Elementor #1677

  • July 24, 2018

RADICAL CREATIVITY Vs INCREMENTAL CREATIVITY

  • By Lana Roy (CEO – Goats2Unicorns)

I recently read a great article which follows from this paragraph that looks at the fact that Creativity is for everyone and not a few select individuals. Many argue that Creativity is a skill not gift but during our formative years, our creative muscle has had a bit too much time resting and it needs to be woken up and worked on.  We call this Re-igniting our Creativity and like any other muscle in the body – we need to apply work and effort to see the results.

Ben Plomion in his article “Creativity Is For Everyone” speaks about radical vs incremental creativity. Radical Creativity – far-out groundbreaking stuff that has become the face of creativity whereby Incremental Creativity – its about building on existing concepts, refining, expanding and improving them.

He speaks about the fact that being incrementally creative is no longer just a nice to have – but an absolute necessity for businesses moving forward.

Overall Ben’s article reinforces the work we are doing at Goats2Unicorns and we look forward to working with your teams using our own developed Creativity Code to incrementally teach the skills of Creativity.

 

Creativity Is For Everyone

Ben Plomion CommunityVoiceForbes Communications Councili

 798 views #GettingBuzz

 

Creativity has a branding problem.

When many people think about creativity — especially people who don’t consider themselves to be creative — artists immediately come to mind. Sculptors, painters and dancers. Pablo Picasso and Georgia O’Keeffe. People whose work altered the ways we think about beauty and even how we see the world. Or our minds turn to innovators like Walt Disney or Steve Jobs. Their creations were so different from existing products and processes that they swiftly and dramatically changed industries.

Those are pretty daunting models to live up to. But creativity isn’t just about revolutionary ideas, and it’s not just the domain of artists and visionaries. Creativity is for everyone.

The image of a creative person as a special breed isn’t just misleading, it’s wrong. Researchers have pushed back against that monolithic concept of creativity. Lucy L. Gilson and Nora Madjar at the University of Connecticut, for instance, argue that there are actually two main sorts of creativity: radical and incremental.

Radical creativity is the far-out, groundbreaking stuff that has become the popular face of creativity. Incremental creativity is the often-overlooked and far more accessible form. It’s about building on existing concepts — refining, expanding and improving them.

It might sound less sexy than radical creativity. But incremental creativity is what the vast majority of projects and businesses need to continue to move forward. It’s the way most of the world works: Just like those “overnight” success stories in Hollywood, what looks like a sudden breakthrough is usually the result of years of making progress on a problem — experimenting, honing the craft, iterating and going to lots and lots of auditions.

And it’s going to become increasingly essential in the workplace.

I don’t need to tell you that robotics and artificial intelligence are pervading and changing every industry, from advertising to healthcare to transportation. In some cases, they are enhancing the way humans work; in others, they are replacing them entirely. According to a study from the McKinsey Global Institute, at least 60% of occupations are largely made up of tasks that can be automated. As technology makes even greater inroads, some of those jobs will disappear because it will be cheaper, faster, easier or more effective to have machines do them. Other jobs will remain, but will drastically change.

Most of the jobs that will be automated involve physical tasks that are very structured and predictable. But creativity is something that machines haven’t mastered (yet). Creativity is how people bring value to the table, using it to turn the potential offered by technology into results.

In fact, when the World Economic Forum conducted it Future of Jobs report, it examined what skills will be most important in the workforce by 2020. Creativity came in third, after critical thinking and complex problem solving.

Happily, anyone can be creative. And being incrementally creative isn’t just sufficient: It’s desirable. While crazy ideas can result in big rewards, they also come with correspondingly bigger risks. Not every business has the appetite for substantial risk-taking, but virtually everyone needs to move gradually in new directions.

The good news for leaders is that incremental creativity can be encouraged and incentivized. The process starts with debunking the idea that creativity is only for a few special people. Engineers, coders, salespeople and customer service representatives can all apply creativity to their jobs. Leaders can demonstrate their support by showcasing new ideas and rewarding progress.

They can also emphasize problem solving. As opposed to radical creativity, which aims to reframe a problem — think of Elon Musk’s plan to build a super-fast tunnel under Los Angeles instead of encouraging more carpooling or rethinking local traffic routes — incremental creativity takes a solutions-based approach. A good example is the work that engineers at my company do every day. They aren’t simply adding servers to increase our technical capabilities, they’re challenging themselves to find other ways to scale and be more efficient at the same time.

Not everyone has it in them to be a revolutionary. But an evolutionary? Absolutely.

Make incremental creativity a part of your culture and you just might find fresh ideas where you least expect them. The power is in everyone’s hands — or, more accurately, in their heads.