Finding Value Among the New

Implicit notions we hold about creativity can unsuspectingly influence how we select the valuable idea from the many novel ones.

Many of us think creativity is something that takes place in the heads of gifted or inspired people. However, as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi states in his recent book, Creativity, “there is no way to know whether a thought is new and valuable except with reference to some standards. . .until it passes social evaluation. Creativity does not happen inside people’s heads, but in the interaction between a person’s thoughts and a cultural [and organizational] context. It is a systemic rather than an individual phenomenon.”  

This observation has significant and profound implications for the principles and practices of management, especially management that is concerned with the productivity of knowledge workers.

Several years ago, the Center for Creative Leadership conducted a study of the different styles of creativity in R&D organizations. They discovered that most, if not all, of the people they studied could be regarded as creative in one of two ways. Some they labeled as more “adaptive” in their creative style, while others were described as more “original.” Adaptive types tend to think of novel ideas within the defined boundaries of a given technical challenge; while original types tend to think of new ideas on the edge or even outside the defined boundaries. Some originals even redefine the boundaries themselves.

The Center for Creative Leadership went on to identify a surprisingly consistent correlation in this research: R&D managers tend to be adaptive in their creative style, while “individual contributors” in R&D organizations tend to be more original in their creative style.

This research confirms what we have frequently experienced ourselves. In selecting the valuable from the many novel ideas generated by a group, those of us in management and leadership roles may show more concern with whether a novel idea fits than with the idea’s intrinsic value. This may be entirely understandable given the management mantra of the early 1990s: focus, focus, focus. As important as fit may be, however, it is not the only or even the primary criterion in evaluating an idea’s value or merit.

Essential criteria for assessing the value of a new idea may include customer and market readiness (pull), feasibility, and fit with the corporation’s core competencies, among other factors. Just as important, however, may be how managers and leaders apply the criteria in evaluating the new—the attitude they demonstrate toward the novel. Demonstrating a deep respect for knowledge bases other than one’s own and a degree of humility about the future are essential for any of us who have responsibilities for finding the valuable among novel ideas.

As Dorothy Leonard-Barton says in her book, Wellsprings, a company’s core capability can have a dark side: the same core competence can also reflect a core rigidity. As a result, considerations of value based on strategic fit should not necessarily override the value of an idea’s inherent fitness.

Given the truth that the future is not what it used to be, perhaps the most appropriate attitude to have in evaluating a new idea is a willingness to trade symptoms of the familiar for faith in the possibilities of the future. Organizations that demonstrate this willingness not only invite more novel ideas, but also attract individuals who generate them.

As Csikszentmihalyi observes, “Many American corporations spend a great deal of money and time trying to increase the originality of their employees, hoping thereby to get a competitive edge in the marketplace. But such programs make no difference unless management also learns to recognize the valuable ideas among the many novel ones, and then finds ways of implementing them.”   

This article was originally published in Innovating Perspectives in September 1996. For this and other back issues of our newsletter, please visit our website at innovationsthatwork.com or call (415) 460-1313.