Creativity is about parenthood, education and freedom

Creativity is about parenthood, education and freedom. Can companies develop a creative culture based on these drivers?

Recently, exactly two weeks ago at 6am to be more specific, we – two founding partners of Innokinetics – were blessed with a newborn baby girl! This unique event in our lives made us think about “the what’s and the how’s” as regards the way we aspire to raise our baby. Being designers, artists and innovators ourselves, we see our child’s life as a “blank canvas” waiting to be filled in with exciting, colourful and wonderful things. The question however is how exactly and with what?

We read books, talked to friends, attended meetings and conferences. We even did some research! But at the end of the day, the basic principle came down to a reflection on our own personal experiences and role models, being our own parents!

The starting point of this introspection was the following: Today, we are being recognized as “creative persons” at least by some of our friends, students, clients and LinkedIn recommendations :). If this is the case, the following questions obviously arise: “how did we get here?” What are/were the leading, core factors in this process? What went right and what went wrong along the way? One thing we are sure and certain about however is that until now, our walk of life has been a very happy and intensive one…. not in the least thanks to mom and dad!

Our parents did not hold any academic Master’s or PhD degrees, but they had intuition, vision, ambition, life experience and a big heart instead!

In today’s “Eyes and Knowledge” we identify the following factors as being crucial in our quest to become creative workers and evangelists :) :

• Our parents always allowed us to express our own personality – e.g. during wintertime we could wear summer t-shirts and vice versa. This might look like a very simple example, but it illustrates so perfectly well their willingness to understand and respect our need for expressing ourselves as different and irreverent youngsters.
• They always said “yes” to all our hobbies and pastime ideas we wanted to try out; from piano lessons, to music & art classes, to several different sports which were of course most of the time scheduled at the same moment (tennis, football, handball, riley hockey, badminton, gymnastics…) , to boy scouts. Most importantly, they were not crossed with us for leaving one or more of those hobbies after just 3 to 4 months of trial and experience. They understood the power of “been there, done that” and the power of experimenting.
• They always “pushed us” to grasp at least a little bit of knowledge on a wide range of different issues and topics. Already at a very young age, they triggered us and inquired us after our opinion on politics as well as football, school, friendship, economics, art, music, etc…They continuously pushed us towards developing an open mind, as well as debating skills and a multi-disciplinary knowledge background.
• They always celebrated the small and the bigger victories together with us. They understood that confidence can and should be nurtured. They applied Amabile’s progress principle.
• They always supported us and always found the right positive and supportive words when we failed. They were always there for us when they needed to be, proclaiming the message we desperately needed to hear at that moment: “you can do better the next time, just try it again and again”; they allowed us to fail and retry in order for us to be successful afterwards.
• They didn’t allow us to think negatively or to surrender by stating “I cannot do it”. They were always there to push us through those difficult moments and helped us just by saying “just do it” and try it! They were always positive and optimisticabout everything.
• Very soon in life they “transferred us the notion of responsibility”; they taught us to be responsible for our own actions. By being responsible, we can push the limits, break the barriers but we cannot “overcome the frontier”
• They were the first to live their lives with a sense of humor and playfulness. We grew up in a playful environment. Even now, being well in our forties, our parents still enjoy watching us play and joke around. We always seek humor even in serious matters and believe this is an important skill to live by! :)

Back to the million dollar question; can companies develop a creative culture based on parenthood, education and freedom?

YEP, YES THEY CAN (thank you Obama!), and they should! If the companies’ focus and efforts are centered around innovation, it is even a MUST! How? Turn yourself into your company’s parents and educators and create your own creative culture through:

• Empowering your employees by stimulating them to express their own personality, promote diversity and freedom of behavior.
• Ignite the power of experimentation within your company and together with all collaborators.
• Promote cross-pollination and collaboration within your company. Let your employees learn from each other’s knowledge, bring new knowledge inside the organization, send you employees to the opera, to the theatre, for example, let them learn from other fields and experiences.
• Create your own routine for celebrations. Show your team that all small and big progresses are important to build confidence and team spirit.
• Incentivize trial and failure process. Make sure your employees fully understand and are comfortable with the idea that it is good to try new solutions, that failure is part of the process, and that this idea is fully embedded within the company’s DNA.
• Be positive and optimistic. The right atmosphere is of primordial importance to make creativity flourish and bloom.
• The best ideas always came near the limits. Make sure your team realizes that they should push it to the limits of common sense, ethics, craziness, etc. Near that line you can be “Unique”.
• Live in the playfulness “garden”. Your company must be the best place in the world to work at, a place where people are allowed to behave like… people, talk informally, play, collaborate on crazy ideas, where they can try new things just because they want to…

We, at INNOKINETICS, already know through our experience and expertise that we can help organizations to change and develop their own creative culture, enhancing innovation to naturally flourish and succeed. The question remains however: Can we accomplish the same with our newborn child?

We are confident that if we follow our “Role Models” :), we will be able to do so!

Why don’t you try to start a change and talk to us? Just do it!

This post was originally published on our company website under our blog: http://innokinetics.com/innovation-culture-parenthood/