Take the Creativity Test

Researchers from McGill, Harvard and the University of Melbourne have come up with an algorithm to calculate creativity by measuring the semantic distance between 10 words that you are asked to list down. If you have a spare four minutes you can do the simple test here.

I scored 93.38 which is above average (78) and just below high (95). My choice of words below is not completely random, I have an explanation for each word: I have mould in my house, I was reading The Economist, I read a book to my three-year-old about astronauts and satellites (this pulled my creativity score down), I am not getting much sleep and I was researching about electric vehicles and “kerb” side charging stations. I guess I am leading a very creative life? 

Creative problem solving and innovating using emerging technologies will continue to be an important factor in creating a competitive advantage in organisations. According to Gartner research, key technologies that picked up momentum in 2021 were Internet of Things (IoT), Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT), Blockchain, Quantum Machine Learning and Generative Artificial Intelligence. The creative challenge is working out the possible applications of these technologies and the problems that can be solved. It’s a blank canvas. The potential solutions are yet to be imagined, yet to be discovered.

Let me start by giving you an example of a NFT creative technology application from the Fashion industry to stimulate your thinking.

Last year virtual sneaker brand RTFKT Studios collaborated with crypto artist FEWOCiOUS and sold 620 pairs of digital sneakers (before the physical sneakers were even produced). This crypto-art and NFT market experiment made history as the digital sneakers sold out in five minutes and generated USD$3.1m. The early adopters and enthusiasts purchased the sneakers in both its digital and physical form. Why? Experts believe that we are continually blurring the lines between the physical and digital worlds. So, if you met me digitally in the Metaverse with my FEWOCiOUS designed sneakers and then saw me in person, I would have the same sneakers on in real life.

This creative solution wasn’t born necessarily to solve a problem in the Fashion industry, instead it was solving a need in the world of Gaming inspired by animation and sci-fi movies. The implications for the Fashion industry, however, are vast. A new target audience: Your Avatar, and a new channel to reach them with: Virtual stores. This solution also helps assess the demand of fashion goods before physically manufacturing those goods. It’s revolutionary! I am both inspired and overcome by the creativity, industry disruption and innovation this example showcases. Do you know who else was impressed with this idea? NIKE. NIKE recently acquired RTFKT studios and their team of talented creators.

The experimental and breakthrough nature of this example shows the power of creativity and exploring the boundaries of an emerging technology. In an organisation’s context, however, creative ideas and solutions of this nature sometimes never surface up for air.

My role leading Innovation Strategy at Optus has given me the opportunity to regularly collaborate with diverse teams and explore creative applications of emerging technologies. People first need to feel comfortable with the realms of what the technology can do. My boss has a saying that I think is quite empowering for the team: “There is a new expert in the team every day on 5G (insert any technology here). It’s anyone that has made the time to learn about its latest developments”.

There is a shift in organisations evaluating how to keep up with the pace of change and unleash creativity in leaders and employees. Here are my top four learnings:

Competency compulsion hinders creativity. Practice saying “I don’t know” and follow the Socrates approach.

We are often hired for our knowledge and expertise in a particular area of business. These credentials help give the organisations and the teams we work for the confidence that we can get the job done and come up with the necessary solutions. 

Socrates was known for saying, “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing”. I found this extremely hard to implement. This is certainly not one to try in board meetings to begin with. The technique allows you to create space and open room for discussion to hear from others. It also empowers others to share the responsibility with you to come up with a solution.

If great ideas can come from anywhere, do we need an Innovation team?

There is generally no shortage of ideas in organisations. Based on a substantial body of empirical evidence, creating psychological safety for your people to speak up builds trust between them. When people start to share ideas, critique, and provide feedback without the fear of negative consequence or judgement, creativity is unlocked. Likewise, accumulated knowledge surrounding a particular problem gives people several different perspectives and sparks creative solutions. By sharing knowledge across teams, you harness the collective power of looking at the problem from different angles and interpretations. The role of an Innovation team is better served supporting everyone in the organisation to contribute

Enabling Leadership. Find leadership talent that enables vs lead teams.

Short term goals, together with day-to-day pressures, sometimes see novel ideas lost in emails, in conversations and endless workshops. According to Reiter-Palmon and Illies, authors of Leadership and creativity at Science Direct, “People need to define and construct a problem, search and retrieve problem-relevant information, and generate and evaluate a diverse set of alternative solutions. To provide this support, leaders must understand the cognitive requirements of creative problem solving.”

Creativity is a team sport for which you need a coach to unleash its true potential. The leader’s role is to enable the creative problem-solving process by openly debating, discussing and providing feedback and constantly moving between divergent and convergent thinking.

Develop a creative mindset with Divergent and Convergent Thinking. Consider the possibilities before you narrow in on the solution.

This exercise is extremely useful with large groups or when you think you have a limited number of solutions to begin with. According to the authors of the book Creative Leadership, there are four key principles of divergent thinking:

• Defer judgment
  • Judgement of ideas impedes divergent thinking and restricts the art of what is possible. Be open.
• Go for quantity of ideas
  • Breakthrough ideas are generally a culmination of lots of ideas. Picasso, Thomas Edison, Shakespeare all created a large number of creative work from which emerged a handful of masterpieces that we still admire today.
• Make connections
  • A diverse group of people can connect different ideas and concepts based on their individual experiences.
• Seek novelty
  • Letting your imagination run wild to come up with novel solutions requires psychological safety within the group. Think of ways you can make this step fun as part of the divergent thinking process.

And four key principles to converge:

• Apply affirmative judgment
  • You can now bring in your judgment and create criteria to assess what stays on the list.
• Keep novelty alive
  • Hang on to some of the ideas that seem crazy and stay curious, building them a bit further to see where they could take you.
• Check your objectives
  • Balance both realism and creativity against your objectives.
• Stay Focused
  • Evaluating ideas should take as much time as brainstorming of ideas during the divergent thinking phase. Purposefully eliminating ideas takes critical thinking to benefit from investing time in this exercise.

I believe creativity is a human quality that we are all born with. As we let our imaginations run wild as children believing anything is possible, we are not judged. Nurture your creativity.