Stunning news (at least for me) broke in the spring when the largest IBM CEO survey ever identified "Creativity" as the "single most important leadership competency." In a business world that loves to overuse the word "Innovation" (most often defined as "applied creativity") but shies away from the more personal "C" word, creativity itself was heralded like never before, as I summarized previously. Now you can read the full report, called "Capitalizing on Complexity," and even access an interactive version by clicking on the graphic on the right. "CEOs now realize that creativity trumps other leadership characteristics," states the report. "Creative leaders are comfortable with ambiguity and experimentation. To connect with and inspire a new generation, they lead and interact in entirely new ways."In July, Newsweek weighed in with a cover story called "The Creativity Crisis," which explored new research that has found that creativity test scores have declined since 1990 in the United States. The authors note that other countries are making creative development more of a national priority, with the European Union actually designated 2009 as the "European Year of Creativity and Innovation." "While our creativity scores decline unchecked," write authors Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, "the current national strategy for creativity consists of little more than praying for a Greek muse to drop by our houses. The problems we face now, and in the future, simply demand that we do more than just hope for inspiration to strike." You can read the story and hear a fascinating radio interview about Torrance creativity tests, schools and adult creativity myths here, and can experience your own creativity test here.
Both of these headlines are calls for action, and one new source of inspiration comes from Steven Johnson, whose subtitle alone in his new book "Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation," makes its release a worthy event this month. While his book takes a wide-lens and historical approach to human innovation, he shared some of his more contemporary conclusions about creativity in the workplace in this interview with Salon.com yesterday. "The problem," he says, "is that most traditional companies...talk a big game about innovation and making their workforce more creative" but do very little to change the culture or allow for ideas to be nurtured in the normal structure of daily work. He argues for "innovation time off"--like the "20% passion time" Google allows for employees to work on what they wish--so that "you're always spending a little bit of your time working on something weird that's not part of the official plan," a "permanent track of hunches and half-baked ideas that runs alongside the regular work-week with its immediate deadlines and fixed concepts." Yes.A local upcoming highlight here in Chicago local inspiration is the always entertaining and eye-opening Chicago Innovation Awards, scheduled for November 1, which honors our region's most innovative new products and services. If you live here, rush to reserve a free ticket (this link should work) and come join me as we see some positive examples of how humans are demonstrating the #1 leadership competency and combatting the creativity crisis as best we can during this time in our natural history...