CONTEXT MODIFYING


CLASS
A
PHASE
Idea generation, Predisposition
APPLICATION FIELDS
Various
ASSUMPTIONS
The group is expected to be heterogeneous. Participants are allowed to change their work environment.
PROS
  • It is a technique suited to be used in groups
  • It is easy to be applied
  • It does not require an high level of cohesion of the creative group
  • It is not necessary a specific preliminary training of the team
CONS
  • It could be ineffective due to the uneasiness of juniors to deal with seniors
  • It isn’t easy to convince external managers to participate
  • The most useful sub-technique is Social Context Modifying; other sub-technique could be scarcely effective
DESCRIPTION
The Context Modifying technique could be applied successfully both in the idea generation phase and in predisposition to enhance creativity inside the company.
There are four different ways (sub-techniques) to modify the context:

1. Social Context Modifying;
2. Physical Context Modifying;
3. Reversed Thinking;
4. Zoom in – Zoom out.

1. Social Context Modifying

Social Context Modifying consists in changing the social environment, where the creative dialogue takes place. For instance, it can be built an effective mix of senior and junior managers, researchers and commercial staff, Europeans and Americans, in order to improve the productivity of the meetings (given the assumption that each participant has carried out the same training phases).
Some authors, such as Robert Sutton (2002), retain that the promotion of creativity as daily attitude inside the firm assumes the realization of a proper work environment. This can be achieved by recurring to the Social Context Modifying technique, it is to say by creating the most heterogeneous as possible mix of personnel. This means, for example, to engage managers from other companies and empower them with the authority and the resources to disrupt the existing outdated models; or it means, for instance, to involve consultants in order to introduce effective best practices borrowed from other companies; or to encourage employees to use their critical sense when they receive an order from their superior, even daring to refuse it, if necessary. It is also important to engage people hard to conform to the company’s organizational code of conduct, since their resistance is due, generally, to their critical sense or to their high self estimate.
It should be avoided then to penalize these employees for their particular attitude, protecting them from the pressures they receive to conform to business culture and placing them near colleagues quicker to learn the organizational code, so that they can complement each other. This concept of complementarity concerns also:

  • age: younger employees should be placed near senior colleagues in order to have a mutual exchange of knowledge
  • cultural training of employees, avoiding to engage people having the same cultural background
  • geographical provenance, avoiding also in this case to have the same one.

The aim is always to build an heterogeneous creative group.
In addition to this, a chance should be given also to those with whom you may feel uncomfortably, because when engaging only candidates conforming with the exemplar-employee stereotype the risk is to preclude possible sources of variety.
Moreover, it is important to create a proper “mistake culture”, to allow resources and fix high expectations, to give to employees a wide autonomy in realizing their own projects and ideas and above all to avoid to look back to past successes.
This all to induce employees to take action, since creativity is function of quantity of work. On one hand, therefore, inactivity should be punished, while on the other hand both success and failures must be rewarded with any sort of incentive. Indeed, people having made casual mistakes (not due to their own fault) should be listen to; the whole group should reflect on these mistakes so that everyone could learn from them. Of course, those committing always the same mistake should not be rewarded. Finally, it is possible also to learn from the mistakes of other companies: this is cheaper and less harming.

2. Physical Context Modifying

According to some authors, the working Physical Context Modifying can lead to a lot of advantages: to this purpose, Weiss W.H. (2002) states that making some modifications to the office or even choosing a different place where to concentrate on daily activities (and not only on the creative process) can generate, unblock or trigger new stimuli.

3. Reversed Thinking

Reversed Thinking is a method enabling to change the mental attitude when trying to solve a problem. This easy to be used and also very effective technique consists in thinking exactly the opposite of what is commonly thought by the rest of the group in a precise moment (this approach is also called "turn round the question"). "If you think that a small molecule is needed to produce a new medicine, try also a big one. After all, it is not always possible to foresee what is going to happen." (Foster & Kaplan, 2001) The use of Reversed Thinking can contribute to the creation of an atmosphere of game and amusement, these constituting an important requirement for ideas generation. To this purpose, Robert Root-Bernstein, author of "Sparks of Genius", states that the game let emerge feelings, emotions, amusement, from which creative intuitions may stem, transforming a really normal person in an inventor.

4. Zoom in – Zoom out.

An alternative to Reversed Thinking is the Zoom in - Zoom out approach. The Zoom-in phase reveals the minimal details of each element of the game as well as the short term trends. On the other hand, the Zoom-out phase shows the relationships among the different components and explains also how these change in the long term. By setting against the two perspectives generated by the Zoom-in and by the Zoom-out it is possible to obtain innovative solutions.

REFERENCES
  • Foster R.N., Kaplan S., Creative Destruction: Why Companies That Are Built to Last Underperform the Market – and How to Successfully Transform Them, Currency Doubleday, 2001.
  • Sutton R.I., Weird Ideas that Work. 111/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation, New York, The Free Press, 2002.

  • Weiss R.P., How to Foster Creativity at Work, Training & Development, Vol. 55, n. 2, 2001, pp. 61-66.

  • Weiss W.H., Demonstrating Creativity and Innovation, Supervision, Vol. 63, n. 3, 2002, pp. 6-10.