Managing Personal Creativity

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64
Design Management Review Summer 2006
Walk into any preschool, and you’ll find
some of the best creative thinking any-
where: finger paintings with purple peo-
ple and polka-dot skies, fanciful tales of
magical, faraway places. There are les-
sons for the corporate world in the day-
care center downstairs.
Young children are naturally creative.
They must create ways to learn and con-
struct a world view from a collection of
initially disconnected events and colors
and movement and sound. So what
happens between the open, effortless
experimentation of our childhood and
the blocks in creative thinking experi-
enced by many adults? Sociological, psy-
chological, physical, and behavioral fac-
tors conspire to stifle our natural ability
for original thought. And overcoming
those barriers is one key to recapturing
our creativity.
This is not news to corporations.
Many organizations have responded to
competitive and economic pressures
with the conviction that creativity and
innovation are the keys to success. In
fact, a June 1995 study commissioned
by the US Department of Labor and
conducted by Ernst & Young with the
Harvard and Wharton business schools
found that 85 percent of US companies
are currently involved in workplace
innovation programs. Such programs
usually include training managers in
effective group processes, as well as
coaching teams on how to generate
ideas and then implement the most
promising ones.
S U P P O R T
o improve corporate creativity, Jeffrey Mauzy advocates improving the creative 
abilities of individual employees. Elaborating on this theme, he probes the process
of creative thinking and factors that limit these opportunities. He details several
interesting exercises for generating more and fresher ideas, and he outlines steps
managers should take to leverage the creative output of their staffs.
Jeffrey Mauzy, Innovation
Consultant, Strategy Planner,
Synectics Inc.
Managing Personal
Creativity
by Jeffrey H. Mauzy
T

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Design Management Review Summer 2006 65
The success of such group-oriented programs
varies widely. Many companies have been
extraordinarily successful at bringing innovative
products and services to market through the
effective use of teamwork. Others founder
because of such factors as inadequate training or
a lack of organizational commitment to the pro-
grams. But there is one approach that can help
both successful and unsuccessful companies
achieve their goals for innovation: developing
the personal creativity skills of
individual
mem-
bers of an organization.