Unleash your employees’ hidden talent for innovationand creativity―the key to organizational success! For any organization competing today, nothing is more important than building teams ofcreative thinkers and problem solvers. With practical, simple-to-implement leadershiptechniques, Manager’s Guide to Fostering Innovation and Creativity in Teams explains howyou can Create an environment that gets people thinking creatively - Align teams to work toward creative, original solutions - Lead the charge toward a newly innovative organization - Build a self-sustaining culture of innovation Use Manager’s Guide to Fostering Innovation and Creativity in Teams to generate betterbusiness ideas, create a more compelling workplace, and lead your company well into thetwenty-first century. Briefcase Books, written specifically for today’s busy manager, feature eye-catching icons, checklists,and sidebars to guide managers step-by-step through everyday workplace situations. Look for theseinnovative design features to help you navigate through each page: Clear definitions of key terms, concepts, and jargon - Tactics and strategies for driving innovation and creativity within teams and organizations - Insider tips for getting the most innovative and creative thinking from your teams - Practical advice for building creative teams - Warning signs when creating teams focused on innovation and creativity - Stories and insights from the experiences of others - Specific creative-thinking procedures, tactics, and hands-on techniques Charles Prather, Ph.D. , is president of Bottom Line Innovation Associates, Inc., a firm that helps organizations develop innovation as a core competency. Charles Prather, Ph.D. , ispresident of Bottom Line Innovation Associates, Inc.,a firm that helps organizations develop innovation asa core competency. Manager's Guide to Fostering Innovation and Creativity in Teams By Charles Prather The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Copyright © 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-07-162797-9 Contents Preface1. The Innovative Organization2. Innovation 1013. Creative Thinking4. Process of Innovative Problem Solving5. Developing a Challenge Statement6. Defining the Right Problem7. Brainstorming to Empty the Box8. Thinking Out of the Box: Breaking Patterns9. Convergence and Implementation10. Setting the Climate for Innovation11. Leading Innovation in Teams12. Getting the Right People into the Right Jobs13. Coaching for InnovationIndex Excerpt CHAPTER 1 The Innovative Organization When the DuPont Center for Creativity and Innovation was created, we needed amodel on which to structure our offerings. Having been a manager of research anddevelopment for some 18 years, I drew from my personal experience about theenvironmental factors that help innovation and the ones that can quash it. Sincethat time I have refined the model that appears in Figure 1-1 . I call itthe "Innovation Competence Model," since the model works for most anyorganizational competence. The Three Arenas of Innovation Competence The three arenas of the competence model are education about theprinciples, tools, and techniques of creativity and innovation; application of these principles, tools, and techniques to solve criticalbusiness problems; and leadership in the workplace to enable innovation.Developing an internal competence for innovation requires a systemic approach inall three arenas. It is a mistake to think that focus on one area alone will result in an increasein innovation competence. That's why training in creative thinking techniquesalone will be uniquely ineffective in improving innovation competence unlessthere is attention given to the remaining areas, application and leadership.Leaders who delegate innovation to the training department will always bedisappointed with the outcome, since innovation requires total commitment andleadership from the very top of the organization. Since I first published this Innovation Competence Model ( Blueprints forInnovation , New York: American Management Association, 1995), a number oforganizations have embraced it, most notably the 3M Company's Grass RootsInnovation Team (GRIT), whose members found they were already doing what themodel illustrated. As Kim Johnson, leader of the 3M GRIT. says, "The Model ofThe Innovative Organization gave structure and brought clarity to what we weredoing, and made it easier to communicate to upper levels of leadership. We werehappy to have independent confirmation of our programs and activities." If youare to use this book as a guide for innovation in your organization, werecommend you use the Innovation Competence Model as the unifying system fordefining and for describing each specific activity. At the DuPont Center for Creativity and Innovation, we offered courses increative thinking (education) and facilitated problem solving workshops(application), but we naïvely assumed that leaders in a c