Creativity is a slippery concept. It’s hard to define. It changes in time. And there is always lots of disagreement as to its essence. But you have to start somewhere if you want to attempt a definition, and this is certainly the prelude to attempting to measure it, at least in corporations.
This came to me over a very long period of time. 15 years to be exact. But I am certain that there are some core elements that determine whether or not creativity is present, and whether or not it will turn into innovation in a corporate environment. After working with companies around the world for so long, I finally decided to put my hypothesis to the test. Hence, the birth of an innovation questionnaire that measured aspects of emotional intelligence, attitude, influencing, impression management, employee engagement and, of course, skilled thinking techniques.
And guess what we found? That these core elements, when present in corporations, will predict with a good degree of accuracy, whether or not a company has the ability to turn its latent creativity into innovation.
We’ve normed the instrument on more than 600 people so far and thanks to the great work with the doctoral department at the University of Colorado, we can show its validity and reliability.
Stay tuned. I’ll be back at a later time to share with you some of our case studies.
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