1. Improving the creativity of organizational work group Team V 施光玉、許怡涓 、何柏青

2. Why is Creativity so important? Flatter organizational structures require companies, divisions, and managers to act in a more entrepreneurial and inventive fashion. Businesses are becoming more and more competitive. Blurred lines between traditional notions of who is “inside” and who is “outside” the company allow teams to form new relationship with suppliers, complementary businesses and shadow business. Customer service is more important than ever.

3. Know Creativity The production of novel and useful ideas James Guilford: Creativity thinking occurs when a problem solver invents a novel solution to a problem

4. Classification of New Ideas Creative conservative Realistic Idealistic Realistic:connected to current ideas and knowledge Idealistic Creative: highly original and imaginative Conservative Creative Realism Conservative Realism Conservative Idealism Creative Idealism

5. Example I

6. Example II Creative Realism Conservative Realism

7. Measuring Creativity Guilford’s Cardboard-box task ParticipantAnswerFluencyFlexibilityOriginality Alex-a god -a telephone -currency 33Unknown Jenny-a cage -a container -a kennel 31Unknown Fluency: How many different ideas a person is able to generate? Flexibility: How many different Types ideas a person is able to generate? Originality: a measure of the uniqueness or originality of the idea

8. Numbers ItemRange Fluency5-40 Flexibility4-17 Creativity0-14 Alex Osborn: Quantity often does breed quality Guilford: Flexibility is the driver among the three items. Flexibility represents a source of Divergent Thinking Divergent Thinking represents a source of Creativity

9. Convergent Thinking vs. Divergent Thinking Convergent Thinking- Thinking proceeds toward or converges on a single answer (A Gambling example) Divergent Thinking- Thinking moves outwards from a problem in many directions and involves thinking without Boundaries. Janusian Thinking- the ability to cope with conflicting ideas, paradoxes, ambiguity and doubt

10. How to stimulate Divergent (Junisian)Thinking? Tom Verberne’s suggestions Open-ended questions stimulate divergent thinking. (most negative and most positive) (a hotel example) Role Switching Ideas that cannot be implemented (Impossibilities)

11. Why do teams tend to focus on convergent Thinking? Act like a norming device Diversity also means conflict Other reasons:

12. The Creator of Brainstorming Creator: Alex Osborn His main ideas: - The main blocks to the organizational creativity was the premature evaluation of ideas. - Two heads are better than one when it came to generating ideas. (People are trained to defer judgment of their own and others’ ideas during the idea generation) - Brainstorming can increase quality and quantity of ideas by group people.

13. Brainstorming Basic Idea: A team is more likely to discover a REALLY GOOD idea if it has a lot to choose. But there is even more to brainstorming than mere quantity

14. Does Brainstorming Work?

15. Four Major Problems Social loafing -Organizational members feel their opinions are not so important or necessary, they are likely to loaf. “Flow” state- by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (psychology) Q: An example of loafing in your office Conformity -The desire to be liked and accepted by others in one group -Fearing group members would negatively evaluate the ideas Production Blocking -Waiting period is so long that participants forget their ideas. Downward Norm Setting -The performance of people working within a group tends to converge over time. - The least productive members are often more influential in determining overall team performance than the high performers, when there are no internal or external incentives for high performance.

16. What Goes on During a Typical Brainstorming Session? Experience inhibitions, anxiety, and self-presentational concerns Reduce their production Participate in social rituals, such as telling stories, repeating ideas, and giving positive feedback (a natural pattern of conversation that works well at cocktail parties but kills creativity) Set their performance benchmarks too low Conform in terms of ideas Conform in terms of rate of idea generation

17. Ten Strategies Build Team Creativity

18. Heterogeneous vs. Homogeneous Heterogeneous Groups, compared with homogeneous groups can: - offer different categories of ideas and ways of looking at the problems - excel at all measures of creativity - create more arguments, apply more strategies, detect more novel solutions, and better at integrating multiple perspectives

19. Definition: the act of applying a concept or idea from a particular domain to another domain Example: 曹植 vs. 曹丕 ; 錯誤偵測 vs. 迴轉壽司 ; red (green) vs. stop (go) Problem: It is not easy to transform relevant information from one domain to another because it is not easy for people to access another domain. “Inert Knowledge” Problem: applying the previously learned knowledge to new solutions is difficult. Example: a ray destroys tumor vs. a general captures a fortress Analogical Reasoning

20. Definition: Benefits: - Eliminate the problem of production block - Eliminate the conformity problem due to “Anonymous” - Consistently produce more and more ideas than typical brainstorming Options: - Take breaks Brainwriting

21. Nominal Group Technique Definition: Nominal Group Technique (NGT) One variant: Anonymous Nominal Technique Benefit: Creating greater acceptance of others’ ideas; preventing individual members from championing only their own ideas Another variant: Delphi technique Benefit: Providing maximum structure, ensuring equal input, avoiding production blocking. Disadvantages: time consuming ItemCharacterJob Definition Anonymous NGTany member of the groupCollect notecards, shuffle and distribute them Delphi NGTtrusted by group membersDistribute a topic or idea to members, collect feedback and repeat the actions till the task is done Comparing the facilitator between the two variants

22. Creating an Organizational Memory Groups can create an organizational memory by recording ideas in full view. Recording all ideas greatly improves brainstorming sessions. Examples: - Buckman Laboratories Inc,. : Connects all of its associates worldwide with a proprietary knowledge network, K’Netix. - Sun Microsystems’ Java Migration Team: Created a shared-code library

23. Trained Facilitators A trained facilitator: - Better follow the rules of brainstorming which helps to create an organizational memory, and keep teams on track - Bring the level of team performance up to that of nominal groups Long-term Benefit to train facilitator: - Guide teams in several sessions of productive idea generation - Coach teams to share ideas without extensive social interaction or “filler” talk. Example: - IDEO Design Firm : Key qualification of the facilitators is “good with groups” - Group leaders are used to facilitate all brainstorming sessions.

24. High Benchmarks Brainstorming groups often underperform due to lack of benchmarks. Provide brainstormers with high performance standards increases the number of ideas generated greatly. A facilitator can periodically call the attention of brainstormers to a graph on the computer screen. - It indicates how the team’s performance comparing with other teams. - It also enhances the number of ideas generated by the group. Brainstorming also helps members to record their own ideas.

25. Membership Chang Greater Member Diversity - Groups who experience membership change will generate more and different ideas than those groups who remain unchanged. Influence of a new comer - Inspire old members to look at themselves more thoughtfully - Motivate old-timers to revisit their task to develop and improve methods for performing group tasks. A better position of the group - The group is in a better position to think about their working style and learn from others as well. Transitory nature of interaction - Groups that experience membership change are more task-oriented due to the transitory nature of interaction among members of groups. Stepladder technique - A variant of the membership-change technique - Members are added one by one to the team - Members with the best individual decisions exert more influence in stepladder groups than in tree interaction groups.

26. Electronic Brainstorming EBS (Electronic brainstorming) - Use of computers to interact and exchange ideas. An variation of electronic brainstorming used by Mattel Media - A self-proclaimed “technographer” records team members’ new-product ideas on a laptop. - If you are writing, you are not thinking. - Did not allow anyone to write to minimize production blocking - The note-take recorded everyone’s ideas in front of the group. - Such ideas could be rated, evaluated, accepted or dumped. - Everyone left the meeting with a hard copy in hand, providing the organizational memory. - Boneyard: A file of ideas which were rejected in the meeting. These notions may be valuable later for other projects.

27. Build a Playground Stimulate creativity in the short terms and instill long-term passion and motivation of the creation in the work playground. Break with old ideas of its meaning at work Chill-out zones - Spaces that are designed to foster creativity including a lot of fun elements. - A example of Southern California’s Foote, Cone & Belding Advertising Agency - A example of D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles Advertising Agency