Before & After : Creative thinking in business

Yes, we live in a disposable society. That hasn’t been news since Huntley and Brinkley reported it in living black & white.

Yes, my father drove a car for a decade and wore a suit for twice that long. I drive a car until the oil needs changing and it’s certainly not my father’s Oldsmobile. Do they even make Olds anymore?

Yes, today’s era of continuous improvement will yield particularly disposable disposable goods and, I suppose, a lot of disposable non-disposables, or durable goods as we called them in business class. (Don’t hear the term durable goods as much anymore, do we?)

But don’t get disposable products confused with disposable ideas. There’s a huge difference between goods and services and the ideas behind them. And I see too many people in business bringing the disposable mentality to the creative thinking process, which is leading to some pretty lousy ideas. Ideas with short, unprofitable shelf lives, not because they are part of the planned obsolescence that is fundamental to our greed-driven,…er… excuse me, free enterprise disposable operating model, but because they are simply bad ideas, hastily conceived to put out the fire of the day, with virtually no chance of enduring.

Here’s where I see evidence of this destructive trend. (more…)

If you missed our enlightening 20-minute conference call on August 8th with creative organization expert Paul Deslauriers, click here for a complete recording of the call, edited for easy navigation. This call was primarily with ad agency principals, but it will be extremely valuable to any managers who look to maximize creativity in their organizations.

Paul Deslauriers is president of B&A sister company, NRG Consulting, an organizational development firm that specializes in creatively driven companies such as ad agencies and media outlets to help them maintain their edge, not just creatively, but also in overall performance, efficiency, productivity and profitability.