[SOUND] Welcome back to the third video on creativity. My name is Daan Stam, and I will talk with you today about how we can enhance creativity, how we can make people more creative, and how we can make the output of people more creative. As a manager in today's world, being able to build creative capabilities in your firm is essential. And enhancing your employees' creativity, or your own, is a very useful skill to accomplish this. Do you remember from the previous video what the three elements are that make people creative? The first is expertise, the second, motivation, and the third, creative thinking skills. If we think about these three elements, and we want to enhance creativity, we can do so in three ways. Let's start with the first one, expertise, the technical, procedural, and intellectual knowledge. There are different manners to enhance expertise. Let's imagine a team selection for instance, we could simply try to select those people with the right amount of expertise in our team. Alternatively, if we already have a team of people and we want to enhance their expertise, we could also send them on their way for a training session. We could also have them follow a course at the University, or an online course like this MOOC, for example. However, it's very difficult to enhance expertise quickly. In addition, these training sessions and extra courses take time and cost money. So let's move on to the second element, motivation, especially intrinsic motivation. Doing things because you love doing them. Let's take the same example of the theme selection. We could then try to select those people that are most intrinsically motivated if we know how to find them. If we succeed in the selection process, we have a team of very intrinsically motivated individuals that hopefully will become creative. Otherwise, we could also try to persuade them of the importance of the task or the effect. That the task is really cool to do. This way of motivation might work to some extent, yet research shows that it's very difficult to change the intrinsic motivation of people, since this is really something of people themselves. Let's move onto the third element, creative thinking skills. This element was all about how flexibly and imaginatively people approach problems. It differs from the previous elements because this is one we can actually change, and we can even change it quickly and with real results. So, if we think about tools to enhance the creativity of individuals, creative thinking is the element that has the most creative tools focused on. In the next couple of minutes, we're going to look at three examples of tools. The aim of these tools is to enhance creative thinking skills. So what do these tools actually do? The main problem with create a thinking skills that people go through life not thinking about things too much, most of the time. We have all kinds of scripts and schemas in our heads, whereby we simply move with. We can drive, walk, and cycle without much thought. We can say hi to others in the hallways, absent-mindedly, if needed. And we can watch TV without really engaging. We also automatically make use of many assumptions when we try to do idea generation, product development, or other creative tasks. Cars always have four wheels. People like phones to be small and light. Children need smaller toothbrushes than adults. We don't think about these assumptions. We just go with them. What this automatic mode leads to, is that our work remains invisible and implicit. We are not able to get a good overview because we are not thinking about many aspects of it. And most tools that enhance creativity aim to provide a very structured procedure to tackle problems and aim to look at new opportunities that do not come up if we are in automatic mode. They try to bring explicit order to chaos, so we can actually see what's going on. Look at these wires, for examples. They are not ordered, and if we would try to find the best matches, we will find out this is a very difficult task. But if we place these wires next to each other, if we structure them, we create an overview. And suddenly, we are able to see the opportunities and matches. Then, we may realize that cars can have five wheels, or none at all. That some people like really big phones and children prefer big brushes rather than small ones. This is what tools that enhance creativity do. So let's look at three of these tools. The first one I want to discuss here is left-right brain alteration. The tool is based on the idea that different parts of our brain have different functions. The right side of the brain is very good at artistic, creative and emotional tasks. The left part of the brain is really good at math, analytics, analogical thinking. The left-right brain alteration tool is there to take advantage of these two different functions of the brain. The tool is very simple, for instance if you are thinking of a good idea for a new product or a new surface, what you actually do is thinking with one side of your brain and then alternating several times with the other side of your brain. For instance, first think with the left part of your brain about the finances behind the idea or the business case behind it. And then you switch to the right part of the brain to start thinking about the possible emotions of the customer when they buy the product or service. And you keep alternating between the left and right part of the brain, and this is supposed to have three effects. First of all, it overcomes the bias of the dominant brain half. People who have a dominant left brain are very analytic. And for others the right half is dominant and they are generally very emotional and artistic. When doing tasks we tend to use our dominant brain half, and alternating between brains overcomes this bias. Second, you can combine ideas that on the one hand come from thinking about the emotions of the customers, and on the other hand come from the analytic part like finances. In this way, you get ideas that are both customer oriented and have a solid financial plan behind them. And third, although there's not a lot of evidence for this, if you supposedly create linkages between the two parts of the brain, this creates synergy and makes you more creative. All in all, left-right brain alteration structures the task for you so you don't forget to think analytically or emotionally. And this enables you to see the bigger picture a little bit better. The second tool that I want to discuss is called SCAMPER. SCAMPER actually stands for a couple of questions that you can ask. It's an acronym. The S stands for substituting. The C for combine. The A for adapt. The M for magnify, minify, or modify. The P for put to other use. And the E for eliminate. And the R for reversal or re-arrange. And the two works like this. You look at your product or service or a business model that you are making your changes, you then look at all the various parts of your product or service. And for each of these parts, you ask yourself the following questions. Can I substitute this part for something else? Can I eliminate this part for something else, etc? For instance, you could think of the milk producer that sells milk to the grocery store to get to the customer. Using the E of eliminate, the milk producer could eliminate the middle man, the grocery store, and just sell to the customer directly. You could also think of the C, combining two products or parts. For instance, the smar watch, which combines the smartphone and a watch. And SCAMPER is really useful for at least two reasons. First, it forces you to explicitly ask questions that you would normally never think of. And secondly, by asking all of these questions, you will get a really good overview for the possibilities of a certain product. And in this way, you can overcome schema scripts and assumptions. It structures the idea generation task for you. A final tool that I want to discuss with you is design thinking. Design thinking is more extensive than the other tools. It's a whole process, starting from generating ideas all the way to testing them and implementing them. The idea of design thinking is to always start with the customer, trying to understand him or her. You go out and observe what your customers are doing. You look at the customer and try to feel what they feel, think what they think, see what they see. And based on these insights you gain from the observations, up on the needs are perceptions of these customers, you conduct a brainstorm to come up with ideas. Having seen the customer so extensively will usually provide you with many new ideas. And in a brainstorm, you could also make use of the tools like SCAMPER or left-right brain alteration to come up with even more ideas. Once a good idea emerges, you try to build a very simple prototype of the product or service. And subsequently you test your freshly made prototype. And check whether it works before you start spending money. Design thinking offers several benefits. The tool creates a very structured process for ideation. By focusing on customers, you will think of ideas that you would not have thought of otherwise. And the tool is easy to use and not necessarily costly, making it quite practical. In this video, we discussed three tools. But obviously there are many, many more tools that stimulate you to be more creative. In all honesty, not all tools work well for everyone. So it is really up to you to find out which tool you prefer. It is important to remember two things. First, most of these tools have the aim to structure the ideation and creativity processes to make sure you're not missing things. You're not just going with your implicit assumptions and your schema. And lastly, to make sure you explicitly think about all the options available before making decisions. The second point is, everyone is creative. There is no such thing as an uncreative person. At most, there are people that don't try to be creative. We are all built to be creative. And by using the tools we have discussed today, we can make creative persons from everyone. So that's it for this video. In the next video, we have a look at the creativity in groups, because creativity's not just important for individuals, but also for groups. Yet, even groups comprised of individuals that are all very creative can easily fail to produce high quality creative output. How can groups be creative? Join us in the next video.
