The Future of Business Success-Part 4

From Idea To Innovation

All human endeavors begin with a thought, an idea. Ideas are the roots of the tree of innovation, the foundation of every new invention. Innovation is the fruit of well-developed ideas, all flourishing from a single seed: Creativity. And, creativity is the bold ingenuity to be different or to do something differently. Planning and execution is the watering of that very seed, the process of nurturing the idea to fruition. Belief or, to take it even a step further, determination and discipline provide the fuel for that process, the energy–the sunlight, for the sake of the metaphor–that brings the idea to life as it is reimagined, reshaped, and refined throughout the development process.?

The fearless explorer fulfills this best, along with a team of ambitious free-thinkers.

What Can We Learn From Creatives?

Fredrik Haren , The Creativity Explorer, author, and world-renowned keynote speaker, came up with the insane idea that if business leaders had a book that could teach them to be more creative it would, in turn, enhance the creativity of their teams and their businesses would suddenly begin to flourish beyond previously conceived limits. And, since the average company invests in only one personal development book for its employees but spends thousands of dollars on stationary, buying hundreds–if not thousands–of notebooks for them, he decided to give them both: “The Idea Book” (which is ranked on “The 100 Best Business Books of All Time” list, selling over 200,000 copies to date). The first half is full of ideas, the second half is a notebook. That’s right, you read that correctly: blank pages. Imagine you paid the full price for a whole book only to find out you got half a book. “What kind of a rip-off is this?!”, you might ask yourself…until you read it and find out that the first half, the “book part”, is comprised of 63 chapters on how to develop new ideas, each ending with a practical activity or exercise that you’ll need a notebook to write things (and ideas) down in. Well, what do you know? You have one, attached to the book. Genius idea! Right??

But what does this teach us? Well, sometimes, the most absurd ideas, the ones that offset the status quo, challenge the standard, push the limits, or disrupt the norm, are usually the ideas that create the most innovative concepts and/or inventions we’ve ever heard of. The cover design of The Idea Book is another example of this. H?rén decided not to follow the herd. (After all, true Creatives are leaders, the reason he travels the world speaking to the leaders of Fortune Global 500 companies.) Take a look…

H?rén suggests, “Write down all the fundamentals of the product you’re working on, or the problem you’re trying to solve, then take them away. It sounds counterintuitive. It sounds stupid. And, most of the time, it IS stupid. But sometimes you get a really, really good idea.” Apparently, this was one of those times. Foregoing all the rules of book cover design: no picture, no author’s name, no subtitle. Only the title, in small letters, on a black cover. “If it worked for [the best-selling book of all time,] The Bible, it should work for my book too!”, H?rén thought. And sure enough, it did. It was proven to be “the most picked-up book” on a shelf of the best-selling management books, right next to authors like Malcolm Caldwell, Donald Trump, and Barak Obama, at a book store in Singapore, one of the first to carry it.

The Chicken Or The Egg??

For the second time in this series, I ask again, in the spirit of exploration: What exactly is creativity? According to Fredrik H?rén, “The definition of creativity is when a person (p) takes knowledge (k) and information (i) and combines them in a new way”. For which he created this equation depicting how an idea is formed:

Idea = p(k + i)

The plus (+) is the key, as he states, “We put a lot of emphasis on giving people access to knowledge. We put a lot of emphasis on giving people access to information. But we put very little emphasis on teaching people the ‘plus’. And the ‘plus’ is what makes the difference". In his speech at The Global Leadership Summit in 2018, he inconspicuously gives the perfect example of creativity by leading the audience of corporate leaders on an informative, yet entertaining, journey into the depths of creativity and how to foster it, while he humbly, humorously, and tactically establishes credibility simultaneously.?

After over 20 years and over 2,000 speeches in 65 countries on 6 continents, asking business leaders from all over the world the same 3 questions, H?rén has found the following:

• 98% of business professionals believe that being creative is important in their job.
• Only 45% of them believe that they are actually creative, (on a global average, of course, as this number varies according to cultural personality differences).?

He jokes that the latter percentages are higher in larger countries as they tend to have larger egos, particularly in North America (not surprisingly), whereas far east cultures are more humble in their self-view of creative confidence. For example, South Korea showed the least amount of creative confidence (0% out of an audience of 300 business leaders) but is actually very creative in terms of business, technological, industrial, and artistic innovation.

Take A Page From South Korea-tivity, Maybe?

In case you didn’t know, South Korea has contributed many life-changing innovations that have transformed the way we live today, including the world's first watch phone, the first computer tablet, touchscreen phones, the world’s first social media platform (Cyworld)--making way for our very own MySpace and Facebook–the first cancer-fighting nanobot (the “bacteriobot”), internet cafés, 5G technology (yup!), and let’s not forget K-Pop, just to name a few.

As a matter of fact, South Korea was labeled the world’s most innovative country in 2021–according to the Bloomberg Innovation Index. And prior to 2020, when Germany seized the top spot, South Korea actually held the title for six years straight. The Innovation Index judges countries based on research & development (R&D) intensity, manufacturing value-added, productivity, high-tech density, tertiary efficiency, researcher concentration, and patent activity. The secret lies in the fact that its government has been investing heavily in R&D and manufacturing dating back over 60 years. So much so, that today it has become an integral part of the culture. South Korea currently spends about 4% of its budget on R&D, which is actually very high.?

Birthing companies like Samsung, Hyundai, Kia, and LG, South Korea has leveraged its investments to fuel market-creating innovations–simplifying complex products and services making them more affordable to a larger percentage of the population. This means revamping infrastructure, and creating new employment opportunities to manufacture, market, and distribute these products and services, not to mention a new sustainable source of tax revenue as well.?

Not only is that the perfect example of H?rén’s point that there is no correlation between a nation’s creative confidence and the evidence of creativity among them, but also an exemplary display of how creativity has the power to transform business and impact economic growth tremendously. Beginning with President Park Chung-hee’s idea to implement a five-year economic plan focusing on supporting R&D back in 1961, South Korea went from being one of the poorest countries in the world to becoming one of the world’s most innovative high-tech leaders presently.

Before Honor Comes Humility

When H?rén asked the third question, “Do you think your company is doing enough to develop the creativity of its employees?” the numbers were staggeringly low in a worldwide consensus.

• 2% said “Yes”.?

Wait…something isn’t quite adding up here.?

H?rén states that 95% of the business leaders in America alone believe they are creative, but 98% of them feel they aren’t doing enough to develop the creativity of their employees. Why? And how is that even possible? One of these numbers must not be accurate. Either they are not as creative as they think they are, or, if they actually are, they aren’t putting it on display for their teams to see. Perhaps their creativity happens behind closed doors? Or, maybe, it only happens within the confines of their own minds.?

So the million-dollar question is, how can business leaders make their teams/employees more creative??

Well, according to H?rén, “You don’t do it by talking about creativity. You don’t do it by adding creativity and innovation into your mission statement…You don’t even do it by teaching creativity, not even buying a creativity book. You do it by doing creative things yourself as a leader…because people are inspired to be creative”.?

And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is the key, the “+” is “inspiration”.?

One of the most powerful quotes I’ve ever heard came from the late, great Nipsey Hussle–YES, the rapper–who said, “The highest human act is to inspire.”

Stay tuned for the final segment of The Future of Business Success Part 5: How To Foster Creativity Within Your Organization.