Creativity Oct 03, 2011
Fostering Innovation: Forget Solutions. Find problems.
Our clients come to us with problems. All the time. Every day. As their agency, we like to think of ourselves as innovation experts – the ones that solve their problems. But solving problems or coming up with “big ideas” is only one part of the creative thinking process that leads to innovation. The real key to innovation is identifying a problem in the first place. Consider Edwin Land, inventor of the Poloroid camera. He recalled that the key to inventing this camera was sparked by his daughter’s innocent question – “why couldn’t she see a picture the camera had taken instantaneously”?
To anyone who is interested in driving innovation within their own organization, I would strongly recommend they acquaint themselves with Min Bassadur’s model of the creative process. Mr Bassadur suggests innovative thinking practiced by multidisciplinary teams is driven through an appreciation and adherence to this four-stage process. His academic paper outlines the importance of each stage and is a must-read for everyone in business today.
Leading others to think innovatively: Creative Leadership
The first stage of the model is the Generation Stage. This is where innovation begins – using our knowledge to create new problems to solve. In marketing, we tend to focus our efforts on the Conceptualization stage of the process – coming up with the ideas to solve the problem. But imagine what your clients might say if you came to them with a problem that never occurred to them AND you had a good idea on how to solve it?
In Japan, Toshiba ensures Researchers and Scientists start their careers in the sales department to teach them the process of “problem finding”. If agencies want to be valued as innovation drivers then we have to do a better job of finding problems to solve within our client’s business instead of passively waiting for them to hand us their problems.
Creative Process
Lynn RidleyVice President | Creative
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