Developing creative minds
A clear head, a deep heart, and thick skin will help raise your creativity
Creativity is to come up with ideas that are both useful and novel.
A clear head helps both ration and meet energies, and subsequently, helps think through issues for longer time frames, which is fundamental for complex critical thinking. Emotions assume a significant job in critical thinking, for you should feel about the issue and not simply consider everything. Also, one should not be affected by others opinion
Opinion | Innovation is not enough to sell a product, timing matters as well
Innovation is an invention commercialized, and keeping in mind that need can trigger an innovation, the development sees the light of the day just when the empowering influences go along. The key isn’t the amount of a need that exists on the lookout and for how long, the significant condition is the readiness of the components that make the arrangement conceivable.
Opinion | Why selling an idea to the boss or investor needs political skills
The winning idea is not the best but is the one that is the most acceptable. The survival of the most acceptable idea and not the best one is a logical extension of Darwinian principles to the sphere of innovation- the play out of the selfish gene in the corporate milieu. To make the idea adequate:
1. Sell the problem first
Start by making the gravity of the difficult felt. Start with the issue and take it to the degree of an existential need, and afterward, your clients will probably look for the arrangement
2. Never take an idea directly to your boss
Take it to your companions, all things being equal. Their input will assist you with refining your thought
3. Include all stakeholders
Basic partners can represent the deciding moment of your advancement, and frequently unpredictably.
Innovation is a landmine prompting a gold mine. Figure out how to be politically keen.
Opinion | why our love for jugaad can backfire
Jugaad is a low-cost solution that uses design thinking. These are a band-aid for continuing the show. But it should not be replaced as a permanent solution. These jugaad doesn’t have the scope of improvisation as they are meant for short term fulfillment of goals.
For creative solutions, slow and deliberate thinking is the key
The two types of thinking as classified by the Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman are type-1 thinking which means thinking fast whereas type-2 thinking is slow and deliberate. In the first type of thinking the problem solver might value quality over quantity and might settle for the first few ideas which are the most non-creative ones. In type-2 thinking the problem solver invests most of his time in thinking about the problem and as we all know that the fully understood problem is half solved and also, in this case, the quantity leads to quality.
What the arts and sciences bring to India’s innovation table
The culture of the west allowed students to take multi-disciplinary courses that allowed the cross-pollination of ideas whereas in India there are no such movements between science, arts, and commerce which hinders their holistic development. Also, with multi-disciplinary courses, students will get a chance to think from their hands which is one of the core aspects of creative thinking. Risk-taking abilities that enhance creative thinking is not much praised in India though the culture is shifting still people are afraid to take multiple entry-exit options.
How to hire creative people, fix problems in a crisis
An individual who sharpens different affiliations is more inventive than an individual who distinguishes life in restricted measurements. The different affiliations in life convert into being a T-molded character at work. A T-molded individual has huge profundity in a topic alongside a capacity to identify with a few different spaces. The stem of the “T” speaks to ability, while the bar shows sympathy. Significant thoughts are conceived at the convergence of orders since they should show both utility, which ordinarily is grounded in the profundity of control, and oddity, which regularly comes from across disciplines.
To fight the coronavirus spread, give artificial intelligence a chance
We all know the use of AI at the battlefront and exactly and precisely it has helped the US military in defining the exactness of the attacks. With this pandemic the companies especially tech-savvy companies should use this period as an opportunity to create better usage of AI to help people in fighting with this pandemic.
Get SHUBHAM PUJHAR’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
It’s not the people but the routines that make up a company’s work culture
Robust routines impact company culture more than innovative talent
We know the importance that habits play in our daily life. An individual’s development is much dependent on the habits of the person. Similar are the routines of an organization. They are mostly subconscious, largely time-saving, and highly sticky. With time the routines become robust. Culture, then, is not so much a manifestation of people as much as that of routines. Innovation is just one of the outcomes of the culture that is adopted by them. We overlook the ways things are done in big organizations. In a big company’s wrong hires are bound to happen, robust routines can only substitute for not-so-great talent. The greatest contribution of CEOs and founders is often in creating routines that shape behavior for a long time to come.
How being bored out of your mind can make you more creative
The Psychology of Optimal Experience states that a person is in the best state of creation when she’s in the state where the challenge offered by her task requires certain skills which in turn matches with her skills. When the challenge is greater anxiety creeps in, whereas if the challenge doesn’t consume the skills boredom occurs. People fear boredom, rather than alone time, i.e. being electronically disconnected. So there is not enough challenge given to available skill. The “my time” is extremely required for creativity, along with prioritizing things.
Opinion | Asymmetric incentives have the power to push for innovation
Fostering an enduring culture is the most crucial job of a leader; the questions that it leads to is who, how, and why? The 3 possible levers of these questions are — talent, routines, and incentives. Influential managers marshal scarce resources to deliver sustainable performance by giving incentives, more specifically, asymmetric incentives. When there is a requirement of cultural transformation in innovation, the intent is to preserve the routines along with changing those through experiment. It’s the incentives that play a greater role than the people who are involved or the jobs they do.
Opinion | Open innovation can solve problems of the future
Earlier companies like AT & T, Xerox used to have an insular approach towards managing innovation but that has now developed towards giving rise to Open innovation where the focal organization is the orchestrator, working with various entities to solicit ideas, talent, and capital, rallying the outcome in a collaborative manner. Eg: Cisco, NASA, Dell, PepsiCo, Nike, and Novartis have proved that lower spending on internal R&D can be complemented with a networked approach towards innovation.
Several difficulties faced in the open model are — privacy, value appropriation, intellectual property management, and designing contracts which make companies shrink back to earlier methods adopted. But blockchain technology could help to overcome the same and manage the intellectual property with visibility of ownership. Crowdsourcing models such as Nine Sigma and Yet2.com, connect seekers with solvers, involving the transfer of intellectual property and payment of cash.
Value appropriation can be done via smart contacts which are automated computer programs that carry out the terms of a contract and it's easy to trace the value-added hence providing a more participative approach to innovation.
For innovation in the office, cut your team some slack
Innovation comes with enabling employees to try new stuff, offering them critical resources and time. Unless the leadership appropriates resources for such efforts, most employees would not even venture into risky bets. The need to cut some slack for employees to venture into risky bets and provide support to their ideas, give them some time and back off and allow them to make mistakes as many companies have benefited from the same. If done so people will try new things and if not nobody will have the courage to venture out into a risky zone.
Why you need to break up with your pattern of sameness to survive the AI age
Humans are left with Creativity and empathy when compared with machines. Both go hand in hand and create an impact — creativity without empathy is a false start, and empathy without creativity is a dead end.
Some other ways by which you can stay ahead of others and machines, and create a richer life.
Press the play button: Pack your life with multiple activities, pick up hobbies and invest in them which could offer self-confidence, perspectives, and empathy.
Try to ignore stuff: Ignore information, situations or, even, individuals whom you can’t meaningfully learn from or influence try to be not distracted and focus on fewer things at a time.
Give listening to a chance: Listening is core to empathy and creativity because you don’t just listen to the words but go deep and understand the meaning to be able to truly appreciate the intent. Remove judgment/ biases and adopt the 1:5 rule
Break patterns before it breaks you
Opinion | The heady cocktail of creativity and cognitive bias in today’s workplace
There are five cognitive biases that hurt organizational innovation the most: fundamental attribution error, sunk-cost fallacy, confirmation bias, groupthink, and the bandwagon effect.
The cost of narrow vision: We put failures on individuals and do not own up mistakes but by this, we cannot create anything worthwhile
Sunk-cost fallacy: continue to escalate the commitment in the face of not-so-promising results, you are falling for the sunk-cost fallacy
Confirmation bias: when you tend to seek, receive, filter, interpret and adjudge incoming information that suits your preconceived notions or hypothesis
Groupthink: where all follow one dominant voice and individual ideas are not so much entertained
Bandwagon effect: a psychological phenomenon in which people do something primarily because other people are doing it, regardless of their own beliefs, which they may ignore or override.
