 A well defined corporate vision, mission and charter for your company is good because it helps restrict your activities to those that will allow you to develop your business the fastest with the least amount of effort. Think of it like putting your thumb on the end of the organizational hose. By concentrating your efforts on those things that are really important you will go farther, faster, with less effort. You will not spend your limited resources on projects that are not a fit with your distribution channels, brand positioning or corporate resources. When applied in a too rigid fashion however, formalized processes can water down great ideas and create tremendous opportunity losses since all of the organizations new ideas develop a certain amount of uniformity about them.
Having uniform creativity sounds like an oxymoron yet that is what a lot of companies are asking for when they establish formalized new product development processes. Forcing every idea to go through a formal process can also result in the creation of lots of camels. A camel is a horse designed by committee. Camels often come as a result of taking a very creative original idea and fine-tuning it so it meets all of the criteria of a company charter. In the process many of the great original thoughts that made the idea unique or original to begin with are often weakened to the lowest common denominator in an effort to appeal to the masses.
Making every new idea go through a rigid formalized process also often means that many good ideas are shot down before they have a chance to develop. Other great ideas are watered down so they meet the very strict rules established by the new product committee. The process of finding a common ground leads to a similarity of new product ideas that results in a flow of formula driven initiatives. Only close in ideas make it through the screening process and the real novel ideas with the potential to be disruptive in the category are often ignored or rejected.
One way to avoid uniform creativity is to encourage the development of truly novel thinking and creative ideas that address real consumer needs. You don’t have to spend a lot of corporate time and resources on these ideas until their timing is right or the resources are available but the process of encouraging ideas that stretch the imagination will most likely lead to even better executions of ideas that are closer aligned with your mission and business charter. It is like an athlete who trains to run a quarter mile race by running a mile. When they go back to the quarter mile it seems much easier and shorter. Stretching the imagination can work the same way.
The ideas generated by thinking outside the box could possibly be sold or licensed to generate revenue even if they don’t fit your business. Taking the really creative good ideas and putting them in a corporate idea library, - even something as simple as a spiral note book, allows you to give credit to the idea originator and also makes a great resource for future product development. Many ideas are simply ahead of their time and having them cataloged means you don’t have to always reinvent the wheel and might also serve as the basis for future intellectual property protection.
Management needs to play a key role in helping to make sure everyone understands the difference between spending time and resources on projects that are consistent with the companies mission and charter and have the potential to generate a positive financial contribution versus those that won’t. At the same time it is important for management to foster an environment that recognizes everyone for their ideas and encourages them like the athlete, to periodically stretch their creative limits so they also become better at the basics. An environment that fosters stretching the imagination while keeping the company mission and charter in mind will dramatically increase your chances for sustainable success and make for a much more interesting work environment and reduce the likelihood of “uniform creativity”.
About the Author – Scott Francis is President of Topline Development LLC a Strategic Marketing Consulting Group that provides helps companies determine how they can make the most amount of money with the least amount of resources. To learn more about Topline Development LLC visit their web site at www.ToplineDevelopment.com or contact Scott directly at scott@toplinedevelopment.com. |
