Creativity, Dilbert and corporate madness
Charles Bukowski was a misogynist alcoholic deadbeat who knew how to write a poem. In the movie of the cult American writer’s life, he wins a writer’s fellowship and is given a cubicle that eerily prefigures the white, antiseptic corporate prisons in Scott Adams’ Dilbert cartoon. Confined in his cubicle, Bukowski is given some blank sheets of paper and virtually told to write. Instead, he screws up balls of paper, throws them at the other fellowship winners and is escorted from the premises.
Nursing creativity isn’t a matter of luxurious surroundings (though sometimes they can help), outwardbound days (where some are alienated by the pretence) or even budget. Sometimes, the best ideas emerge from people with no budget and no time but they are most likely to emerge from an organisation with a culture of innovation.
Effectively self-employed, poets define their own corporate culture as their livelihood depends on creativity. This is not to say creative types should be able to do whatever they want. In New Yorker magazine (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/03/14/110314fa_fact_fey), comedienne and writer Tina Fey (most famous for her impersonation of Republican politico Sarah Palin) points out that, even on a TV show like Saturday Night Live, being successful can be about “discouraging creativity” if it’s inappropriate, irrelevant or coming from the wrong source (in her case the actors). There are no formulas which is why creativity and innovation are the subject of so many books, lectures and articles.
Often, there is a mundane, but deadly mismatch between strategy and ideas. Yet some ideas are so good they should change the strategy. As Xerox should have realised when it developed such novelties as the computer mouse and the graphical user interface and virtually gave them away.