Introduction
Year 1776; the Independence of the United States, year 1969; man's arrival to the moon. Someone would have thought for that last quarter of the eighteenth century that man would step on the moon, and less in relatively so few years for such a great feat.
Until a few years ago, locating and communicating with a person was complex, difficult, today cellular telephony has formed a network of such magnitude that it is possible to communicate instantly with anyone, anywhere in the world.
The world changes, and increasingly rapidly. How well did the researcher Ricardo Ferrero make mention of “Alice in Wonderland”: “You have to run a lot to stay in the same place. If you want to get somewhere, you must run twice as much. ”
Just as a last mention, it is enough to remember where the People's Republic of China was thirty years ago, and where it is today in technological, economic and productive matters.
The same can be said of the changes that occurred in the same period in what was the USSR. Someone would have thought of Chinese businessmen buying the IBM business unit for the manufacture of personal computers (PCs), or the dissolution of the Soviet bloc and the formation of a Stock Exchange no less than in Moscow.
The world advances and changes very rapidly, and with increasing acceleration. In such a way that the countries, companies and people that cannot adapt to the changes will be irretrievably left out of the race and out of context. Many professions, industries, jobs, products and services that existed twenty years ago today no longer exist. Every five years, knowledge becomes obsolete and is replaced by new concepts. Falling asleep means awakening in a world that you will not recognize.
The mind has the capacity and the duty to constantly update and adapt to new times. It is the rule of evolution transferred to the psychological and social field. A society that does not evolve and adapts with sufficient flexibility and speed is destined to perish, at least to suffer the serious consequences of reducing its quality of life.
Faced with a constantly increasing population, and with the pressure of new and more sophisticated needs, societies that do not evolve tend to increase their majority of the poor every day. In the individual field, not changing in time implies plain and simple being left out of the contest for progress and survival.
What happens in companies in the face of the events reported, is this what we should now ask ourselves? Only, it is enough to see that first-rate companies have recently and in a short time reduced their product design and development deadlines from 60 or 48 months to just 10, to realize the magnitude of the changes that have occurred. This leads to increasingly shorter product life cycles, which is why companies lacking flexibility and responsiveness are and will be marginalized from new production processes. Never before is it so true that time is worth money.
We live in an era of new speculations, of open windows although the doors still remain closed. We must not turn our backs on the future, wanting things to continue as they have been until now, we need to face a changing reality.
The speed of change
If a graph is contemplated that compares the speed to travel in different times of humanity we will see at the beginning what that speed was 500 years before Christ and then the corresponding to the successive periods, in it a very slight increase will be observed, almost insignificant, but in the last five centimeters the line begins to grow suddenly.
When horse transport was overtaken by the steam train, it was overtaken by automobiles, these in turn were overtaken by airplanes and the latter by rockets. In turn, each mechanical transport system was improving itself. The quick change fits very well into the "more, only better" scheme. Something much more powerful is taking place in communications and computing, where information is transmitted more and more rapidly and data is processed in ever smaller fractions of time.
In line with technological changes, life has become faster for individuals, who also expect faster responses. Faster trips, faster service, faster services, faster information, faster communication, everything faster. No one is willing to wait longer than they consider acceptable.
Ultracompetitive companies have echoed these new demands, adapting to the high speeds of change and demands, generating faster production processes, designing products more quickly, and delivering orders placed by their customers more quickly. The main asset no longer consists in the quantity of inputs and merchandise stored, but rather in the speed of response to the needs and demands of customers.
It is in this new context where creativity and innovation take a new form and become fundamental bases for change and the competitiveness of companies. In a world where everything tends to be imitated quickly, creatives, generators of innovation in terms of processes, products and services, will be the ones that take advantage. Thus, the sum of cumulative advantages is the new slogan in strategic matters.
From these first two sections we come to the conclusion that time is worth more every day, and therefore it must be used to the maximum. How? Generating the most innovations in the least amount of time, in such a way to stay away from the competition.
An interesting exercise is to think about what our different products are, or can be. In short, what can I sell that is better than what others offer? Of course, this question is valid both individually and collectively. In other words, what product can I offer? What about my company? What about our country?
These different products are "of high added value and what adds value is ingenuity and knowledge". In other words, they are innovations.
Creativity
In the current knowledge economy, creativity is more important than ever. But many companies unconsciously use management practices that kill them, crushing the intrinsic motivation of their employees, that is, the strong internal desire to do something based on interests and passions.
Directors don't kill creativity on purpose. But in their search for productivity, efficiency and control they end up undermining creativity, which is the sustenance of those in the medium and long term. Entrepreneurial imperatives can, have, and must coexist with creativity, for which managers will have to radically change their way of thinking.
Now, the time has come to ask yourself about what is entrepreneurial creativity? Creativity is generally associated with the arts and thinking of it as the expression of original ideas to the highest degree. But, in companies, originality is not enough. To be creative, an idea must also be appropriate, useful, and viable. In some way it must influence the way of doing business, for example, improving a product or opening a new way to approach a process, and even generating new ways of thinking strategically.
The associations made between creativity and artistic originality often lead to confusion about the appropriate place for creativity in business organizations. So many believe that creativity is something related only to marketing, advertising, or the design of products or processes. But creativity can benefit all departments of a company. Think about it in the ABC (activity-based cost system), which was an invention in the accounting area whose impact on organizations has been positive and profound.
For many, creativity refers to the way people think, that is, the greater or less inventive way of approaching problems. But imaginative thinking is only part of creativity, for it to take place also requires skill and motivation. Thus, creativity is the result of combining three elements, the ability to think creatively coupled with expertise and motivation.
Expertise encompasses everything a person knows and can do in the broader field of their work. Expertise constitutes what the economist and psychologist Herbert Simon calls the “network of possible displacements”, the intellectual space that he uses to explore and solve problems. The larger this space, the better.
Creative thinking refers to how people approach problems and their solutions, their ability to bring together existing ideas in new and special combinations. The ability itself depends largely on the personality as well as the way of thinking and working of the person. Your creativity will be increased if you combine knowledge of apparently disparate fields in your reasoning.
Expertise and creative thinking are raw materials for each individual; their own natural resources, but there is a third factor that determines what people actually do, and that factor is motivation.
Managers can influence all three components of creativity: expertise, creative thinking ability, and motivation. But the fact is that influencing the first two is considerably more difficult and time consuming than influencing motivation.
It is therefore necessary to answer the question, which management practices affect creativity? As a result of more than two decades of research focused on what are the connections between the work environment and creativity, six categories have emerged that are: challenge, freedom, resources, characteristics of group work, encouragement of the supervisor and determined support of the organization..
- Challenge: Of all the things managers can do to stimulate creativity, one of the most effective is to assign each person the right role for them. Directors can assign each person jobs that match their expertise and creative thinking skills and that foster intrinsic motivation. Perfect collations expand employees' capabilities, but the magnitude of that expansion is crucial: not so small that they feel bored but also not so large that they feel overwhelmed and threatened by a loss of control. Freedom: When it comes to granting freedom The key to creativity is to give people autonomy from the means but not necessarily from the ends.People will be much more creative if it gives them the freedom to decide how to climb a particular mountain, which does not mean letting them choose which mountain to climb. Thus, clearly defined strategic goals enhance people's creativity. It is therefore very important that whoever defines these goals make them clear in the organization and that those goals remain stable for a significant period of time. It is difficult to work creatively toward achieving a goal if it is constantly moving. Autonomy with respect to the process stimulates creativity, because giving people freedom as to how to approach their work strengthens their intrinsic motivation and their sense of ownership, that that work and its results belong to them.Freedom of process also allows people to approach problems in ways that make the most of their expertise and creative thinking abilities. Resources: The two main resources that affect creativity are time, appropriate physical space and the money. Managers have to allocate these resources carefully. In the same way that they have to combine the right person with the right task, deciding how much time, how much and what physical space to grant and how much money they are going to allocate to a team or a project requires a very careful judgment. Exploring new concepts, reaching unique solutions, and wandering through the maze can be a slow process.Managers who do not give time to explore or do not plan incubation periods are unconsciously hindering the creative process. Features of group work. If you want to create teams that generate creative ideas, it is a must to pay due attention to the formation of such teams. To do this, it must create groups that support each other with a diversity of points of view and backgrounds.
Why? Because when teams are made up of people with different intellectual bases and different approaches to work - that is, different practical knowledge and different creative thinking styles - ideas tend to combine and act in very useful and stimulating ways. But this diversity is only a starting point, managers must also ensure that the teams they make up have three other characteristics.
One is that your team members must share the same enthusiasm for the team's goals, the second is that the team members must show a clear disposition to help their teammates during difficult periods and in setbacks. And the third is that each team member must recognize the unique insights and views that each of the other team members brings to the table. These factors not only enhance intrinsic motivation but also skill and creative thinking ability.
- Supervisor's Encouragement: Employees may find their work interesting or challenging without being reminded of it, but only for a limited period of time. However, to maintain that passion, most employees need to feel that their work matters to the company. Organizational Support: The encouragement received from supervisors really encourages creativity, but creativity increases greatly when creativity organization as a whole supports it. Such support is the task of the leaders of an organization, who must put in place appropriate systems or procedures and emphasize values that make clear that creative efforts are an absolute priority.
The lessons from the results obtained by highly competitive companies is that fostering creativity is something that is in the hands of managers. Creativity requires managers to radically change the way they form and interact with work groups. This implies a change in the organizational culture, which generates significant rewards.
The risks of not doing so may be even greater. When creativity is killed, an organization loses a powerful competitive weapon: new ideas. At the same time losing the energy and commitment of its people.
The qualities required for creativity management are, in the first place, observation, consisting of the ability to observe things exactly as they are in themselves, to know if the things described are really present. Then, reflection, which teaches the value of actions, images, thoughts and feelings; and it helps sensitivity to perceive their mutual connection. Then the imagination, necessary to modify, create and associate; then invention, and finally judgment, to decide how, where and to what degree each of these powers should be exercised.
Innovation
Innovation is usually defined as an idea or group of ideas, transformed into some product or process, sold or used. Another more rigorous definition says that innovation is the process that goes from knowledge to a product on the market.
An innovation only takes shape when a product or service reaches the market. If nobody pays for something, there is no innovation. Innovation can manifest itself in the design of a new product, in a new production process, in a new marketing approach, in a new way of carrying out the training and education of personnel.
The great objective is to generate innovations that manage to create competitive advantages, for which it is necessary to perceive those totally new market opportunities, or to serve a market sector that other organizations have ignored. When competitors respond slowly, such innovation provides a competitive advantage.
An innovation must aspire to leadership from the beginning, otherwise it is unlikely to be sufficiently innovative. Whoever does not use new remedies must wait for new ills; because time is the greatest innovator ”.
Research and development involves the use of resources to generate knowledge. Innovation is the use of knowledge to generate wealth. It should be noted that some innovations are born from a flash of genius, but most are the result of a conscious and deliberate search for opportunities. Above all, innovation is work rather than genius. It requires knowledge; wit and a lot of concentration.
There are, of course, innovations that come from great inspiration. However, most innovations, and especially those that are successful, result from a conscious and deliberate search for opportunities to innovate, which are found only in a few situations.
In innovation, as in any other endeavor, talent, ingenuity and knowledge are present. But when everything is decided, what innovation requires is hard work, oriented and meaningful. If diligence, perseverance and dedication are lacking, talent, ingenuity and knowledge are useless.
Intentional and systematic innovation begins by analyzing the sources of new opportunities. Fonts will be of varying importance over time, depending on the context.
Since innovation is both concept and perception, aspiring innovators will have to go outside and look, ask and listen. Successful innovators make use of their two cerebral hemispheres; they study the numbers, but they do not forget to also study the people. Analytically develop what innovation must be like to take advantage of the opportunity. They then go out and study potential users to learn about their expectations, values, and needs.
Backward thinking
Accelerated and discontinuous change requires discontinuous thinking. If the new course of events is going to be different from the previous one, not just an improved version of it, then we must see all situations differently, that is, from a new perspective.
In the long run, in the perspective of history, as Charles Handy well points out, it seems that the really influential people in the last 100 years have not been Hitler, Churchill, Stalin or Gorbachev, but Freud, Keynes and Einstein, men who did not They changed nothing except our way of thinking, but with it they have changed everything. The reverse creative thinking of such people is the fundamental premise of this work. New ways of thinking about familiar things can release new energies and make all kinds of things possible. Thinking backwards does not change anything except the way we think, which can make a huge difference.
The thinker Donald Schon, dedicated to the field of organizations and learning, argued that creativity, particularly scientific creativity, comes from "displacement of concepts" that is, taking concepts from one field of life and applying them to another to produce new intuitions. Thinking backwards is an invitation to consider the improbable, even the absurd. We must get used to asking "Why?" about what already is, and "Why not?" about any possible rearrangement.
Resistance to change
In art and science, the innovator only has to persuade one person: himself. Changing your mind has its share of tensions. In matters of belief, as William James said, we are all extremely conservative and only under pressure do we abandon old opinions. But innovation in a company faces an arduous task: the innovator must persuade others to change their opinions and / or their way of seeing things.
Change is threatening. Innovation, be it in ideas, products, services, processes or strategies, may seem like an attack on the foundations of the Universe. As Machiavelli said: “The reformer has enemies in all those who benefit from the old order (with the old way of doing things or operating); and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would benefit from the new order; This lukewarmness arises in part from fear of their adversaries…. and in part from the disbelief of mankind, which does not believe in anything new until they have experienced it.
Profiting from the old order takes much more serious forms than making money from it. The vested interests are variable. They can be personal: dedicating a mind and a career to a particular belief system. They can be institutional: ideas embodied in institutions become especially difficult to abandon. They can be social: surrender to a belief system that protects the power of a group or class. Whatever their forms, vested interests reject lines of thought that are disturbing to the person, discipline, institution, or existing power arrangements.
The famous Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter tells us that any measure against routine raises doubts. The individual who neglects established channels lacks persuasive data to justify challenging the rules. Whereas previously the precedent had provided authoritative guidance, now the success of it all depends on intuition, the ability to see things in a way that later turns out to be true, even if it cannot be demonstrated at the time, and to grasp the essential fact by discarding the it is not, although one cannot give any explanation of the principles according to which it is made. Few are willing to abandon assumptions to which they adhere by taking admitted risks.
Schumpeter also highlights the revenge that the social environment takes against those who want to do something new. Every group resents the heresy of its members. In economic and business matters, this resistance manifests itself above all in groups threatened by innovation, then in the difficulty of winning consumers.
Considering the power of gravity, habit and fear, the dead weight of inertia, orthodoxy, and self-reliance, the task of persuading the majority to accept innovations remains enormous.
Precisely in that strong resistance to change is the great secret. Those organizations that acquire sufficient mental flexibility, the conviction of the urgent need for change, and see in individual and collective creativity, the possibility of accumulating innovations, will be the companies that achieve enormously competitive advantages.
In the management of change, what weighs the most are not material but mental limitations. As it has been said "there is nothing more difficult to open than a closed mind".
Conclusions
We cannot look to the future as a continuation of the past. The things that got us to where we are today are not going to help us stay there. But, on the other hand, if we don't know where we come from, it will be difficult for us to move forward.
The way to understand the future, in organizations, in society and in life itself, is to take care of the future, not respond to it. In the global economy, you cannot compete, you cannot be viable, if you do not have high quality at low cost. And one cannot achieve high quality and low costs without a culture of excellence. Achieving excellence has constant creativity and innovation among its requirements, based on continually questioning existing paradigms.
CK Prahalad tells us that what makes a company survive for a long time is its ability to change. The change is inevitable to maintain continuity. If continuity is necessary in society, then change is a prerequisite; if we don't change, we die.
In essence, competing for the future means maintaining continuity by ensuring that the company is constantly creating new sources of profit. This requires a commitment to create new businesses and new products.
Companies are going to have to start unlearning a lot from their past. It is not easy to unlearn or forget the past, but you will have to. If companies want to escape the gravitational pull of the past, they have to be willing to question their own orthodoxies, regenerate their basic strategies, and rethink their most fundamental assumptions about how they will compete.
Competitive companies are always looking forward, not backward. They constantly change the competition rules instead of following the already established rules. They define new ways of doing business, pioneer new products, build new basic skills, create new markets, set new standards, and question their own assumptions.
Getting where others have gone is necessary to continue in the game, but to succeed you will need to have the ability to create fundamentally new games. So those who succeed will have unique advantages in the 21st century because they will dominate the imagination, spirit and intelligence of people in a way that no traditional organization could ever achieve before.
Bibliography
Educating to compete - Ricardo A. Ferraro - Editorial Sudamericana - 1995
In search of excellence - Thomas Peters and Robert Waterman - Editorial Atlántida - 1982
The Age of Unreason - Charles Handy - Limusa - 1993
Imagination - Mauricio Lefcovich - www.degerencia.com - 2004
Reconceptualization of business - Mauricio Lefcovich - www.gestiopolis.com - 2004
The philosophy of strategy - Mauricio Lefcovich - www.ilustrados.com - 2004
