I can think of no finer way to enrich a person's life than to
stimulate him to a greater use of his creative talents. The ability
to be creative, in which the techniques of "brain-storming" play
such an important part, is largely a state of mind. It is a state
of mind that we all can cultivate. As a business manager, I have
been especially interested in stimulating ideas for two reasons: to
benefit the business itself and to help the people who work in that
business. In our organization we have had quite a bit of experience
with this subject. And I can say that these techniques not only
work on specific problems. They also help to broaden a person's
outlook on life, to open his whole personality to the "idea
concept" and to encourage a constant, fresh eagerness about all the
problems of daily living. Although my comments are being made from
a businessman's point of view, I think it is evident that they
apply quite generally to all people. Any company or organization
that makes and sells products in competition will prosper only as
it develops new ideas. This is basic to growth and improvement. To
fulfill this objective, the organization must have creative people
on all its important areas, such as engineering, manufacturing,
sales, and personnel. And it must have good management in seeing
that the best results are obtained from those creative people in
all those areas. Yet, whether one's business is large or small,
there are some dilemmas in which the manager finds himself. For
instance, a very small business, desiring to grow, may find the
problem of developing new ideas a difficult and expensive one.
Therefore, the need to avoid the failure of working on the wrong
idea is vital. The manager of a large organization is also in a
difficult spot. To him, spending money on a poor idea is not so
serious because his resources are larger. However, because of this,
there is less appreciation of the cost of development. Consequently
the controls that he must employ can create an atmosphere that
hampers idea men and their productiveness. Thus there are the dual
problems of creativity and good management. Creative ability is
most frequently the opposite of good judgment. Creative ability
includes the tendency to experiment with novel ideas that might be
unsound. It includes a good deal of the gambler's spirit where the
individual "sticks his neck out" and tries something new, perhaps
even "wild" or "crazy." Therefore, by its very nature, creative
ability is on the opposite end of the scale from good judgment. In
other words, if we were to draw a line to represent the various
degrees of creative ability and sound judgment, we would put great
creativity at one end and sound judgment at the other. The better
manager, when rated along this line, would be much closer to the
good judgment end than to the creativity end. So we immediately see
that a "good manager" may automatically constitute a barrier to an
atmosphere that fosters creativity. Consequently, this is a real
challenge to business leaders: how to combine a flow of creative
new ideas with sound evaluation. Business, just as art, needs a
climate of open-mindedness, and should not be wary of
non-conformists who continually pose ideas that run contrary to our
orthodox thinking.
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