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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Flying in the face of current thinking, this book suggests that we do not need to 'think outside the box' in our quest for creativity, rather we should rethink the way we look 'inside the box'. This idea will resonate only too well with those who have endeavoured to be creative by thinking outside that box, only to have their attempts scuppered by the constraints of bureaucracy and organizational politics. Instead of fighting a losing battle, the author suggests that creativity should be worked at within the constraints of the organizational box, but that space needs to be grown and allowed to be shaken up. Only by experimenting, mutating and finding new directions can you uncover business paths that lead to success. The reader is encouraged not to free themselves from all their knowledge and experiences (the thinking outside the box method) but to use their knowledge and experience in new ways. The book is structured around three key steps: * Expanding the box: so that the pieces of the puzzle in it can move around more freely * Filling the box: with even more knowledge, and how to get these new pieces of the puzzle to connect with the existing ones * Shaking the box: so that the pieces fall into new places and form new patterns. The book shows that anybody can be creative. The creative methods suggested in the book will be linked to real business examples from which techniques have been developed to help their implementation. Numerous exercises and 'eye-openers' form part of the practical implementation of Micael Dahlén's ideas. The book is framed by models and concepts of how creativity works (the creative process, the creative person and the creative result) and what its effects are.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgements
1: Why this book?
PART I: It’s About Success
2: Why creativity?
3: Are you creative?
4: Why is creativity so important?
Leaking buckets
Market ceilings
Efficient complexity
Happiness
5: Isn’t creativity dangerous?
Does the company lose definition or credibility?
Wasted money?
PART II: Think Inside the Box
6: What is creativity?
Creativity defined
Myths about creativity
7: The creative result
8: The creative process
Knowledge
Motivation
Corporate governance
Thought tunnels and riverbeds
Randomness
The use of knowledge
9: The creative person
Flow of ideas
Risk-taking
Paradoxes
10: Thinking inside the box
Shaking the box
Expanding the box
Filling the box
PART III: Expanding the Box
11: The four walls of the box
Get smarter through training: about the exercises
12: The first wall: conventions and rules
How to recognize a rule or convention
Selling bricks
Coat hanger: (im)possible tasks
Improving on scissors
The ping-pong ball in the steel pipe
13: The second wall: common sense
Man with bow-tie stuck in the elevator
The rope round the Earth
The tennis tournament
The letters
The dots
14: The third wall: physiology
The monk
The folded paper exercise
Answering the telephone with the ‘wrong’ hand
Professor Balthazar
15: The fourth wall: consciousness
RAT
Changing details
Quick and slow solution
Anti-jeopardy
PART IV: Filling the Box
16: There’s no such thing as ‘useless’ knowledge
There is no ‘useless’ knowledge
17: The brain is lazy
18: The power in brands
19: Associations
20: The context rules
PART V: Shaking the Box
21: Preparations for the final step
Two ways of shaking the box
22: Shaking the box side to side
Change the brand voice
Do the Following
Change the category voice
Do the Following
Change the size of the company
Do the Following
Change the name
Do the Following
Enhance ‘bad’ characteristics
Do the Following
Enhance specifics
Do the Following
Communications RAT
Do the Following
When obstacles become solutions
Do the Following
23: Shaking the box up and down
Random verbs
Do the Following
Another time of day
Do the Following
Break the assumption
Do the Following
Not-Definitions
Do the Following
Product RAT
Do the Following
Associations squared
Do the Following
Change category
Do the Following
Next customer
Do the Following
PART VI: Congratulations: You’ve Become Smarter
24: Are you a creative business innovator?
Only the beginning
Further Reading
It’s about success
Think inside the box
Expanding the box
Filling the box
Index
WILEY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
List of Tables
2: Why creativity?
Table 2.1 Effect on systematic risk
3: Are you creative?
Table 3.1 Self-test for creativity
12: The first wall: conventions and rules
Table 12.1
Table 12.2
Table 12.3
Table 12.4
15: The fourth wall: consciousness
Table 15.1
Table 15.2
Table 15.3
Table 15.4 correct answers to tests
24: Are you a creative business innovator?
Table 24.1 Self-test for creativity
List of Figures
2: Why creativity?
Figure 2.1
Figure 2.2
3: Are you creative?
Figure 3.1
4: Why is creativity so important?
Figure 4.1
Figure 4.2
Figure 4.3
Figure 4.4
6: What is creativity?
Figure 6.1
Figure 6.2
7: The creative result
Figure 7.1
Figure 7.2
8: The creative process
Figure 8.1
Figure 8.2
Figure 8.3
Figure 8.4
Figure 8.5
10: Thinking inside the box
Figure 10.1
11: The four walls of the box
Figure 11.1
13: The second wall: common sense
Figure 13.1
Figure 13.2
Figure 13.3
Figure 13.4
15: The fourth wall: consciousness
Figure 15.1
Figure 15.2
17: The brain is lazy
Figure 17.1
Figure 17.2
Figure 17.3
Figure 17.4
Figure 17.5
18: The power in brands
Figure 18.1
Figure 18.2
Figure 18.3
19: Associations
Figure 19.1
Figure 19.2
20: The context rules
Figure 20.1
Figure 20.2
21: Preparations for the final step
Figure 21.1
23: Shaking the box up and down
Figure 23.1
Figure 23.2
Figure 23.3
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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Creativity Unlimited
Thinking Inside the Box for Business Innovation
Micael Dahlén
This edition copyright © 2008
John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester,
West Sussex PO19 8SQ, England
Telephone (+44) 1243 779777
Email (for orders and customer service enquiries): [email protected] our Home Page on www.wiley.com
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except under the terms of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP, UK, without the permission in writing of the Publisher. Requests to the Publisher should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex PO19 8SQ, England, or emailed to [email protected], or faxed to (+44) 1243 770620.
Original edition (Sweden) published by Volante QNB Publishing
Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The Publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.
This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the Publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.
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Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dahlén, Micael.
[Boxen. English]
Creativity unlimited : thinking inside the box for business innovation / Micael Dahlén.
p. cm.
Translation of: Boxen : kreativitet som skapar bättre affärer : träna dig till framgång.
Stockholm : Volante QNB Pub., c2006.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-470-77084-9 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Creative ability in business. 2. Creative thinking. 3. Technological innovations. I. Title.
HD53.D34 2008
658.4’063—dc22
2008027939
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-0-470-77084-9
Nothing is impossible.Some things are just more difficult than others.
Acknowledgements
Study after study has made it clear that creativity and personal success are strongly dependent on the environment in which one operates. Others must be the judge of whether this author has been creative or is successful, but my environment, at least, has always been the best possible. I only wish that everybody could enjoy the advantages of working with the people mentioned below.
Claes-Robert Julander is an amazingly wise man who continuously challenges and encourages me to be more incisive. For a researcher and writer with a tendency to indulge in details, it is a blessing to have a boss who can always see the big picture. Magnus Söderlund is my other boss, an inspiration and example both in the matter of academic ‘hygiene’ and other forms of asceticism. I have the further advantage of working on a number of exciting research and education projects – and of laughing my way through the time in between – in the company of a group of gifted and dear friends at the Centre for Consumer Marketing (CCM) at the Stockholm School of Business, who have also been fantastic and well-informed guinea pigs for several of the exercises contained in this book (Anna Broback, Karolina Brodin, Rebecca Gruvhammar, Hanna Hjalmarson, Fredrik Lange, Jens Nordfält, Sara Rosengren, Henrik Sjödin, Fredrik Törn and Niclas Öhman). And of course there is Richard Wahlund, who is now a boss somewhere else, but still provides very valuable support.
Over the years (now I’m feeling old …) I have had the pleasure and the honour of educating a large number of amazingly bright and successful students. You have made a greater impression on me, and meant more than you will probably ever know.
I am very grateful that so many of you stay in contact (don’t stop), and that I have the chance to be involved, give support and take pleasure in your successful careers. Particular thanks are due to my magical students in Marketing Communications XL, who have been involved in testing many of the exercises and arguments in this book.
A very meaningful and stimulating part of my research work is meeting with businesses and inquisitive and skillful marketers and business creators on a virtually daily basis. These meetings give my work invaluable feedback as well as insights and suggestions for what I should do next. Many thanks for the important work you do every day and for your readiness both to learn and to teach!
Apropos learning and teaching – it is really wonderful to have a publisher who has evolved from being my student into my teacher and friend. Thank you, Tobias Nielsén.
1Why this book?
It is up to us to train our brains to be strong. Einstein’s brain, for example, was surprisingly small. This book contains creativity exercises that relate directly to business creativity and various business-related problems. In addition, it describes how and why you might use a number of classical creativity exercises.
What is the body’s biggest muscle? A lot of people think it’s the brain, but this is not true. The brain is not a muscle, but like a muscle it can be trained. And although it cannot be flexed like a muscle (it would look rather odd if your head swelled up every time you did some serious thinking, in the way that your biceps increase in circumference when you tense your arm) your brain can be made stronger. This occurs in exactly the same way in which a muscle becomes stronger, namely by creating more connections between the cells.
The thing that distinguishes ‘strong’ brains from others is not that they are bigger, but that they are denser. In spite of the tendency to describe the geniuses and thinkers of the past as having ‘big brains’, research has found no evidence that their brains were particularly large. Einstein ’s brain, for example, was surprisingly small – it weighed a mere 1230 grams, almost one-fifth less than the average brain. A rather comforting thought, isn’t it? We are not, in other words, born with differing potential (‘Lisa was obviously bound to succeed in life, she had such a large brain’). Instead, it is basically up to us to strengthen our brains by training, by maximizing the number of connections between our brain cells (yes, this was the special feature of Einstein’s brain). That is why I have written this book.
My goal is not to strengthen the whole of your brain. Many others have had this goal and many (though not all) have failed to achieve it. Instead, I want to help to make you a better business creator (and this includes chief executives, developers and public sector decision-makers – those whose job it is to create better business opportunities for the Nation/Region Inc.). The work demands only a limited amount of your mental capacity and small improvements can produce big results.
Let us permit ourselves a small digression. In general, it is fair to say that our body, with certain exceptions, has a reasonably constant number of cells. Therefore our muscles do not increase greatly in size when we train them. Any increase that results from training depends mainly on the muscles binding more water and sugar. The reason for the increase in muscle size through training is not the formation of new cells; rather, it is due to the creation of more connections between our current muscle cells. All these connections make the muscle denser (as you know, a well-trained muscle feels harder than an untrained one, just as it is more difficult to squeeze a carrot than a marshmallow).
If you have seen body-builders or athletes at close quarters, you know that their muscles are not actually very big (except during the offseason when they store water and sugar in their muscles, and perhaps some fat as a ‘shock absorber’). Their muscles only look big because they are so dense and well-defined. This is a result of the muscle cells contracting and giving the muscles a definite shape. It is the same with the brain. Whenever I summarize my years of research and teaching, I usually arrive at the conclusion that marketing and business creation (the two are inseparable, which we will come back to later in the book) consist in constantly reinventing oneself. All my research results point to the importance of challenging conventional wisdom and breaking patterns and habits in order to reach out to people, attract their interest and gain unique advantages. Just knowing more than others is not enough. You must also be able to use your knowledge in a new way. All the information stored in the cells of the brain must be combined through new connections.
My research is concerned with developing and testing new opportunities and goals for companies and brands. It might, for example, be a matter of redefining a brand, changing product category, shaking up customer relations or evaluating business results on completely new grounds. This looks promising in theory, but the feedback I have received from companies and experts in marketing and business creation who consider these questions every day of their working lives has indicated that it is not always easy to put these theories into practice. I have therefore spent more and more time developing exercises and ideas about how to put together the challenging results of my research and finding out how, as marketer and business creator, you can continually reinvent yourself.
Trying ‘merely’ to make you more creative is not enough. If it was, I would not be writing this book. Thousands of books on how to increase your creative powers have already been published. While there is always room for further texts on the subject, this book is about creativity and business creation. The difference may be slight, but oh so important. I have read all the books I could find on creativity and have discussed them with students and businessmen. In many respects, we have reached the same conclusion: the most important problem is that most of the books contain valuable and entertaining insights and exercises, but unfortunately often end up as being only ‘entertaining’. The reason such books do not lead to concrete results is due to the fact that the exercises are not directly linked to business creation.
This book presents a collection of exercises that I have partly gathered from elsewhere and partly developed myself. It contains exercises that relate directly to business creativity and various business-related problem scenarios. In addition, it describes how and why you might use a number of classical creativity exercises. This book is in five parts and can be used for a number of different purposes. The book’s Introduction (Parts I and II) is there to provide you with arguments for yourself and others as to why it is important to let both the particular exercises in the book and creativity in general become part of your daily work. The exercises in the middle part (Part III) can be used as regular training to develop your creative powers, and also for warming up in various group contexts and in teaching or as metaphors in your daily work (thinking points). The exercises in the final parts (Parts IV and V) are intended for use directly in your strategy and tactics development to help you to find new angles and develop new solutions and business.
Welcome aboard! Let’s go.
PART IIt’s About Success
In this part:
Why creativity?
Are you creative?
Why is creativity so important?
Isn’t creativity dangerous?
‘All my research results point to the importance of challenging conventional wisdom and breaking patterns and habits in order to reach out to people, attract their interest and gain unique advantages. Just knowing the most is not enough. You must also be able to use your knowledge in new ways.’
2Why creativity?
This book is not about luck. It is about how to work systematically with creativity. For the effects are extremely systematic. Creativity is not about taking chances. Creativity is about ensuring success.
Why creativity? Put the question to the state-owned Swedish bank SBAB, which has gone through a radical transformation from the old, established Sveriges Bostadsfinansieringsaktiebolag (Swedish Domicile Financing Ltd) to an aggressive building society with the acronym SBAB. SBAB has totally transformed its business for itself, its competitors and Sweden’s population. Since as recently as 2000, by means of pioneering financial products and marketing programs such as ‘canned’ mortgages and mortgage blogs, the company has almost doubled its market share and tripled its customers. Annual sales have tripled, and according to investment bank Goldman Sachs, the value of the company and the SBAB brand have increased by several billions. Financial services in Sweden will never be the same again.
Another organization that has reaped the harvest of its creativity since 2000 is the pharmaceutical company Pfizer. Around the millennium shift, they reformulated a blood pressure medicine and marketed it instead as a man’s best friend. With this creative twist, Viagra was born. It has since been sold for billions – annually.
Why creativity? Ask 3M that question, who like Pfizer managed to create one of the world’s best-known and successful products. By thinking creatively about how to use a glue that did not work, the Post-it note was born. Today it sells more than all the functioning glues the company markets put together.
If you ask the people behind the Swedish free newspaper Metro the same question, you will hear a story of the future that became a reality thanks to a combination of an established product and a new business and distribution model – owing to insights about people’s behaviour patterns and changing habits. The first edition of Metro was distributed in the Stockholm underground in 1995, and within 10 years the free daily had grown to over 60 editions in 19 countries with a readership of more than 18 million.
Apart from their success, these examples have one thing in common. They have been successful by being creative within their existing areas of activity. Instead of looking beyond what they already knew and trying to think up radically new products, they have used and developed their existing products, their know-how and their experience to achieve a creative result. Instead of thinking outside the box they have thought inside the box. Thinking inside the box increases the likelihood of achieving creative results and also strengthens the impact and value of the creativity.
The above examples provide some anecdotal evidence of the enormous power of creativity and the revolutionary effects it can have. The list of examples could be considerably longer (and we will see many examples later in the book), but I do not want to concentrate on individual cases. If we spend too much time on particular, brilliant examples, there is a risk that they become just that, brilliant examples, and that these companies may be seen as companies that had special advantages and, perhaps, special luck.
But this book is not about luck. It is about how you can systematically work with creativity, for the effects are systematic to a high degree. Creativity is not about taking a chance, it is about ensuring success. Figure 2.1 shows the result of a systematic analysis of 350 European, American and Asian brands within every area from cars to computers, cosmetics, clothes, drinks and cleaning products. Over a two-year period, researchers examined how creativity affected the company’s outcomes in the form of sales growth, market share, profit levels and return on investment (ROI). They also measured product outcomes in terms of customer satisfaction with the products, and the perceived quality of the products. The percentages in Figure 2.1 show the extent to which creativity accounts for a company’s earnings and how much the customers like the product.
At the top of the figure, you can see that when companies with high earnings are compared with those of lower earnings, 26% of the difference can be accounted for by the fact that the successful companies’ products are improvement innovations. Considering all the factors that can affect a company’s financial results (its market segment, the actions of its competitors, relations with suppliers, pricing of parts, yield conditions and much more) 26% is a surprisingly high figure. In the illustration, we can also see that improvement innovations account for 35% of the reason why certain products are regarded as being of higher quality and have more satisfied customers (this is also remarkable considering all the attributes of customers and their usage of the products that affect the result).
Figure 2.1
It also appears that for paradigm-challenging innovations the connections are evident, but not as strong. In contrast to improving innovations, which are products that the market and the customers can easily accept as a development of existing habits and buying patterns, paradigm -challenging innovations are products that completely alter people ’s behaviour and habits. In others words, you may already begin to suspect that it is better/easier to develop people’s existing patterns and behaviour than to alter them. This important piece of the puzzle will be explored in depth later in the book.
If you are still not convinced about the enormous impact of creativity, then consider the sum of USD 405 million. This figure captures the net present value of an innovative pharmaceutical product according to systematic analyses that researchers have conducted over a 10-year period of 255 ground-breaking products in the USA, UK, Japan, France, Germany, Belgium and Switzerland.
Pharmaceuticals are an extreme branch, with very long development and patent times. At almost the other end of the spectrum we find cars, where existing models are constantly being improved and new models are developed at a furious pace. But even in these areas the connection between the companies’ results and creativity are just as striking. American researchers analysed a total of 399 large and small product innovations over a six-year period and were able to summarize the results, as shown in Figure 2.2. If one considers that the numbers in the figure show how the marketing of a single product affects the whole company, the effects are remarkable. If, for example, Ford makes a minor update to its Escort model, one can expect the whole company’s sales figures to improve by 4.3%, profit by 0.6% and the value of the whole company by 1.1% within two months. If Ford were even more creative and marketed a completely new model, they could within a week expect to achieve the figures in brackets (which illustrate the average effect of big innovations), that is, a 6.0% increase in sales, a resulting profit improved by 2.1% and an increase in the total worth of the company of 1.2%.
Figure 2.2
Concentrating on creativity is the best investment you can make. The numbers speak for themselves. In a study of the 3000-plus stocks that were traded on the New York Stock Exchange from 1979 to 2001, researchers found that the major factor that clearly reduced a company ’s systematic risk (i.e. strengthened its independence of trade cycles and other external factors that can diminish its value appreciation and gave the company control of its future) was the amount and time invested in research and development (R&D). Table 2.1 shows clearly how investment in creativity gives a company considerably more security than, for example, its assets, age, liquidity, growth and financial strategy (the last two in fact increase the risk!). And even if the creative investment leads to products that do not reach the market for some years, you can probably reap your rewards immediately. An American study shows that simply announcing that a company is developing a new product raises its share price. In a study of 419 new product preannouncements from 1984 to 2000 in the high tech industry, it was found that yield increased, on average, by 14% for a whole year after the creative investment was made public.
Without even developing or promising new products, a company can gain a high return on its creativity. In a wide-ranging experiment, we conducted marketing campaigns for well-known and established products, including items from headache pills to coffee and washing-up liquid. By varying the amount of creativity in the campaign we could measure how people’s reactions to the same companies and products were affected by the creativity the company signalled. The effects were striking. The more creativity there was in the marketing of the product, the higher the quality that people attributed to the product (in spite of the fact that these were established products that had been used before!) But even more interesting was the fact that people had higher expectations that future products from that company would be interesting, of high quality and satisfy their needs. Creativity in itself acted as a signal that the company was smart and flexible and had the ability to find superior solutions and solve problems far into the future.
Table 2.1 Effect on systematic risk
R&D
−0.50
Asset size
−0.09
Age
−0.02
Earnings variability
−0.02
Dividend payout
0.00
Liquidity
0.00
Growth
+0.36
Leverage
+0.52
You have now seen some interesting examples and evidence – both for yourself and for whoever you might wish at some future time to persuade or convince – of the very tangible power of creativity, and it is now time to start some serious training.
We will now look more closely at how and why creativity works. We will look at market-related reasons for why creativity is so important, proceeding from concepts such as leaking buckets, market ceiling, efficient complexity and suitability. We will also see how in fact you can become a happier and healthier person. We will start in the usual way when designing a training programme – that is, by assessing your fitness. How creative are you and how creative is your company?
3Are you creative?
A successful business executive is the same as a creative business innovator – he or she promotes the company by increased sales and market share won, creates value for the owners and partners through bigger profits and also strengthens customer satisfaction
Take a minute and score yourself on the basis of the statements in Table 3.1. Give yourself a mark from 1 to 10 according to how well you think you match every statement, where 10 means that you always act 100% according to the statement. Add up your points at the bottom. If you scored 73 or more, you are in all probability a highly successful business innovator. If your score was around 45, you should still not be worried as you are average. And when you have finished reading this book, you will hopefully have approached the magic limit of 73 points.
Why just 45 and 73? The numbers are taken from a wide-ranging study, where 73 points was the limit for the upper third that were regarded as really successful and 45 was the average. Researchers studied business executives in 578 American companies, which together covered widely differing products such as cars, hotdogs, mobile phones and syrup. It was found that the really successful leaders in trade and industry differ from the rest insofar as they display the qualities on which you have just assessed yourself to a much higher degree than other people.
Table 3.1 Self-test for creativity
Statement
Points
1. I know a lot about people’s behaviour, drives and motivations.
…
2. I know a lot about economics and business.
…
3. I know a lot about demographic trends (for example, the effect of motoring tolls, population changes and people’s leisure activities).
…
4. I really feel that I have achieved something when I have thought of a new idea.
…
5. Developing new ideas is one of my favourite pastimes.
…
6. It is challenging to develop new market strategies.
…
7. I do not try to stay on the safe side when I develop new business ideas and programmes.
…
8. I prefer to think unconventionally in business and programmes.
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9. I am a risk-taker when I promote ideas.
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Sum of points
In a second stage of the same study, 240 ordinary consumers were asked to answer questions and assess the creativity of the products and marketing programmes that the executives had developed. The results showed unambiguously that the products and marketing programmes of the successful executives were judged to be considerably more creative. In the study, researchers also found a direct link between creative business innovation and professional success, but they chose not to measure professional success and the personal qualities that make it possible.
So far we have learned that nine specific qualities – those measured in Table 3.1 – determine whether the result of your work is creative (we will have reason to return to this later in the book); and that if you are creative, this means that you will be more successful professionally. But let us now leave promotion, salary increases, benefits and other features of a successful career aside, and widen our perspective.
How does it look at company level? In Figure 3.1 you can see the result of a wide-ranging study that can help companies to see how they can be more creative and judge the effects of their progress not only on the company’s market-related and financial results but also on the company’s customers. American researchers examined in total 312 companies involved in everything from abstract service products to toothbrushes, but all of which were to some degree engaged in product development.
Figure 3.1
Creativity was scored by the companies and by the customers in the market. They gave marks, firstly, according to how creative the specific product was and, secondly, to how creative the marketing (positioning and brand strategy) was around the specific product. The results were measured in the form of sales and market share (market result), profit and return on investment (financial result) and how satisfied the company ’s customers were compared to customers who bought competing products (customer satisfaction).
The results in the figure show that there are very strong links between the company’s creativity and its results. If we add together ‘Product creativity’ and ‘Marketing creativity’, we can see that these components explain no less than 77% of the changes in the company’s market result. If we compare companies who have increased their sales and market share with those who have maintained or lost sales and market share, the successful companies have been more creative, which explains 77% of the positive result. The majority of the changes in the financial result – precisely 52% – can also be accounted for by the creativity of the company. Finally we may note that creativity also has a 61% effect on the satisfaction of the company’s customers. A successful business executive – and this, as we have just confirmed, is the same as a creative business innovator – promotes the company through increased sales and market share, generates value for the company’s owners and partners, and contributes to the company’s customers experiencing higher value in the company’s offers and their relations with the company (which is usually the most fundamental factor in customer satisfaction).
The study also shows that there are two sides to the creative coin. Professional business creativity is about both the concrete development of products and marketing creativity. With the possible exception of very high-tech companies, there is evidence that marketing creativity – that is to say, the conceptual and strategic development of product marketing – is of greater importance than concrete product creativity.
Among the average values in Figure, we can see that ‘marketing creativity ’ is of greater significance for ‘market result’ (59 versus 18%), financial result (29 against 23%) and customer satisfaction (45 versus 16%).
A quick return to the study of ground-breaking pharmaceuticals in Chapter 3 clearly illustrates the importance of marketing creativity: if the company concentrates on marketing in the promotion of the new product, the estimated worth increases from USD 405 million to USD 929 million. Without marketing, it sinks instead to USD 122 million.
The finding that conceptual marketing creativity is on average more important than concrete product creativity might come as something of a surprise. Most of us probably associate creativity with brilliant discoveries and revolutionary products such as the telephone, television, the computer, the aeroplane or the motor car. But the fact is that most businesses are based on considerably more modest innovation, just as almost all patents registered throughout history have concerned small changes to existing products.
The dominant significance of marketing creativity can be understood from several points of view. Almost all companies are active in mature markets, i.e. markets with many different competing businesses offer ing similar products. For example, in order to be successful, it is not enough to develop a mobile phone that takes pictures, because competitors will soon be promoting similar telephones that take pictures that are just as good or even better. In other words, it is difficult to make money from pure product innovation. In addition, product innovation in mature markets is fairly insignificant – adding a picture-taking function is far from being as revolutionary as the introduction of the mobile phone, which created an entirely new market.
Because most markets offer a wide choice of competing products with similar attributes, the concrete functions of the product are not necessarily the deciding factor in people’s choice. For a mobile phone to be chosen, it is not enough that it can take pictures. It must stand out and offer something more in the way of a concept or meaning. History is full of inferior products that have become superior through marketing, such as the classical examples of the Duorak keyboard and the VHS video (we shall have reason to return to this kind of dynamic market development later in the book).
Let us return for a moment to Figure 3.1, concerning product and market creativity. At the far left of the figure you can see how the company’s general knowledge of the world and its organization affects its capacity for product creativity and market creativity. In the light of the previous discussion, it comes as no surprise that competitor focus and knowledge of competitors’ activities has negligible significance for the company’s creativity. We have already pointed out that the actual differences between most products are modest. Studying one’s competitors therefore gives very little guidance on how your business can be developed (more about this later in the book). On the other hand, studying customers and applying a customer focus has significance for marketing creativity, because the products acquire their meaning first in the presence of customers. (Perhaps you can now see a connection between the first three qualities in the test you did earlier?)
Finally, the figure shows that the way the company is organized has great significance for its capacity for both product creativity and marketing creativity. The greater the company’s flexibility, the easier it is to adapt to new insights and ideas, and the easier it becomes to develop new products and ideas. And in order to guarantee flexibility in a company, you need executives who are motivated to think in new and different ways (questions 4 to 6 in your test of qualities) and who have the courage to renew themselves (questions 7 to 9).
