• Contrary to the widespread belief, brainstorms are more about giving sense to old ideas than discovering new ones.
• Every model is based on assumptions. Paradigms and stereotypes are more abstract models that don’t necessary come with explicit assumptions, which narrows down creativity.
• Creativity is about changing perception. Innovation is about changing things.
• Techniques for workshops:
  • Choose a random organisation having nothing to do with your industry. What is the probability it takes over your business in 10 years? Explain SWOT.
  • Speak about your job without using the most commonly used words to describe it.
  • A paradox is when reality doesn’t follow the model. A new model must then be applied. An ambiguity is when reality can be represented by several models; it is far more common. Creativity is about building new conceptual ‘boxes’ inspired by ambiguities.

Luc de Brabandère is ‘corporate philosopher’ and director at BCG, check out his books here.

• An economy of contribution is an economy where actors contribute without having necessary a measurable counterpart (e.g. money, product). This model is radically different from an economy of exchange and must be taken into account when the externalities underlying an industry become central to its process. In this context, the function of companies is to capture positive externalities.
• An organisation is at the cornerstone of three axes:
  • Patrimony: the former ‘inner’ single reference for a company: legitimacy, expertise, employees…
  • Employability: capacity to inscribe its products and usages in shared values. Employability is related to economical theories of ecosystems in which an organisation is seen as a part of a system, either parasitic or in symbiosis.
  • Interactivity: capacity to adapt to the needs of individuals and communities who will in return support the activities of the organisation. With the rise of social media, brands want to be seen more and more as Customer to Customer ‘CtoC’, like if they were initiated by customers and driven by them.

Mozart: a talent detected in his early childhood

I attended few weeks ago a seminar organised by the Philosophy and Management association in Brussels. It was all about talent, and how the way artists work and manage their career can be a source of inspiration for talent management within business organisations. Pierre-Michel Menger, French philosopher and research director for the CNRS, presented some of his researches in the sociology of work and art. The expertise of Pierre-Michel Menger in both fields led him to very interesting observations.

He first discerned two types of work:

• the ‘labour’: an effort, constraint with a predictable outcome
• the work as a discovery of yourself, the masterpiece of your life. Success in this type of work is more a derivative, not a predefined goal. It is unpredictable.

The later work is influenced by philosophies from the 19th century emphasising the infinite depth of consciousness and the infinite possibilities opened to us. Because of it’s unpredictability, it is a type of work that involves a lot of risks. The prestige and satisfaction you get from the realisation of a masterpiece is immense, but the risk to fail is in equal proportions. Artists are facing this risk in a hyper competitive environment. Differences in revenues between artists is huge, the small number of successful artists take most of the resources, leaving a small portion of revenues to the vast majority. If you look at just the financial situation of an artist, choosing such a career might look like a bad evaluation of the risks. But it doesn’t take into account the non-monetary value of a potential huge gratification, a relative autonomy and the diversity of the tasks involved in the job.

What influences the likelihood to become a successful artist (at least in the narrow sense of social recognition and monetary compensation) is not clear. There is something about artists that cannot be measured, cannot be put in an equation. It is not enough to make studies, work hard and accumulate experiences. You need to have ‘talent’. The same applies to business. Sure, you can find people able to perform a task by looking at their past experiences and by using rational criteria. But how can you detect the collaborators who will go far beyond, surprise you and develop considerably within the company. How can you make sure to invest more in these people and less in the others? McKinsey invented a marketing term to describe the 10% of your employees who will bring the most to the company: ‘talents’. Talent management is controversial and relates to the many meanings of the word ‘talent’.  Pierre-Michel Menger proposes to define talents as people you cannot isolate using predefined criteria or reading their CV. It helps to stick to this definition and to not take into account all the other meanings and judgements that the word ‘talent’ implies. He argues that the only way to detect talents is to compare them between each others. This is why competitions and awards in the art world are so frequent. The jury don’t know themselves what they are looking for, and the outcome is unpredictable.  It is after comparing the contestants that they can see who has a little something more, a higher potential. This is also why I think you start to see more and more contests and game-like workshops in business (hack day for developers, unconferences, Dragon’s Den kind of internal events), to detect talents you could not screen using a formal HR equation.

I think that this approach raises many ethical dilemma.

• On one hand, I want people to judge me on rational criteria that I can understand and act on. It is a system that protects all of us against arbitrary decisions and favouritism. On the other hand, I also want to be judged for who I am and for my talents, independently of any predefined list of criteria.
• Whatever your boss says, it is reassuring to know that he doesn’t judge you but only your work and your performances. With the concept of ‘talent’, suddenly your boss wants to know what you do in your spare time and wants you to reveal yourself, so that he can detect the ‘talent’. It is a much more personal relation. It surely benefits some people, but not necessary everyone. The opposite leads to the same problem but the other way around. You might have a quality that you know could help your career, but an employer looking only at short term figures and performances might not realise it.
• Is it right to invest more in the 10% of ‘talents’ in your company instead of using that money to raise the general level of expertise of the team? To use an example from Pierre-Michel Menger, if a talented researcher wins an award for a paper he wrote, his reputation will get a boost which will convert probably to a higher salary. But the paper he wrote is most likely based on data that ‘average’ workers collected. Is is fair? On the other hand, if there is no incentive for researchers to excel and be noticed, people will stagnate and become demotivated.
• Even small differences between people of the same level in a specific field, like music composition, can generate disproportionate inequalities. If more is invested to a young ‘talent’ who is a little better than the other children of his class, he will quickly gain more experiences and have more chances to explore his talent. He will then have a reputation, which will encourage people who don’t have time or the knowledge in music composition to hire him instead of someone else, which will give him even more experience, and so on. The ‘talented’ person might truly be exceptional, but was it because of his initial tiny competitive advantage or because of the investment from the community? Does it make a difference? Maybe humans are like bees and need an arbitrary hierarchy for their society to work. (Simply accepting this image of the bees is way too sympathetic with established power though.)
• As it has been pointed during the workshop, talent belongs to the category of work that is unpredictable and can be asserted for sure only a posteriori. Is it legitimate to try detecting talents beforehand? This argument is interesting but theoretical.  Of course, people will always try to detect talents, it happens since the beginning of humanity. And even if it is an inexact science, it probably lead to better results for the community than not trying to support its future ‘talents’. Even if it is not always fair for people.

How to resolve the dilemma depends on your vision of society. If you believe that there is a real opportunity for people from all backgrounds to display their talents, then selecting talents by comparing people between each other on non measurable criteria is legitimate. If on the other hand, you perceive the world as being a constant exploitation of the masses by few people in power, every privilege not based on measurable merit is a potential discrimination. Both extremes are false, the world needs both talented artists and hard workers. I personally believe that the key to resolve the dilemma is to offer multiple ways to succeed, in many different ways, with the help of many different groups of people. Diversity lowers the probability of generating systematic discriminations and enables many understandings of what talent means.

If you are preparing an award or competition in your organisation, you need to understand why you the feel the need to do so. If it is at least partially to detect talents, I hope that the points above will help you design the process in accordance to your values and goals. Don’t simply replicate what has already been done, enable participants to show their talents from a difference angle, the winners might not be the ones you expected.

I collaborated with him to prepare the photographs and Polaroids, you can find the details here.

I hope it conveys the message and the exciting mission of the Philosophy and Management association.

The conference room of PICNIC 2009

The presentation by Gentry Underwood at PICNIC 2009 was useful because it gave some hopes that employee engagement could truly be improved using the intranet. The key is to stay focus on the practical objectives of the employees and the core priorities of the organisation. It is illusionary to believe that employees will really share their thoughts on the intranet just for the sake of the organisation, and for colleagues that they never met. It is insulting the intelligence of employees to believe that they would participate in internal forums thinking they are taking part in a democratic process. I see the knowledge sharing system developed by IDEO as one that acknowledges that employees have personal ambitions and are all well aware of the competitive environment they are working in. If writing something on the intranet has no implication for my career, why would I do it? If reading the intranet doesn’t help me in my personal goals, why would I bother? In an intranet platform that IDEO developed for its own internal use, employees can create their personal pages on which they can list all the projects they worked on and why. When a new project is about to start in the company, the manager can search on the intranet for employees that are potentially either the best suited or motivated for the project. The intranet becomes a tool truly improving the efficiency of the organisation, employing the best people for each task, and an effective way for employees to influence their career within the organisation. It is furthermore much more motivating and efficient to put in touch people having complementary expertise than to ask them to write down their knowledge on an intranet document. Writing down documentation is long and boring, why would I do it for the benefits of people I don’t know? The approach requires obviously much more than the creation of a new intranet website, it changes the way the organisation operates. Intranet tools need for this reason to be adapted for the goals and culture of each organisation. It seems to me an essential step if one truly wants to motive his collaborators with practical opportunities. An Intranet based on a wishful but only superficially executed democratic model becomes a dangerous daydreaming which demobilizes people because it doesn’t offer them any realistic mean to prevail.

Another illustration of wishful thinking are intranet websites that encourage employees to post their brilliant ideas for the company, and how often they end up being broken for years because no one ever use them. If a politician or an entrepreneur has an idea, he will exploit it in order to obtain more power or revenues. What could an employee hope to get in exchange of his ideas? Nosco developed a software called Ideas Exchange in which participants not only share ideas, but can also invest virtual shares in ideas from others. Not only it makes the process more exciting, it also helps identifying good ideas, the ones considered as being the best investments by the employees themselves. If coupled with the right incentives, such as real life returns on investments or opportunities to participate in the direction of the projects, the system could also lead to a higher level of engagement.

Many Smithsonian museums are on the National Mall, so many I was a little lost and overwhelmed during my visit in 2003.

If you are interested in strategic thinking, look at the lecture of Nina Simon at the Smithsonian. It is a long video but I think it encompasses many important subjects: how to use tools such as twitter to make an ethnographic study of your audience, what are the best practices to define the mission statement of your organisation, how to interact with your visitors and provide something really valuable for them. Even though the subject is museums, I believe that most of the presentation can be applied to any type of organization. The speaker attempts to provide clear recommendations to the Smithsonian auditorium but I feel looking at the Q&A section that it may take a while before anything happens in such a big institution. This should not stop the rest of us adopting her recommendations. You can find much more on her blog: http://museumtwo.blogspot.com/2009/05/everyones-smithsonian-video-slides-and.html

Any other good speech related to the museums strategies to engage their visitors?

• “Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.”

Somehow dubious video from the creator of the name ‘crowdsourcing’

• “Corporate Social Responsibility is a form of corporate self-regulation integrated into a business model. Essentially, CSR is the deliberate inclusion of public interest into corporate decision-making, and the honouring of a triple bottom line: People, Planet, Profit.”

CSR could be the way for big corporations to find a soul again after the economical black hole of the last months, and the revelation of their poor records on ethics.

• Corporate social responsibility is vital for business survival
• The Oxymoron of ‘Business Ethics’ Proves Its Worth
• Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): Simply Good Business?

Crowdsourcing relies on the principle that good business happens when the customer is listened. In fact, so much listened that he takes an active part in the company’s activity.

• Travel company invites clients on planning trips
• Is Crowdsourcing a Fad or a Foundational Element?

My argument is that those two trends go in two opposite directions on ethics. CSR is based on the assumption that corporations play a leading role in ethics, that they are the motor of new ethical practices. A corporate has a social responsibility which might be linked or not to the priorities of its customers. It is the responsibility of the management to drive an ethical business, not of the customers.

On the other hand, crowdsourcing could be seen as the last step to empty corporations of their substance. A corporation should be focused on its customers, so much focused it could maybe not have any other goals, any vision than to satisfy the needs of the market. The ethics of a corporation would then strictly be the ethics of its customers, nothing more, nothing less.

How much are those two trends concealable? Who should be responsible for business ethics, the customers or the management?

The World Mobile Congress

I was at the World Mobile Congress last week and I wondered, what are the key players in the mobile? Not that I don’t know already this industry, it is my day job. The most wealthy companies are for sure the network operators and the mobile manufacturers (e.g. Vodafone, Nokia). The ones getting the most attention from journalists are Apple, Google for example. But what about the customer, what is the most important part for him? And will it always be the same or does it change with the maturity of the industry?

Here are the categories that I identified at the congress, with illustrations from other industries:

-          Networks / Distributors: mobile operators such as Orange, Vodafone, Telefonica or T-Mobile. In the transport industry, networks are for example highways and rails. In the movie industry, they are the cinema chains like UGC. Without them, nothing is possible. They are the backbone of the industry in that respect.

-          Manufacturers: Nokia, HTC, Samsung, BlackBerry and others. The main manufacturers in the transport industry are car manufacturers. It is what the customer has physically in his hand, the most concrete part of the all thing. I also put in this category the technologists such as Gemalto, Intel or Goodyear.

-          Content providers: MSN, The Weather Channel or the New York Times. In the transport industry, maybe the radio you listen in your car. In Cinema, definitely the films. This category plays a central role in media related activities.

-          Service providers / applications: Nokia maps, Google mail, Twitter or Apple store. In the transport industry, timetables, in-flight first class services for example. In the cinema, maybe online movie ratings or the possibility to buy food before a movie.

-          Advertisers: If no one tells people that something is out there, it won’t be used by anyone. In that sense, communicators are central to any industry.

-          Countries and universities: Countries with their legal frameworks, education systems and structures for innovation can be viewed as important players. They enable an industry in the first place.

I did this rough classification very quickly and should put more thought in it, but you get the idea. Each of those categories could be considered as the central part of the industry. Actually, each actor of an industry is convinced he is the centre, as the industry could not live without him. What is required to classify the categories by importance is a set of values, for example:

-          If money is the value, the networks or manufacturers are at the core of the mobile industry

-          If innovation is the value, service providers are maybe at the core of the mobile industry

-          If information is the value, content providers win

So, at the end of the day, what you consider being the core of an industry depends of your values ,and there are no correct or bad answers. My next question is then, what are the values of let’s say the journalists, which in a way represent the preoccupations of people. Journalists at the World Mobile Congress were typically tech journalists or business journalists. I didn’t see any political / society journalists nor any art critics for example. Not necessary because there was nothing to say in those areas (impact of mobile in social activities, privacy protection, flash mobs,…) but because, today, people don’t think this is central in the way they use their mobile. I just wanted to highlight this observation to prove that things can always be different.

What is your opinion, what should be the corner stone of an industry?

the BBC

I just launched my new project, “curated matter” and defined its mission, vision and core values. I had the idea in March 2008 but it took months of passive reflection to come up with its final definition. The good thing about defining the mission of a venture beforehand is that you can then  easily understand what the goals and priorities are.

What interests me in defining a mission is that the final statement looks the same whatever the size of your project, or its nature. A mission statement should be as simple for a multibillion company than for a non-profit association of 5 people. This apparent simplicity is what makes the intellectual work so interesting. Here are some examples: the BBC, Coca-Cola, Starbucks coffee, HP. You can read more missions on WikiAnswers. It is not easy information to find though. I think it should be on the website of every organization, and I mean not a customer friendly version, the real missions.

The mission of curated matter sounds maybe a little too exoteric  and is not that clear, compare to the BBC for example. But I wanted something playful and exciting for the imagination.

To show how much a mission statement is important, here are some thoughts about the one of the BBC. I went to their tour last week, and even if it was at the end more for kids, it put me in the mood.

The BBC mission is “to enrich people’s lives with programmes and services that inform, educate and entertain.” No mention is made on which of the three aspects is more important: inform, educate or entertain. This leads to the recurrent debate on how much BBC should entertain. After all, private broadcasters do already entertain people. It remains that you can clearly see that the BBC portfolio strictly follows this mission: inform, educate and entertain.

The vision of the BBC is “to be the most creative organisation in the world.”. It seems to me a strange vision. Is it really what people want above all from the BBC? And is the BBC best placed to be the most creative, with its duty to inform and educate? Obviously,  that creativity is arguably important to inform and educate. And that the BBC without creativity is dead. But I’m still wondering what this vision actually means in terms of ambition and actions. I think this is eluding the central question of what is the most important to broadcast. Nobody could however deny that the BBC is genuinely trying to achieve this vision, with frequent new programs, some very ambitious in terms of creativity.

Then, the BBC values are listed. I just have one remark for the fun. It states “Trust is the foundation of the BBC: we are independent, impartial and honest” and that “Audiences are at the heart of everything we do.”. But putting audiences at the center, is that not a form of dependence? Some facts or programs might not please an audience but still be genuinely important. It is the dilemma between encouraging people to watch a program and remain impartial on what is shown, even if boring or disturbing. Again, the BBC’s values don’t provide any answers. Imagine for example what would happen if the second value was “Getting audiences knowledgeable and providing them with the most refined entertainment is at the heart of everything we do”.

I should say that most of those remarks are addressed in the Public Purposes of the BBC Trust. I would however question why they are not at the same level of importance than the BBC overall mission.

Any mission statements you would like to share? What are your thoughts on the mission, vision and values of the BBC?

But how to find solutions to problems such as the economy slow down, spreading illnesses, climate change? This is where creativity techniques can be used effectively, techniques which facilitate the emergence of creative solutions. Everybody agrees that today’s challenges cannot be resolved by tempered actions. They require innovation and radical change. Here are some creative techniques that have been applied during the forum.

Restating the problem

Resolving a problem is often about taking it at the right angle. A technique to find this angle is problem reformulation. To take a very simple example, ‘how do we stop children for making noise’ takes a very different shape if it is stated ‘how do we help children wait patiently’. Here are some reformulations proposed by the facilitator of the debate ‘Is emissions trading the carbon solution?’:

o   In the middle of this economical crisis, can carbon market still be the answer to tackle climate change?

o   How can we all, and people around the world, make sense of this very complicated issue?

o   Can we save ourselves from ourselves?

o   How do we encourage the cooperation of all nations to bring down carbon emissions?

o   What sort of financial incentives will attract all countries to get involved, and entrepreneurs to get involved?

o   What sort of technologies offers promises?

o   How do we persuade to innovate on behalf of a low carbon economy?

Each of those reformulations has very different answers. It is important not only to find creative solutions to a problem, but also to creatively reformulate the problem. Problems can even become opportunities using such techniques.

Notice that the facilitator revealed his personal belief that carbon trading was the solution, before even starting the debate. This narrows down considerably creative reformulations. It is a shame that the World Economic Forum and the World Social Forum cannot collaborate at least on some brainstorms. Creativity usually happens when confronting different personalities and ideas. It is understandable that not everyone agrees on a solution, but this should not stop us working together at understanding creative options.

Brainstorm

The brainstorm was animated by Maria Bartiromo (somehow related to Citigroup by the way). The goal was to understand how global economic deterioration happened. People where split in 20 tables, and had 30 minutes to debate the causes. Then, the results were shared and commented. It is a brainstorm in the sense that no idea or opinion was discarded and that everyone could express his opinion whatever his position. However, a proper brainstorm includes a second phase during which the ideas are listed and categorized. This brainstorm didn’t do anything else than letting its participants expressing their views, without any serious attempt to synthesis them. The job is thus half done and it looks more like a executive survey than really an initiative committed to encourage further action. But still, nice event, and leaders can always continue the discussions at their expensive social networking parties.

Idea labs

The forum also organized “Idea Labs“, new sessions designed in collaboration with universities, where ideas, trends and concepts are presented by intellectual and entrepreneurs. This encourages communication between experts, creativity on how technologies could be combined and intellectual cross pollination: trying to apply a concept, technique or solution from one field to another, even if remotely related. The Idea Labs seemed however very small compare to the other activities of the forum. They were apparently not very interactive either. They could have been followed by an exchange of ideas from world leaders of different backgrounds, so that momentum could be built. Right now, it looks like everyone is speaking to his own audience of experts, basically selling his technology. It looks more like lobbying than really trying to apply an expertise to creative debates.

Michael Cima on using electronics to improve health care management, earlier in the illness treatments.

Paul Fairchild on Stem cells researches

Transparency

Creativity is about sharing ideas, not being scared of expressing them, and not being scared of having them being challenged either. The more knowledge is available and debates are transparent, the more it is possible for everyone to play a constructive role in the process. All the presentations of Davos are on YouTube.

The 2009 World Economic Forum used creativity techniques that can facilitate the emergence of new solutions. But most of them were half executed. Davos has the choice to be either simply a forum where everyone can express his views and then go back home, or to be a true international facilitator, a leading event for those wanting to resolve the global challenges we face.

What is your opinion? What could be done in terms of creativity to resolve today’s global challenges? Has Davos any role to play in this process?