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A 116 page, 20,000 word Master of Business Administration (MBA) research project (136 pages including appendices) that proposes a framework for managing creativity and innovation through active research of 22% of the largest advertising agencies in London and critical evaluation of more than 120 sources of literature (including Harvard Business Review articles and Harvard Essentials). |
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This document is invaluable for a) the creativity and innovation consultant, leader, director or manager and b) the creative person, idea generator or innovator wishing to produce or improve tangible creative output. As the concepts are universal, this document applies to a variety of domains and industries, including human capital management, product development, organisational culture and structure management, management consultancy, intrapraneur and entrepreneur, think tanks, creative corporate strategy, business creativity etc. |
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Creativity and Innovation are often taught using airy-fairy, intangible, ungrounded, unscientific, non-useable, undefined, mysterious terminology and theories. To get a handle on it you need to talk in real, tangible, useable, measurable concepts to explore the twelve major themes that are common in all fields of creativity: |
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Powerpoint Presentation
Presentation A ready to go powerpoint presentation (with detailed notes) that is a companion to the MBA dissertation. Ideal for consultants, coaches, workshops, training, and management presentations. a) Fully editable. b) Contains 50 slides, 300+ bullet points. c) Divided into 4 sections : Contents, Theory, Data and Conclusions, Summary d) 59 pages of detailed notes e) Clearly identifiable set of notes for each set of slides f) Clearly identifiable notes for each bullet point within a slide g) Multiple academic and real life examples to form powerful arguments h) For and against theories for each argument i) Instantly apply your own design template (powerpoint function) j) Included with the MBA dissertation k) Covers all the topics discussed on this web site. |
Testimonials Lots of valuable information and easily communicated... Edward Zsolnay Like any form of public speaking, after the third presentation I sounded like an expert... Jane Forlaget Good presentations are about knowing your material and this does that... Hugh Botham I use it for 90 minute presentations and day long workshops... Eileen Johnson It is amazing how this topic touches everything... Sue Richmond We instantly started advertising it on our product lists... Rua Aires, Management Consultants More incise, relevant and, as you say, tangible than other information sources... Alan Brodie This provides a higher quality of knowledge than any workshop I have been to, and consequently more productive interactions in the workshop setting....Nigel Hall Very enlightening...Robert Stott |
Creativity and Innovation DIY Audit
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Creativity & Innovation DIY Audit A ready to go creativity and innovation quantitative sheet (5 pages) for DIY audits. Ideal for coaches, consultants, leaders and managers. a) Simply rate each process or practice on a scale of 0 to 10. Includes more than 150 practices and processes that sharpen your management of creativity and innovation. b) Divided into sections (organisational culture, structure, group structure, learning and development, motivation, knowledge management, radical versus incremental creativity, process, idea valuation and more). Ensure you are taking holisitic action. c) Find your zero ratings - processes or practices you are not considering or incorporating at all. d) Find strengths and weaknesses and target weaknesses for improvement. Compare and contrast strengths with weaknesses. Identify obstacles. e) Find contradictions. For example, respondents often provide a high value when asked if they intensely investigate a problem. But then answer low when queried about problem investigation practices. f) Focus leader behaviour. Do your managers know what they should be doing? g) Consistently rate yourself to monitor improvements. h) Ask others to rate you - staff, colleagues and clients - find discrepancies between how you perceive yourself and how others perceive you. i) Create an action plan to guide positive change. j) Benchmark exisiting practices, processes, attitudes and beliefs with focused one-on-one interviews. k) A companion to the MBA dissertation on Managing Creativity & Innovation.
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Testimonials We didn't realise how low we scored... Henderson Downing Targets weaknesses effectively...Charles Bennett Super tool...Shruti Patel We have knowledgeable, intelligent and competent managers who can use this as a guide... Billy Kay We're not half as good as we thought we were...Elena Scott Does what a consultant would do...Denby Richards The audit is good but you need to read the MBA dissertation to understand some of the terminology...Leonard Bridgeman
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Good Idea Generator
More than 300 techniques to help you generate a substantial pool of good ideas and help you problem solve...
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MBA research has revealed that all creativity and problem solving workshops use a variety of techniques to do essentially four things: a) unblock the mind, b) tap into tacit knowledge, c) trigger the mind into working at various cognitive levels and d) apply a) and b) and c) to the areas of problem identification and idea generation. Individuals and groups are given a set of mental and physical tasks or exercises designed to elicit ideas. Creativity and problem solving workshops can be useful: working in groups can produce a lot of laughter, the coordinator can help reduce the negative elements of group dynamics and personal psychology that hinder creativity but, most importantly, the coordinator forces you to think of ideas (extract tacit knowledge, form relationships) using various exercises. However, you can't attend a workshop everytime you need an idea, so this software contains more than 300 of those exercises, which can be performed alone on a single computer or in a group over a network. Each exercise requires only five ideas. Each exercise requires you to look at the problem or the solution in a different way. Each exercise is chosen randomly. Thus, only by performing five exercises, it is possible to quickly produce 25 ideas. By persisting through 50, 100, 200, 300 exercises, it is possible to generate a substantial idea pool. Research has revealed that by requiring five, short ideas and performing many, different exercises the mind is forced to frame-break and reduce path dependency; multiple areas of the subconscious are accessed to a significant depth in short bursts; the mind is tasked and stimulated at various cognitive levels; energy is conserved (intensely thinking of ideas can be tiring work). As it can be said with great confidence that simply being prolific produces good ideas, by completing 20, 50, 100, 150, 200, 300 or more exercises, you will greatly increase the chance of producing a quantity of quality ideas. Further, the more exercises you perform, the more unblocked and confident you become and the more fun and radical will be your ideas. The randomness of the exercises means that you can start again without fear of repetition. The variety of exercises means that any form of problem can be addressed or any type of idea can be generated - from thinking of a new brand name to saving your marriage to developing a character for a film script to coming up with new products to finding something original to say at your next business presentation. Even complex problems that require new knowledge and have practical impediments can be solved, usually by incrementally toying with various ideas until radical leaps are made. Apply these techniques to any problem at your convenience and never be stuck for a good idea again. Works on all Windows operating systems above 95; runs on a Mac with the appropriate Emulator.
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