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Features

Published February 2008

Innovation and Creativity – Beyond the Mission Statement

  

  Michael Rosenberg

It was one of those rare moments of candor you get when dealing with senior management. “I know that our mission statement talks about innovation and creativity,” she told me hesitantly. “But we really don’t want people really think outside the box.  We just want to make the box cheaper.”

What do all pharmaceutical companies have in common? Every one of them has either the word “innovation” or “creativity” in their mission statement. They are not alone: According to the Innovation Network, 88 percent of all organizations have either the word “innovation” or “creativity” in their mission statements. Yet, less than 5 percent of them actually have programs in place that teach innovation or creativity and make it part of the culture. So, why do so many pharmaceutical companies and other organizations think it is important enough to put on the wall but so difficult to apply as a training strategy?

The problem that most organizations have in translating innovation and creativity from the mission statement to the enterprise is there is no real understanding about what innovation and creativity really mean.

I was sitting on a panel a few years ago with a consultant for a large training organization. The topic was creativity and this organization was launching a new training product that was “designed to tie creativity to the bottom line.”

“Creativity,” they said, “is going to be a hot topic at least for the next five years and we want to be on the bandwagon.”

So, in response to a demand for more creativity, this organization created a very complex program that was designed to make sure that “bad ideas weren’t expressed.” Bad ideas? I asked them how do they determine a good idea from a bad idea?

“Bad ideas,” the consultant told me confidentially, “just annoy people.” (Well, we would not want any ideas that might annoy people!) “Besides, our creativity is tied into the bottom line. People come up with an idea that gets approval. They get all the resources they need and then they measure the result, put in on their review and are held responsible for it. Consistently what we have found is that there is a positive bottom line effect.”  

My thought was that if my job was on the line for an idea I created, and I got all of the resources I needed for its completion, you could bet money that I would make sure that at least appeared to be successful!  

Everybody Is Creative
What the story above demonstrates is that if you are told that your head is on the chopping block if you fail, you will become very creative. We expect people to be creative and innovative. That is why they were hired in the first place. That is the reason that we have so much difficulty implementing training programs for innovation and creativity. Even though everybody is creative, not everybody is necessarily a project manager, handles change well or an effective communicator. That is why we have programs for those competencies. Since everybody is creative, how do we put that into an organizational development strategy? Training will not make somebody creative or innovative.

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