Harry Vardis
How to create a fertile environment for creative problem solving
Creative collaboration is vital to the creative problem-solving process, allowing individuals to come together to share ideas and develop innovative solutions to problems. It is a powerful tool for generating new ideas, accelerating progress, and creating unique products and services.
The key to successful creative collaboration is to create an environment that encourages open communication, encourages risk-taking, and allows room for experimentation. It is critical to ensure that all participants feel comfortable sharing their ideas and that their ideas are taken seriously. It is also important participants share a clear goal or purpose so everyone is working towards the same end.
When it comes to creative collaboration, it is also crucial to consider everyone’s different personalities, skills, and ways of creative expression. In addition to different strengths and weaknesses people also have preferences as to how they express their creative ideas.
For instance, some might be interested in dwelling on what the right problem to solve is while some might enjoy developing different options for solutions. Others might be more interested in developing plans for action, and yet others might be more interested in implementing the plans.
We use a tool called FourSight assessment, please see https://creativefocus.net/assessment/ that quickly identifies individual creative preferences. It is an eye-opener for the clear majority of the participants because it helps them identify and leverage creative preferences in order to create a successful collaboration during a brainstorming session.
During the actual process of creative collaboration, we ensure that everyone is given the opportunity to contribute their ideas. It is also important to ensure that everyone is given the opportunity to constructively critique and refine ideas. This is done through multiple and diverse brainstorming tools, engaging excursions, and other activities that allow for the exploration of different ideas.
Finally, it is essential to ensure that everyone is given the opportunity to take ownership. This can be done by assigning roles and responsibilities to each individual involved in a project and allowing them to take the lead at various stages in the process. This will help to ensure that everyone is invested in the success of the project and will help to foster a sense of ownership and pride in the final product.
We conducted a project for a major telecommunications company with 42 discreet markets across the USA. We developed a new positioning strategy by assembling all 42 managers for a day-long session where they worked on the new positioning statement. Using collaborative approaches to generate new ideas they worked on an equal basis and established ownership. They were able to diverge on multiple ideas and converge using agreed-upon criteria toward the final goal. Because of this, buy-in from everyone was a no-brainer!
At Creative Focus, we consider creative collaboration as an important part of the creative problem-solving process. It is a powerful tool for generating new ideas and creating unique products and services because everyone is given the opportunity to contribute their ideas, and everyone is given the opportunity to take ownership of any task in a project. Using this approach it is possible to create a successful creative collaboration that results in a unique product that meets the needs of the customer.