Managing Creativity and Innovation in the Workplace, 5th Edition

Session B

Encouraging creativity

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    1  Introduction

‘If at first, the idea is not absurd, there is no hope for it.’

Albert Einstein

In Session A, we saw that creativity is usually associated with artists and craftspeople but that everyone is capable of being creative, of thinking novel and appropriate ideas. Unfortunately most people lack the confidence to think such ideas, at least at work.

We spend so much of our lives learning to think and act conventionally, and to follow the rules and procedures the way that things have always been done. If you want to get people to think novel and appropriate ideas you need to create an environment in which this is seen to be possible. There are also a number of different techniques that you can ...