Driving Innovation: The Importance of Creativity

Sir Ken Robinson said it best: “Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value. The challenge is, if we’re not prepared to be wrong, we’ll never come up with an original idea.” Creativity is the key to driving innovation!

Ken’s TED Talk on creativity has been viewed by over 75 million people. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend you take a break, go watch it, and then come back. I know you’ll absolutely love his video. Go ahead—I’ll wait.

His video is extremely entertaining but deadly serious. His TED talk is titled “How Schools Kill Creativity” and he builds the case that schools, and businesses, have stigmatized mistakes. He's correct in saying that we’re all born creative and then most school systems educate us out of being creative. Schools reward us for NOT making mistakes. They want us to memorize facts and information. They want us to pass exams.

In order to become a highly-respected innovator, we have to find ways to get our creativity mojo back! For most of us it won’t be easy—especially those of us who naturally have low levels of the yellow (do things first) leadership energy. But we can do it—if we give ourselves permission to make mistakes. Innovators build prototypes as a way to learn from early mistakes. And the faster we learn from these mistakes, the faster we can get a new idea into the marketplace.

Creativity generates ideas. And what’s the difference between an idea and an innovation? An idea becomes an innovation once it’s implemented and generating value for the organization. That value could be measured by increases in revenues, savings generated from a process improvement, or enhancements in brand loyalty. Ideas are easy. Innovation is hard.

This is why we recommend the Double Diamond Innovation Process. The British Design Council has given us practical methods and tools for harnessing our creativity and turning it into new products and services. These new innovations are primarily designed to help us win new customers—or keep the customers we worked so hard to get.

In my opinion, the Double Diamond Innovation Process is best described as four equally-important stages. The first stage is called the Discover Stage. This is when we primarily use our yellow (do things first) leadership energy to Create Choices. We are finding our purpose and passion for innovating. We’re using our creativity skills to discover multiple prototype ideas.

In the Discover Stage we create choices and in the Define Stage we have to make a choice! We use our red (do things fast) leadership energy to select the best prototype idea. Then we use our leadership skills to inspire others within our organization to support our innovation project; giving us the resources and staff we need to further improve the prototype.

In the Develop Stage we’re now using our blue (do things right) leadership energy to build the go-to-market strategy and plan. We are thinking, planning, and leading strategically. And we need to develop success metrics that are specific and measurable.

And lastly, we enter the Deliver Stage of the innovation process. We have built the plan and now we’re implementing the plan. As innovators, we continually adjust and improve our go-to-market strategy based on customer feedback and competitor responses. We’re using our green (do things together) leadership energy to transform the idea into an innovation.

Dan Stotz is the Founder of The Leadership Collaborative. TLC helps individuals reach their full potential as leaders and innovators; and helps organizations develop, inspire, and retain their best people. The TLC leadership development approach combines the popular Competing Values Framework with Dr. Carl Jung's ground-breaking research on personal awareness and development. The CVF has been modified to fit the Insights Discovery's leadership energy colors.