whole group.

 

ü an old newspaper

ü an unused pizza box

ü paperclips

ü an empty bottle of wine

ü a lipstick

2. Skim the information about Dark Stories and do the task that follows.

Dark Stories is a very popular game. The essence is as follows: you have some story which has a peculiar/strange ending. Your task is to guess what has happened or why that has happened.Only your teacher knows the answer. You should ask your teacher YES/NO questions only. Keep in mind that the situation may be rather absurd or illogical.

 

Guess what exactly happened in the story below. The answer will be given at the end of the unit.

                                                                                

A man walks into a bar and asks the bartender for a glass of water. The bartender pulls out a gun and aims it at the man. The man says thank you and goes away.

 

Try to explain, how this task is connected with the topic of the Unit. What was so creative about the story?

Key Vocabulary

 

Study the following list of vocabulary. The words appear in the order you will meet them in the text.

1. spark thoughts	(зд.) натолкнуть на мысли
2. define v	определить
3. controversial adj	спорный, противоречивый, неоднозначный
4. generate ideas	генерировать, вырабатывать идеи
5. newness n	новизна
6. actionable adj	практический, выполнимый, реалистичный
7. impact n	воздействие, влияние
8. quality n	качество
9. break away from	оторваться от, покончить с
10. bind to	привязать к
11. search for	искать, быть в поисках
12. encourage v	поощрять, стимулировать
13. be committed to	быть приверженным, преданным чему/кому-л.
14. competitor n	конкурент
15. competitive adj	конкурентоспособный, конкурентный
16. ensure v	обеспечить, гарантировать, добиться
17. view v	рассматривать
18. vital adj	важнейший, насущный, необходимый
19. expertise n	опыт, компетентность, мастерство
20. domain of work	сфера профессиональной деятельности
21. pertain v	относиться, касаться
22. circumstance n	обстоятельство
23. produce worker	сотрудник продуктового или фруктового отдела
24. appealing display	(зд.) привлекательная витрина
25. acquire v	приобретать, получать
26. peer n	(зд.) коллега
27. capacity n	возможность, способность
28. determine v	определить, установить
29. enduring adj	прочный, устойчивый, долгосрочный
30. raw materials	(зд.) составляющие
31. reward n	награда, вознаграждение
32. conscientiously adv	сознательно
33. take action/steps	принимать, предпринимать меры/шаги
34. stretch abilities	(зд.) раскрывать способности, возможности
35. distract v	отвлекаться
36. feel overwhelmed	чувствовать себя разбитым
37. be inclined	быть склонным
38. assume v	предполагать
39. lack v	испытывать нехватку, недостаток
40. promote v	содействовать, способствовать, продвигать
41. curb v	ограничить, сдерживать
42. tight deadline	жёсткие, сжатые сроки
43. simultaneously adv	одновременно, параллельно
44. overly adv	чрезмерно, слишком, излишне
45. luncheon n	официальный ланч, обед
46. sustain v	поддерживать, сохранять
47. complement v	дополнять
48. endeavor n	начинание, усилие
49. collaboration n	сотрудничество, взаимодействие
50. trustworthy adj	надёжный
51. formidable adj	сложный, серьёзный, нелёгкий
52. retain v	сохранить, удержать
53. rallying cry	боевой клич
54. deploy v	направить, использовать, задействовать
55. prosperity n	процветание, благосостояние
56. confusion n	путаница, замешательство, неразбериха
57. tangible adj	реальный, конкретный, заметный
58. fertile source	плодотворный источник
59. outcome n	результат, итог, исход

Pre-reading Activities

1. Choose at least 5 words or word combinations from the list of Key Vocabulary and give your own definitions to them. Let the group guess the words or word combinations according to your definitions.

2. Using Key Vocabulary finish the following sentences.

A. Organizations should become more innovative, because ….

B. To get a creative product, we should ….

C. Just as a flower requires the proper soil and watering, the innovation process requires ….

D. There are some things which positively influence innovation. They are ….

E. With an abundance of resources, management can afford to ….

F. Effective communication helps break down barriers to innovation, because ….

G. Cross-functional teams are widely used to innovate organizations, because ….

H. Innovative organizations actively promote the training development of their members, because ….

I. Innovation is stimulated in a company that is ….

J. A modern office needs innovative people, because ….

 

3. Using Key Vocabulary express your agreement or disagreement with the following statements. Support your opinions with sound arguments.

                       

A. Originality is enough when a company wants to be creative.

B. Creativity involves breaking away from old rules and norms.

C. Managers often face the challenge of dealing more effectively with competitors.

D. To be creative, you don’t need to have any expertise.

E. Motivation doesn’t have anything in common with creativity.

 

Reading

Read the text and be ready to tell the difference between creativity and innovation. Compare your answers in Task 3 from Pre-reading Activities with the information from the text. Be ready to comment on the difference if there is any.

 

In modern society, the term creativity often sparks thoughts related to the arts or literature.  Although how best to define creativity from a management viewpoint may be somewhat controversial, creativity in organizations relates to generating original ideas or new perspectives on existing ideas. Originality or newness, however, is not enough when analyzing creativity from an organizational perspective. An idea must be useful and actionable. Overall, an idea must have a desirable impact on how organizational goals are accomplished. That is, an idea must be evaluated for its positive impact on critical organizational factors such as productivity, communication, coordination, or product quality.

Creativity involves seeing issues from different angles and breaking away from old rules and norms that bind us to traditional methods of accomplishing tasks. Creativity allows us to be different and helps us find new answers and solutions to problems, both old and new. For example, many managers face the daily challenge of motivating organization members and, as a result, are constantly searching for new

ways to encourage employees to be more committed to their work. Additionally, managers often face the challenge of dealing more effectively with competitors and, as a result, commonly search for new ways to increase the quality of their products or develop new and more competitive products. Overall, meeting the challenges of motivating organization members or dealing more effectively with competitors is necessary for ensuring organizational success. Because creativity is the source of new ideas on how to meet such challenges, managers should view creativity as a vital element for ensuring organizational success.

Within each individual, creativity is a function of three components. These components are: expertise, creative thinking skills, and motivation.

Expertise is everything an individual knows and can do in the broad domain of his or her work. This knowledge pertains to work-related techniques and procedures

as well as a thorough understanding of overall work circumstances. Take, for example, a produce worker in a supermarket. Her expertise includes basic abilities in cleaning fresh vegetables, building appealing displays that encourage customers to buy products, and building customer relations. As with all organization members, the abilities of this produce worker can be acquired through formal education, experience, and interaction with peers and other professionals.

Creative thinking is the capacity to put existing ideas together in new combinations. Overall, creative thinking determines how flexibly and imaginatively individuals approach problems. For example, the produce worker will tend to be more creative if she feels comfortable disagreeing with people about how the produce department presently functions. Such disagreement will often result in new thoughts about how to improve the department, such as keeping produce fresher for longer periods. In addition, the produce worker will tend to have more creative success if she faces and solves department problems, such as buying new technology to keep produce cool and not necessarily always looking for quick problem solutions. This enduring attention to problems will provide the produce worker with the attention necessary to generate creative solutions to complex organizational problems.

Motivation refers to an individual’s need or passion to be creative. If an individual feels a need to be creative, that individual is more likely to do so. Expertise and creative thinking are the individual’s raw materials for being creative, but motivation determines whether an individual will actually be creative. An individual can be driven to be creative either through organizational rewards and punishments, or through personal interest and passion related to a situation. Normally, people will be most creative when motivated by personal interest, satisfaction, and the challenge of the work. Continuing with our supermarket example, the produce worker could have the expertise and critical thinking necessary to be creative, but unless she is motivated, she probably will not be creative.  Generally, the produce worker will be more motivated to be creative if she is personally interested in supermarket problems, tends to be personally satisfied by solving these problems, and sees solving the problems as challenging.

Managers should conscientiously take specific action aimed at building creativity in organizations. To encourage creativity in organizations, managers can take certain steps. One of such steps is providing organization members with an appropriate level of job-related challenges. When people feel appropriately challenged, they seem almost naturally to search for new creative ideas to help perform a job in an improved way. People should not be placed in jobs that are too simple or too difficult. If organization members have jobs that stretch their abilities

too little, they can easily become bored on the job and distracted from being creative. If a job stretches worker abilities too much, workers can feel overwhelmed and therefore not inclined to generate creative solutions to job-related problems. Managers must struggle to understand both organization members and their jobs to make sure workers are challenged at a level that encourages creative solutions for meeting job challenges.

People tend to be more creative in their jobs if they have some freedom (autonomy) to influence the process used to perform their jobs. Providing this freedom, of course, assumes that organization members have a clear understanding of work goals to be accomplished. Without such understanding, organization member creativity will lack the consistent direction needed to promote organizational success.

Appropriate time is commonly discussed as a critical resource that fuels creativity in organization members. Without enough time in which to perform a job appropriately, organization members can be so engaged with simply performing a job that generating creative solutions to job-related problems is curbed. Managers who use unnecessarily tight deadlines to push organization members to reach higher levels of production can simultaneously cause employees to feel overly controlled and helpless in terms of being creative.

 As with any other desirable behavior in organizations, managers should personally encourage organization members to be creative. Such encouragement

may take many different forms and range from a simple, verbal “thank you,” to awarding a Creative Achievement Certificate of Appreciation or holding a creativity appreciation luncheon. Because managers are extremely busy and under constant pressure for achieving results, they can be easily distracted from personally encouraging creativity. Organization members often find their work challenging and interesting and can display creativity in the shorter run without much personal encouragement from management. To sustain creativity in organization members over the longer run, however, encouragement from management is vital. Such encouragement assures organization members that creativity is important to the organization and that management values creative efforts, even those that at times may be unsuccessful.

To complement the personal encouragement, organizational systems and procedures should clearly support organization members’ creativity. Such organizational support clearly identifies organization members’ creativity as a highly valued endeavor. Organizational procedures that promote information sharing and collaboration as related to solving organizational problems are examples of such a procedure. Additionally, research suggests that managers who are trustworthy and provide employees with developmental feedback help increase employees’ creativity.

As one last tactic for increasing creativity in organizations, managers can attempt to hire and retain organization members who are creative. Although this tactic may sound simple, it can be difficult to implement. Identifying people who are

creative can be a formidable challenge. Retaining creative employees is particularly important research, which suggests that individuals’ social structures can influence their creativity. In other words, it may help to surround creative employees with other creative employees.

“Innovate or lose!” That has increasingly become the rallying cry of today’s managers. The term innovation can be defined in several different ways. From a management viewpoint, innovation is the process of applying a new idea to the improvement of organizational processes, products, or services. Innovation is critical to the long-run success of virtually any organization. Deployed correctly, the “collective intelligence” of an organization has the power to spark innovation.  On the other hand, without innovation, organizations tend to become less competitive and less desirable to customers as well as organization members, and organizations that do not innovate tend to fail.  Many management theorists believe that innovation is so critical that it can fuel not only the prosperity of organizations, but of nations. To be sure, though, innovation starts with employees.

Confusion often exists in organizations over the relationship between innovation and creativity. Basically, innovation involves turning a new idea into new or improved processes, products, or services that promote the attainment of organizational goals. The ideas on which innovation is based come from creativity in the organization. Innovation is the process of turning those ideas into something tangible that benefits the organization. An organization that is creative but not innovative is characterized by a fertile source of good ideas, but lacking in the ability to make the ideas tangible. An organization that is innovative but not creative is characterized by the ability to turn ideas into tangible benefit, but lacking good ideas to make tangible.

Thus, the innovative organization is characterized by its ability to channel creativity into useful outcomes. When managers talk about changing an organization to make it more creative, they usually mean they want to stimulate innovation.

Comprehension Check

1. Explain in your words exactly what the following statements from Reading mean.

A. Managers should view creativity as a vital element for ensuring organizational success.

B. Motivation determines whether an individual will actually be creative.

C. People should not be placed in jobs that are too simple or too difficult.

D. People tend to be more creative in their jobs if they have some freedom (autonomy).

E. Managers should personally encourage organization members to be creative.   

 

2. Taking into account the information about 3 components of creativity, fill in the following table. Get ready to summarize the relevant passage basing on the information from the table. Mind using proper phraseology while summarizing.

Component	Brief Description

 

3. Find the passage in the text which describes the steps managers should take to encourage creativity in organizations. Finish the sentences, basing on the information from the passage.

A. Providing organization members with an appropriate level of job-related challenges is important for a manager, because ….

B. Providing freedom of action helps organization members ….

C. Appropriate time is a critical resource that fuels creativity in organization members, because ….

D. Personal encouragement of organization members may take many different forms, such as ….

E. Identifying people who are creative can be a formidable challenge, because ….

 

4. Imagine that after skimming the text, your groupmate wasn’t able to understand what the term innovation means. He/she asked you to clarify it. Basing on the text, explain, what innovation means. Mention the relationship between innovation and creativity.  You may work in pairs: one of you asks questions, the other one answers them.

Vocabulary Focus

1. Using Key Vocabulary and Reading translate the fragments in brackets into English. Then in pairs expand the statements and share your ideas with the rest of the group.

A. Business can innovate in a number of different ways: by launching products with new features, by (улучшая) to existing services, by introducing more effective business practices and by finding new markets and (источники поставок).

B. Launching and innovation (включают, предполагают) a degree of risk.

C. Creative people look for (решения сложных проблем).

D. (Гибкость) helps an organization to be successful and innovative.

E. Innovative companies do their best to channel creativity into (полезные результаты).

F. A creative organization has a (плодотворный источник) of good ideas.

    G. Without innovations, organizations become (менее конкурентоспособными).

H. Managers who are trustworthy and (предоставляют своим сотрудникам обратную связь), increase employee creativity.

I. (Для поддержания творческого потенциала), encouragement from management is vital.

J. (Компетентность касается) to work-related techniques and procedures as well as a thorough understanding of overall work circumstances.

 

2. Look through the text and find the words that mean the following.

 

A. Having a physical existence, capable of being touched or felt.

B. The condition of success or wealth.

C. Debatable, disputable, open to question.

D. Extremely difficult to overcome, manage.

E. An effort to do or attain smth.

F. To restrain, constrain.

G. Special skills, knowledge or judgment.

H. To have reference, relation or relevance.

I. Originality, innovation, uniqueness.

J. Reliable, responsible, honest.

How would you define these words in your own way? Share your own definitions with the group.

 

3. Create your own crossword puzzle with at least 10 words studied in this Unit. Exchange your crossword puzzle with your groupmate’s puzzle and guess it. Choose any 5 words from the puzzle you solved and make up sentences with them on the topic of the Unit.

Watching

“Creativity in the Workplace – What You Should Know”

A. Pre-watching

1. Agree or disagree with the following statements. Give sound arguments to support your agreement or disagreement.

A. Creativity is a crucial element in the workplace.

B. People can be creative only in the creative environment.

 

2. Before watching the film make sure you know the following words and word combinations. Consult a dictionary if it is necessary. The words are given in the order you will meet them in the video.

1. launch n

2. sailboat n

3. creative space

4. open-plan office

5. wellness area

6. resourceful adj

7. distraction n

8. outstanding adj

9. figure out

10. inspire v

11. daring adj

12. accelerate v

13. genius n

14. excellence n

 

B. First Watching

                                                   

Follow the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7nEgYOcb5c or find the video “ Creativity in the Workplace – What You Should Know ” on YouTube and watch it to answer the following questions.

A. What do Shawn, Vincent and Lisa do?

B. What is Shawn working on now?

C. Why does Shawn feel stressed?

D. What decision did Vincent make? Was it effective?

E. Why is Lisa successful at her work? Mention 3 factors that influence her success.

 

C. Second Watching

 

Basing on the episode about Lisa’s creativity, fill in the following table.

 

Key Elements of Creativity

Element	Brief Description
1.
2.
3.
4.

 

Basing on the table, describe these elements of creativity.

D. Follow-up Activity

1. Besides the key elements of creativity which are described in the video, what other elements may be important and help to be creative? Discuss them with your partner. Share your findings with the group.

2. Imagine you’re a management theorist on creativity. Deliver a lecture on the topic “Creativity in the workplace – what you should know”. Try to be creative in presenting the information. Be ready to answer tricky questions from the audience.

Talking Points

                                                    

1. React to the quotations by explaining what they mean and showing their relevance and connection to modern times. Take into account the information from Reading.

 

A. For good ideas and true innovation, you need human interaction, conflict, argument, debate.

M. Heffernan

B. Great is the human who has not lost his childlike heart.

Mencius, 4^th century BC

C. The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.

Dr. Linus Pauling

D. Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.

Albert von Szent-Gyorgyi

E. The essential part of creativity is not being afraid to fail.

Edwin H. Land

2. Being creative is very important for a modern manager. Check, how creative your partner is. Ask him/her whether he/she

ü looks for solutions to difficult problems

ü sees things that other people don’t notice

ü likes to find ways to connect different things together

ü notes down interesting ideas as they come to him/her

ü respects decisions made by those in authority

ü likes to keep himself/herself informed about new developments

ü likes taking risks

ü is perseverant

ü takes unpopular positions if he/she thinks he/she is right

ü likes to discuss things with other people.

Analyze your partner’s answers and try to give a reasonable feedback on his/her future prospects of a successful career in the managerial field. Then exchange the roles.

3. Play the game which is called “Two Piles”.

You’ll be given 2 piles of index cards by your teacher. One pile of cards has major brand names, the other pile has product categories. Form teams of 3 – 5 people and choose an index card from each of 2 piles. Imagine that you work for the company you chose and must innovate a product for the category you chose. Each team has 15 – 20 minutes to develop the product’s target audience, features and promotional ideas. One member from each team is to present the ideas of his/her team to the rest of the group. The other members of each team are welcome to add any information the “main speaker” could have missed.

 

Summary Points

 

Read the text, give its summary and be ready to answer the questions on its contents.

Failure Is Glorious

 

Alberto Alessi transformed his family's housewares¹ business into a design giant. His secret: walking the borderline between genius and failure.

There’s only one thing to have success, says Alberto Alessi, godfather of Italian product design: enjoy your glorious failures, dance on the borderline between success and disaster. Because that’s where your next breakthrough² will come from.

Alessi, 54, has followed that very advice ever since he began to run the family business. His partnerships with some of the world’s best designers have transformed this company from housewares supplier to design leader.

But Alessi is just as proud of his failures. It’s the duds³ that enjoy the central place in the company’s private museum, where Alessi’s designers meet weekly to discuss new projects. He has even published a book of prototypes that were never put into production. In a market that’s crowded with the trivial and common, Alessi says, his failures reassure him that he is not turning toward safety.

Fortunately, most of the products created by Alessi’s 200 free-agent designers are winners. His ‘dream factory’ of 500 workers has raised sales by around 15 per cent a year, to $100 million today.

Now, having conquered⁴ people’s kitchens, Alessi is looking at our cell phones, watches and maybe even our cars. How will he do it? By walking along the border between the ‘possible and the not possible.’ In an interview at the Alessi factory he explained his approach.

Where is this borderline?

The area of the ‘possible’ is the area in which we develop products that the customer will love and buy. The area of the ‘not possible’ is represented by the new projects that people are not yet ready to understand or accept. At Alessi, we work as close as we can to the borderline. Because when we succeed, we give birth to a new product that surprises people and because it is completely unknown, it doesn’t have any competition – which means we can enjoy big margins⁵.

How do you explain your success?

Our industrial organisation is very flexible. We have a few best-sellers that sell more than 100,000 pieces a year, while others sell in much smaller numbers. In any case, Alessi is not a mass-production company. It’s a research laboratory. And that means we have to experiment a lot. But doing experiments doesn’t just mean doing the research and making a prototype. It means putting a finished product into the marketplace.

What is your favourite fiasco?

Our most beautiful fiasco was the Philippe Starck Hot Berta kettle. I didn’t realize that we had gone too far. Inside the kettle was some complicated but very intelligent engineering. On the prototypes, it worked well, but when we produced thousands and thousands, it didn’t work so well.

How do you view your customers?

Our customers seem happy to take risks with us. Customers are much more  progressive than marketing people or retailers⁶ think. Society is much more exciting than just a target market. A target market is a cage where people try to put society. It

has no relation to what people feel and want.

 

Vocabulary:

1. housewares n – электротехника

2. breakthrough n – прорыв, достижение, успех

3. dud n – (зд.) неудачная работа, неудавшийся проект

4. conquer v – завоевать, покорить

5. margin n – прибыль

6. retailer n – розничный торговец

 

Questions:

1. What is Alberto Alessi’s secret of success?

2. What is the background of his business?

3. What is Alessi’s attitude towards his failures?

4. What is Alessi’s attitude towards a target market?

 

Writing

Choose one of the following topics and write a well-organized (there should be introduction, body, conclusion), well-developed essay of at least 200 words. Remember to use proper connectors.

1. Creativity and innovation in management: my understanding of it.

2. Would I like to work in an innovative company?

3. Creative ideas for my future business.

4. Are creative managers born or made?

5. “Innovate or lose!” – is this slogan true today?

Independent Study

1. Find real examples of innovations and briefly share them with the group. You are strongly recommended to describe some bad examples that you don’t believe will succeed. Give your reasoning by explaining why you believe that the innovation will succeed or fail.

2. To check, how innovative you are, create your own poster or presentation about yourself. This should include your favorite inspirational quote(s), photo(s), and a short biography of a person who inspires you. This may also include a description and photo of a skill, hobby, or field you know most of all about. Uniqueness in the presentation of this work is highly recommended.

3. Collect information from different Internet sources on a well-known company (local or international) and its open innovation activities.Prepare a report or presentation on your research. Present it to your group. Be ready to answer your groupmates’ questions.

The answer to task 2 from Lead-in: The man had hiccups. The barman recognised this from his speech and drew the gun in order to give him a shock. It worked and cured the hiccups - so the man no longer needed the water.

 

 

Unit 13