How does it work?
Do you want to innovate in your company? Do you need new solutions for your problems? Do you have difficulty with a different way of thinking? You need some creativity! Creativity is a proven (artikel) competence to boost your innovation power. But what is creativity? And how do I know if we own this competence in our company?
“Creativity is a new structure of the mind, a new configuration or a new formulation of meaning”. - Göran Ekvall
A lot is written about creativity. We really like the research from the Corporate Research Foundation (1996) that presents a list where structural flexibility and innovative power are the most important key drivers of future success in the UK’s top 100 companies. The new organizations are already doing this, they are creating flexibility in their structures and way of working so they can be more flexible in their markets. According to Cook (1998), structural flexibility and innovative power are at the core of creativity. Employing highly creative people is therefore desired by most organizations (Sternberg et al., 1997). But this isn’t enough. Just hiring some creative dudes and girls is not enough for your desired creative results; employees must be surrounded by an environment that fosters and brings out the creativity from within them (Amabile et al., 1996; Cummings and Oldham, 1997).
So, before you are writing all these job offers for creative minds, start to check your creative climate!
HOW
And here this guy comes in: Göran Ekvall. This Swedish researcher came up with the idea that in order to realize creativity, you need to increase a climate that nourishes creativity. A climate consists of many attributes and can be seen as the manifestation of the organizational culture. Some of these climate attributes have the ability to affect organizational creativity.
Swedish researcher Göran Ekvall identified ten climate dimensions that affect creativity in organizations. His conception has been validated by repeated studies in the United States and internationally. From these ten dimensions, nine are positive for your creative climate, one doesn’t help you to create creativity. With this knowledge, he created a tool that you can use in your organization to examine if your climate is ready for some creativity.
Start sending the 50 question questionnaire to your colleagues and you will find how your company is doing. Notice: This is only the start. Now we know on what dimensions you are doing well and on what dimensions you have to work on. In each of these dimensions, we have practices to grow. Search our directory to start prototyping your way to a creative climate!
