People Being Creative

Key Insight

To sustain corporate innovation, a company must foster creativity among all its people, rejecting the common belief that creativity is an innate gift reserved for a select few. Creativity is an inherent human capacity that organizations must believe in and actively help employees develop. This includes providing educational training and seminars on the creative process, as practiced by NIKE, and distributing educational materials like books on personal creativity. Companies can also formulate their own 'Innovation Manifesto,' a concise statement outlining core principles such as experimenting first, listening to all ideas, and aiming for a specific percentage of revenue from new products within five years.

Cultivating creativity involves actively seeking and nurturing 'unusual people'—individuals with diverse backgrounds, demonstrated initiative, and a knack for unconventional problem-solving, even if their resumes appear non-traditional, like Bill Wraith, who developed innovative financial securities by approaching problems naively. Tolerating sometimes eccentric or non-conformist behavior from these creative talents is essential, as exemplified by Tom Peters at McKinsey or an engineer at Sun Microsystems. As companies expand, they must deliberately hire 'wild ducks' to counteract the natural tendency to attract stability-focused personnel. While diversity of talent is critical for generating creative insights, it must be balanced with a strong alignment of core values.

A powerful source of innovation stems from hiring individuals who 'don't know much' or maintain a naive perspective, as conventional wisdom can significantly impede new ideas. Benjamin Franklin's discoveries in electricity, for instance, benefited from his amateur approach, and Bill Wraith intentionally avoided traditional methods to solve complex financial problems. Balancing experienced experts with fresh, unconstrained minds is key. Furthermore, design talent—encompassing both graphic and product designers—is an often-underutilized resource capable of driving significant differentiation. Integrating designers early in the product development cycle, not merely for aesthetic enhancements, can infuse elegance, beauty, and superior function into products across all industries, permeating every aspect of the company's operations.