July 2001

Innovation Tips

…ideas to help you foster collaborative innovation

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How to Kill Creativity

The techniques for killing creativity are easy, abundant, and pervasive. We all have a tendency to fall into them without thinking. In her article, “How to Kill Creativity” (Harvard Business Review), Teresa M. Amabile identified a few of the many destructive habits in organizations that suppress, rather than stimulate, creativity.

1. Undermine autonomy.

Change goals and interfere with the work processes of others.

2. Mismanage resources.

Put teams under artificial and severe time or resource constraints.

3. Be critical.

Routinely criticize new suggestions; thoroughly assess each new idea for its flaws.

4. Be secretive.

Create an atmosphere of mistrust.

5. Over-analyze.

Analyze any proposition to death.

6. Let politics prevail.

Let internal politics set priorities rather than evaluating ideas on their own merits.

These techniques are too familiar because they are too often practiced inadvertently; they often come too easily to us all. We must vigilantly avoid them if we are to cultivate creative thinking. Amabile also identified important conditions for creating a healthy context for creative thinking.

1. Expertise

People need to have a high level of competence in some area of specialized knowledge

2. Creative thinking skills

The culture needs to nurture and promote everyone’s creative thinking skills.

3. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation

The internal desire to be creative ought to be coupled with outside incentives that reward creative thought.

4. Job Sculpting

Look for ways to create diverse teams where people can rely on one another’s complementary talents and sculpt the work of individuals to match their best aptitudes.

5. Autonomy

Give people freedom to respond to the needs of the work, but also lay out key principles and core values that will keep the work moving within fairly well- understood channels.

6. Allocate resources

Creating something on a shoestring does exercise the creative juices, but it also tends to focus that creative thinking on how to save resources rather than on how to solve the problem at hand. Allocate enough resources to give people the freedom to keep their focus more on the project to be addressed than on saving money.

7. Acknowledge the value of creative work

Creative work doesn’t always produce immediate or perfect results. It often needs to be protected, commended and developed.

We live in an age of increasing change and challenge. To thrive in this new age, we must learn to cultivate creative thinking in the work place—to thrive on innovation. Following these few principles can dramatically accelerate innovative thinking and boost the performance of the whole organization.

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