Amon Sa­ba Saakana

Cre­ativ­i­ty is one of the most cel­e­brat­ed traits of our so­ci­ety but per­haps one of the least lever­aged. In busi­ness, cre­ativ­i­ty is char­ac­terised by the abil­i­ty to per­ceive the en­vi­ron­ment in new ways, to un­cov­er hid­den pat­terns, to con­nect seem­ing­ly un­re­lat­ed phe­nom­e­na and to con­ceive rel­e­vant so­lu­tions.

How­ev­er, a spark of cre­ative ge­nius is on­ly valu­able to an or­gan­i­sa­tion when it is trans­lat­ed in­to a process that can be repli­cat­ed and sus­tained. This trans­la­tion from idea to sus­tain­able process is the essence of in­no­va­tion. We can de­fine in­no­va­tion as the abil­i­ty to cre­ate, repli­cate and sus­tain ap­proach­es, process­es and prod­ucts that are orig­i­nal, unique or nov­el.

The crit­i­cal role of cre­ativ­i­ty and in­no­va­tion at all lev­els of busi­ness means that ex­ec­u­tives have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to lead and stim­u­late in­no­v­a­tive think­ing across the en­tire en­ter­prise. Share­hold­ers, em­ploy­ees and cus­tomers re­ly on cor­po­rate lead­er­ship to cre­ate a work en­vi­ron­ment that brings out the best of avail­able hu­man re­sources to dri­ve busi­ness pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and prof­itabil­i­ty.

Ed­u­cat­ing so­ci­ety

Yet, in many or­gan­i­sa­tions, lead­ers strug­gle to cre­ate an en­vi­ron­ment that ef­fec­tive­ly taps the la­tent cre­ative ca­pac­i­ty of its hu­man re­source pool. Many are dis­cov­er­ing that aca­d­e­m­ic cours­es in in­no­va­tion, in­vest­ments in knowl­edge man­age­ment and col­lab­o­ra­tion sys­tems, and sem­i­nars in crit­i­cal think­ing do not an in­no­v­a­tive or­gan­i­sa­tion cre­ate.

It is an open se­cret that our school sys­tems pro­duces grad­u­ates who are loaded with in­for­ma­tion, but who are woe­ful­ly un­der­pre­pared for the re­al­i­ties of life and the world of work. It is easy to point the fin­ger and say that our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem has failed us. In­deed, in many re­spects, it has. How­ev­er, fail­ure of the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem is an in­dict­ment of our en­tire so­ci­ety. True ed­u­ca­tion is broad­er than for­mal school­ing. It is the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of all of so­ci­ety. There­fore, we have a col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ad­dress the glar­ing de­fi­cien­cies.

If cre­ativ­i­ty and in­no­va­tion are core com­pe­ten­cies for mod­ern lead­ers, man­agers and pro­fes­sion­al staff, is suf­fi­cient at­ten­tion be­ing placed on en­sur­ing that these com­pe­ten­cies are de­vel­oped in a de­lib­er­ate way?A new ap­proach is need­ed. We need to teach peo­ple how to per­ceive the world in new ways, to find hid­den pat­terns, to make con­nec­tions be­tween seem­ing­ly un­re­lat­ed phe­nom­e­na, to chal­lenge the sta­tus quo and to of­fer so­lu­tions.

Sig­nif­i­cant and nec­es­sary in­vest­ment is be­ing made in the lo­cal ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor. Now cre­ative strate­gies and in­no­v­a­tive ap­proach­es must be ap­plied to en­sur­ing that the end prod­uct is con­sis­tent with our de­vel­op­ment goals.

De­moc­ra­tis­ing idea gen­er­a­tion

In­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy in­no­va­tions play a crit­i­cal role in cre­at­ing an in­no­va­tion-dri­ven so­ci­ety. The In­ter­net, in par­tic­u­lar, has been in­stru­men­tal in blast­ing open bar­ri­ers to in­for­ma­tion, fa­cil­i­tat­ing new col­lab­o­ra­tive in­ter­ac­tions and pro­vid­ing un­prece­dent­ed ac­cess to new mar­kets and op­por­tu­ni­ties. It al­lows more busi­ness­es, or­gan­i­sa­tions and in­di­vid­u­als to go from con­cept to tan­gi­ble prod­ucts and has opened the door to a new era of glob­al in­no­va­tion.

It has al­so opened the door to the de­moc­ra­ti­sa­tion of idea gen­er­a­tion with­in or­gan­i­sa­tions. This presents se­vere chal­lenges to the tra­di­tion­al hi­er­ar­chi­cal mod­el of busi­ness lead­er­ship and in­val­i­dates rigid ap­proach­es to or­gan­i­sa­tion­al re­la­tion­ships and de­ci­sion mak­ing chan­nels. Or­gan­i­sa­tions who ig­nore the mas­sive cul­tur­al shifts, typ­i­fied by In­ter­net-based so­cial net­work­ing and col­lab­o­ra­tion mod­els, do so at their own per­il.

Some­times, busi­ness lead­ers who rou­tine­ly use tech­nol­o­gy to con­nect with friends and fam­i­ly, do not per­ceive the val­ue of us­ing the same tools to forge new con­nec­tions and em­pow­er in­di­vid­u­als at all tiers of an or­gan­i­sa­tion and across in­dus­try.

Valu­ing peo­ple

We have to put greater at­ten­tion and in­vest­ment to how we en­gage and de­vel­op peo­ple with­in our or­gan­i­sa­tions. We al­so have to cre­ate sys­tems and op­por­tu­ni­ties to en­cour­age and re­ceive their opin­ions, whether con­trary or com­ple­men­tary. A lot of times it is staff, not ex­ter­nal con­sul­tants, who have the best ideas for solv­ing cor­po­rate prob­lems and cre­at­ing new op­por­tu­ni­ties.

If we re­al­ly want to see cre­ativ­i­ty chan­neled in­to new, in­no­v­a­tive en­deav­ours; if we se­ri­ous­ly want the pow­er of in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy lever­aged to cre­ate new so­cioe­co­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties; then we have to put the spot­light on peo­ple.

To tap this ca­pac­i­ty, man­age­ment and cor­po­rate lead­er­ship must recog­nise the val­ue of peo­ple at every lev­el of our or­gan­i­sa­tions. But lead­ers are peo­ple too, and they come with their own set of par­a­digms which gov­ern or­gan­i­sa­tion­al pur­suits and shapes cor­po­rate val­ues. These mind­sets pre­scribe both lead­er­ship thought and fol­low­er re­sponse.

Lead­er­ship de­fines the arc join­ing a great new idea to its even­tu­al and sus­tained man­i­fes­ta­tion. So if we have to in­vest in in­no­va­tion, we have to in­vest in lead­er­ship. At the wider so­cial lev­el, to in­vest in the in­no­va­tion mind­set we have to in­vest in in­still­ing val­ues, morals and eth­i­cal stan­dards that build a sense of in­di­vid­ual con­fi­dence and cor­po­rate re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. Cre­ativ­i­ty has to be di­rect­ed to­ward sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment.

If we fo­cus our in­vest­ment on de­vel­op­ing our peo­ple cor­rect­ly, the in­no­va­tion will flow.

Bevil Wood­ing is the chief knowl­edge of­fi­cer at Con­gress WBN, an in­ter­na­tion­al non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion and an In­ter­net strate­gist with US-re­search firm, Pack­et Clear­ing House. He is al­so the founder of Bright­Path Foun­da­tion, cre­at­ing Caribbean-fo­cused dig­i­tal con­tent, apps and train­ing pro­grammes.

Twit­ter: @bevil­wood­ing

Face­book:face­book.com/bevil­wood­ing

The busi­ness ed­u­ca­tion link

The World Busi­ness Coun­cil for Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment re­cent­ly is­sued a re­port en­cour­ag­ing busi­ness to think dif­fer­ent­ly about the role they can play in sup­port­ing growth with­in de­vel­op­ing economies.

It high­lights that by con­tribut­ing across a range of de­vel­op­ment fo­cus ar­eas, busi­ness­es can­not on­ly aid de­vel­op­ment, but do so in a way that can boost their own prof­itabil­i­ty.

For every or­gan­i­sa­tion, the abil­i­ty to at­tract and de­vel­op skills is cru­cial. Any ini­tia­tive that helps em­ploy­ers un­der­stand the qual­i­fi­ca­tions and ap­pren­tice­ships that con­sti­tute the en­try routes in­to their sec­tor, should be a top pri­or­i­ty.

Hav­ing a re­la­tion­ship with lo­cal schools and ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing in­sti­tu­tions can give busi­ness­es ac­cess to fresh tal­ent. At the same time, it sparks a new sense of pos­si­bil­i­ty and op­por­tu­ni­ty in young minds.

Ed­u­ca­tion part­ner­ship pro­grammes should fo­cus on de­vel­op­ing the stu­dents' gen­er­al and sub­ject-spe­cif­ic aca­d­e­m­ic com­pe­ten­cies as well as their per­son­al, or­gan­i­sa­tion­al and in­ter-cul­tur­al com­pe­ten­cies. It is im­por­tant that these val­ues are recog­nised and val­ued by the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

Such pro­grammes can help busi­ness­es en­hance how cours­es, which ul­ti­mate­ly ben­e­fit their in­dus­try, are de­liv­ered. Sec­ondary and ter­tiary-lev­el in­sti­tu­tions should draw on the ex­pe­ri­ence of alum­ni as well as in­dus­try stake­hold­ers when de­vel­op­ing new cur­ricu­lum or dur­ing ma­jor re­vi­sions of cur­rent pro­grammes.

Or­gan­i­sa­tions can then play a more di­rect and strate­gic role in en­sur­ing those en­ter­ing the sec­tor are equipped with the rel­e­vant skills and knowl­edge re­quired.