Creativity at Work Newsletter, May 2010
Creativity is the Most Crucial Factor for Future Success
According to the IBM 2010 Global CEO Study, which surveyed 1,500 Chief Executive Officers from 60 countries and 33 industries worldwide, CEOs believe that, “more than rigor, management discipline, integrity or even vision — successfully navigating an increasing complex world will require creativity.”
CEOs say creativity helps them capitalise on complexity
“The effects of rising complexity calls for CEOs and their teams to lead with bold creativity, connect with customers in imaginative ways and design their operations for speed and flexibility to position their organisations for twenty-first century success.”
Amen to that! If we are going to find solutions in a world that is becoming increasingly interconnected and complex, we cannot rely on traditional ways of leading and managing.
Highlights from the IBM 2010 CEO Survey: How CEOs put Creativity to Work Successfully
Creativity is the most important leadership quality, according to CEOs.
Facing a world becoming dramatically more complex, it is interesting that CEOs selected creativity as the most important leadership attribute. Creative leaders invite disruptive innovation, encourage others to drop outdated approaches and take balanced risks. They are open-minded and inventive in expanding their management and communication styles, particularly to engage with a new generation of employees, partners and customers.
High-performing CEOs practice and encourage experimentation and innovation throughout their organisations. Creative leaders expect to make deeper business model changes to realise their strategies. To succeed, they take more calculated risks, find new ideas and keep innovating in how they lead and communicate.
The most successful organisations co-create products and services with customers, and integrate customers into core processes.
They are adopting new channels to engage and stay in tune with customers. By drawing more insight from the available data, successful CEOs make customer intimacy their number one priority.
95 percent of top performing organizations identified getting closer to customers as their most important strategic initiative over the next five years – using Web, interactive, and social media channels to rethink how they engage with customers and citizens. They view the historic explosion of information and global information flows as opportunities, rather than threats.
Better performers manage complexity on behalf of their organisations, customers and partners.
They do so by simplifying operations and products, and increasing dexterity to change the way they work, access resources and enter markets around the world. Compared to other CEOs, dexterous leaders expect 20 percent more future revenue to come from new sources. 54 percent of CEOs from top performing companies indicated they are learning to respond swiftly with new ideas to address the deep changes affecting their organizations.
To access to the full study findings and case studies, please visit: http://www.ibm.com/ceostudy
As a practitioner in the world of business creativity and innovation over the past twenty years, I am heartened by this encouraging news. We’ve all been tracking the success of innovators at companies like Google and Apple, and now it looks like a second wave of creativity and innovation is penetrating C-level leadership as more traditional organizations adopt Web 2.0 practices. We truly have entered the Age of Creativity.
Related:
Recent Blog Posts
This seems to be the season for studies, and I blog on some of them here:
The Secret Reason Your Employees Won’t Innovate
What do we need to know about the mind-set of today’s employees and
how do we keep them engaged in their work? The 2010 Global Workforce Study conducted by Towers Watson, reveals some illuminating, and startling statistics about employee perspectives and workplace trends.
About The Creativity at Work Newsletter
The Creativity at Work Newsletter provides overviews of new research in creativity and innovation, ‘best practices’ of leading organizations, links to new or relevant websites and an array ideas and techniques from innovation experts.
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Thank you for sharing this timely study. I am indeed heartened that Creativity is finally being recognized as an essential ingredient for business success (as many of us have believed for a long time). So how do we “instill creativity throughout an organization?” I view it as a two-part process. First, we must foster a culture of creativity in the organization, and there are many books and white papers that offer insight as to how to do this. Then â?? and I think this part is often overlooked â?? it’s very important to provide training and offer tools to awaken and develop creativity in the individuals that make up the organization. It’s one thing to talk about creativity, and have a corporate culture that encourages it, but quite another to invest resources to actually teach individuals to access their own natural creativity. The interesting thing is that when we do teach individual creativity, we not only get people who are more creative, but we get people who are happier, more energized, and more responsible… better corporate citizens.
I’ve just published a book called “The 20-20 Creativity Solution,” which may be useful to help individuals in a corporate setting connect with their authentic creative selves. More info at the2020book.com
Thanks for your comments John. I agree with your views. Creativity is a two-part process and it starts with fostering the right culture/mindset.
Hi, I found your website on the list of the 50 Best Blogs for creative thinking. Congratulations. I’m always interested in creativity of all kinds. Great site.
Thanks for your comments. Have a look at my Facebook page too: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Creativity-at-Work/34233786484
Excellient descriptions about creativity and how the creativity relates to CEOs.