Creativity and Its Criticality in Solving Problems Innovatively
Problems are something that is omnipresent and has been pertinent to all organizations and individuals. Hence it is now imperative for individuals, teams, and organizations to have a problem-solving mindset and honing the various intricacies critical in developing it.
It is also imperative that the problem-solving mindset be quick enough to be executed, implemented, and effective. In this fast-paced, VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) economy, it would be foolhardy to suggest that you think slow. Therefore one needs to be creative enough to understand the various implications of thinking solutions to be effective. The process of creativity comprises three compartments — discovery, ideation, and validation.
Since innovation takes center-stage in problem-solving, one needs to understand and cultivate it from an individual’s very nascent stage. Therefore, world-class talent starts at the school and college level with an education system that emphasizes both the sciences and the arts and encourages diversity and collaboration while being flexible and inclusive enough to have space for everyone. The New Education Policy 2020 is a step in the right direction. It proposes this seamless movement between arts, humanities, and sciences to break the artificial hierarchy in subjects that exist today. Thousands of students would be saved from being forced into disciplines they have no interest in. It gives them the chance to develop holistically and be better attuned to real-world challenges.
If fostering an enduring culture is the most crucial job of a leader, there are three possible levers — talent, routines, and incentives. The talent answers the “who” question, or the actors enacting the play; the routines addresses the “how” question, which is the very script of the play; while the incentives are the all-important “why”; why should the actor stick to the script or else improvise. One important aspect that also needs to be addressed is boredom, which is one reason for individual burnout that erodes the team’s efficacy in bringing world-class solutions. There is never a bad time to terminate some old habits and pick new ones, even if temporarily. The growing presence of technology around us and our growing dependence on it only indicates that we will have to justify our presence more than ever from now on. If it were about physical labor, memory power, or sheer intelligence, machines have long overtaken us. Two of the scarcest endowments we are left with are empathy and creativity — empathy to understand the unstated and creativity to imagine the impossible. Neither creativity nor empathy is enough to bring about a lasting change. It is their combination that creates an impact. Remember, creativity without empathy is a false start, and empathy without creativity is a dead end.
You must fill in your life with multiple affiliations, such as taking up a music class, teaching children how to code, playing badminton, writing short stories, learning to cook, and making time for your day job. A bit like a Twitter bio, with multiple identities separated by commas. That is more like a creative person; the one regularly sought out by companies like Apple.
The multiple affiliations in life translate into being a T-shaped personality at work. A T-shaped person has significant depth in a subject matter and an ability to relate to several other domains. The stem of the “T” represents expertise, while the bar indicates empathy.
However, in this digital age, it isn’t that easy. With machines overtaking us everywhere, we are only left with empathy and creativity — empathy to understand the unstated and creativity to imagine the impossible. Hence, to survive in this era and be ahead of others, we must learn to focus on fewer things and ignore information, situations, or even individuals we can’t meaningfully learn from. Also, we need to be good listeners and resist the temptation to answer every question or respond to every situation. More importantly, we must learn to break the pattern before the pattern breaks us by making us fragile.
There is a general tendency while building products that innovators can try to do too much or too fast. Over-engineering only complicates the solution and increases the cost. Building something too fast or too futuristic would not lead to easy adoption, and the product would flop. So it is important to be clear of the problem you’re trying to solve and only focus on aspects of the product/solution that help solve the problem and provides you an advantage. A good way to ensure using the FAB model is FAB stands for features, advantages, and benefits. Features refer to what all the product is capable of; Advantages indicate the offering’s competitive superiority compared to the alternates available with the customer; Benefits comprise the value-adds that the specific customer derives out of your offering.
So embracing the above practices will surely help every organization improve its existing product development process, ensure that they continue to build innovative products, and reap benefits in the long term. Keep innovating