They Have a Better Idea ... Do You?

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Professor of Human Development and Education, University of Chicago
Chicago, Illinois
miska@cicero.uchicago.edu

Dr. Ashley Montagu once wrote that your goal in life should be to die young -- as late as possible. The most creative people I know live by that maxim. They are as curious, engaged, and innocent as children. They keep asking questions, wrestling with interesting problems, looking at the world through an ever-changing lens.

How do they maintain such fresh perspectives? By refusing to do anything they don't want to do. That doesn't mean they never do unpleasant tasks. But they manage to transform even those tasks into something that comes closer to their interests. "I have worked every minute of my life," creative people can say. "And I never did a lick of work in my life." Both statements are true.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's most recent book is "Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention" (Harper Collins, 1996).

Judith Rich

Executive Vice President and Executive Creative Director, Ketchum Public
Relations Worldwide, Chicago, Illinois
judith.rich@ketchum.com

To encourage our staff and clients to solve their problems as creatively as possible, I usually offer these five tips:

1. Never give up on a good idea, even if it doesn't sell at first. When people resist innovation, it's usually because they need to trust more before they can commit.
2. Don't hurry creativity. Impatience is the enemy of innovation.
3. Be generous. Creativity is intensely personal. Those who offer you an idea are offering you a part of themselves.
4. Make creativity a mainstream activity. Respect it. Acknowledge its role in future growth. And don't let anybody dismiss creativity as soft.
5. Become a cheerleader for ideas. Give permission for people to pursue the new. People and companies always learn more from taking risks than from playing it safe.

Judith Rich won the Public Relations Society of America's Silver Anvil Award for her "Morris the 9-Lives Cat" campaign.

Paula Scher

Partner
Pentagram Design
New York, New York
scher@pentagram.com

Creativity requires a certain optimistic naïveté. You have to develop simple solutions to complex problems and ask, "Why not?" My best ideas are usually sparked by some innocent observation or comment the client made in the initial meeting. I've found that if I don't get an idea immediately thereafter it's because I have too much information or I've done similar projects too many times before -- and I have become jaded.

In my work, I always try to adopt the perspective of a first-time user. If I'm designing a package, a book, or a magazine, I approach it as if I've never heard of it before. If it's signage or an identity project, I approach it as if I were a foreigner and didn't speak the language.

The more I push myself into the position of a first-time user, the more likely I am to find a simple -- and unique -- solution. Maybe that's why my most creative work seems to be on projects where I'm inexperienced and uniquely unqualified for the job.

Paula Scher created the graphics for the hit Broadway musical "Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk" and redesigned the "New York Times Magazine."

Theresa Brelsford

Deputy Associate Commissioner
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
Washington, DC
tbrels@uspto.gov

Talk about an unlikely place to find creativity: a 200-year-old government agency steeped in a "we've always done it this way" attitude. But by designing an environment where people are free to express their ideas and by building confidence that good ideas will prompt action, creativity is exactly what we get.

A few years ago, our senior leadership realized it was time to find dramatically new and different ways to manage the process of granting patents. Rather than create a top-down change program, we allowed more than 125 people to go "off the line" two days a week for several months. This unprecedented commitment to innovation helped people lose their inhibitions. Jacket-and-tie bureaucrats acted out skits to describe how a new patent process might work. Old-school managers generated new-wave ideas about change.

The result was a radical redesign of the process -- one that slashes cycle times, reduces how many times a file is "touched" from 67 to 8, and supports electronic patent applications. All thanks to the creativity of people who always did it the old way!

Theresa Brelsford led the Patent Office's successful effort to win the 1995 Department of Commerce Customer Service Excellence Award.