The creative process, innovation and idea development

[[R-COM]Darkpowder]

The creative process, innovation and idea development.

The creative process, like the teams made to see the creative process continue is constantly under a state of constant change.
In any team there are pressures and different directions the teams are moving in.

I discuss here some ideas, which are intentionally kept simple. If anyone wants a more complex explanation i can do so, but for those with more interest please go and read about new business models, such as the high-tech industries such as google who adopt unique management and office environments as well as the field of organisational psychology.

These ideas are by no means revolutionary but may prove useful for anyone working in a creative industry or in a creative role as a hobby. They may prove useful as a talking point, but are by no means a definitive professional level organisational yardstick.

Things to consider with creative teams.


- Participants are protective of their ideas, ideas can get proper consideration by being taken on by technical teams impartially and assessed away from the person who came up with the idea. Formal reports and testing to backup conclusions of the assessing teams to avoid personality reasons why ideas are passed, or rejected.

- New members of the team will arrive and present ideas which could be "short-sighted and wouldn't work" or have ideas which replace and circumvent ideas held, or concepts defended by long standing members of the team. However considering an idea to be "short sighted or wouldn't work" is a value judgement, and without testing only serves to make decisions on ideas on "gut instinct", "intuition" or "just trust me it won't work". Until idea is formally proven in concept it should not be discarded or included arbitrarily.


- Teams need leadership who are focussed on a: the customer, the recipient of the creative idea. b: the cost and time constraints of the creative process, and c: to remember the founding principles of the creative process or the service it is expected to achieve. Leadership needs to be hands off enough to avoid micro management, instead setting goals when needed and putting in place team leaders with clear objectives so these team leaders can more closely manage some members of the team.


- Innovation and out of the box thinking. This concept implies that some concepts are way beyond the scope of the current project but their value is seen in part. In these instances management of the main organisation should maintain supervision of this research and development arm. For example your creative process is redesigning and improving on the classic alarm clock teas-maid that makes tea for you and wakes you up just as its ready in the morning. When someone comes along and makes an addition that makes bacon for you too at the same time, it gets designed and integrated before long. However when someone comes up with an idea, that it will logon and re-order bacon from the internet, or have the bacon scanned by an optical sensor for perfect non-burnt results then this is the job of the research and development team.

Such an idea may be great, and popular but it may be too expensive or time consuming, or perhaps it will overshadow the current product line that needs to be sold. These ideas continue to be developed under the umbrella of the main organisation, the benefit being that the main conventional designers contributing to the main project can think a bit wider and contribute to this research team from time to time.

NEXT TIME: ONLINE and physically distant teams and their challenges.....

Lets hear peoples opinion on the creative process, be it programming, artistic design, or academic study, i'm sure those interested in military strategy can chime in too.