core sector communique

CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION:

TODAY’S SOUGHT AFTER COMMODITIES

THE INNOVATIVE TEAM Provides Framework For Promoting Innovation

And Creativity Within Any Organization

We live in an era of accelerated change unlike any other in history. Products become obsolete in a nanosecond, new careers tracks suddenly appear while others quickly vanish, organizations rise and fall almost overnight, and just trying to keep up with technology can make one’s head spin. The faster things change, the stronger creative thinking and problem-solving skills need to be. To successfully compete in the twenty-first century, creativity and sustained innovation are key.

Chris Grivas, an organizational and leadership development consultant and Gerard J. Puccio, Ph.D., department chair and professor at the International Center for Studies in Creativity at Buffalo State College, have teamed up and written THE INNOVATIVE TEAM: Unleashing Creative Potential For Breakthrough Results. In this engaging business fable, they offer team leaders and team members a proven framework for promoting innovation and creativity within their organization. Backed by twenty years of research and international field-testing, they introduce a set of tools built on FourSight, a measure of problem-solving preferences, which can help businesspeople solve problems and achieve performance breakthroughs. THE INNOVATIVE TEAM shows that the creative process can be boiled down to four distinct steps:

Clarifying The Situation: This is the entry point – the starting gate in any innovation, performance improvement, or problem solving process. When clarifying, the real problem is sorted out from the symptoms or distractions. During this step, it is also important to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of each team member, as well as discovering how to move the team forward. This last point is repeated throughout each step.

Generating Ideas: At some point, the clarifying ends and there needs to be some ideas that will tackle the challenges that have been identified. This is the stage where there is that moment of illumination – the “Eureka” moment. Divergent thinking will help generate as many ideas as possible. Convergent thinking will ensue when there are enough ideas to choose from. Again, it will be essential to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of the team members.

Developing Solutions: Many people confuse creativity with idea generation; they believe that all you need to be creative is to have a novel idea. In this stage the goal is to transform novel ideas into workable solutions – tinkering, adjusting, and polishing. What are the strengths of the ideas? Advantages, drawbacks, obstacles?

Implementing Plans: This is the stage where project plans are created and completed. Now it’s all about action and, in many ways, about managing change. Who needs to be involved? What communications need to be drafted? What else is happening that may help or hinder success? Are the reasons for the change clearly laid out?

THE INNOVATIVE TEAM: Unleashing Creative Potential For Breakthrough Results is an indispensible tool for management and leadership development professionals, team leaders, and team members interested in fostering creativity and innovation in the workplace. In addition to the book, Grivas and Puccio are available to customize team workshops, individual innovation consultation, and courses in order to share the The Innovative Team and FourSight concepts.

About The Authors

Chris Grivas is principal of Chris Grivas Consulting  an organizational and leadership development consultancy focused on increasing the creative capacity of individuals, teams, and organizations. His clients have included Ernst & Young, Connecticut Children's Medical Center, and New York University, among others. He holds a Masters Degree in Creativity from the International Center for Studies in Creativity in Buffalo, NY. Grivas is qualified to administer and debrief FourSight, Myers-Briggs, KEYS, DISC, and The Center for Creative Leadership assessment tools. Chris Grivas Consulting is headquartered in Seattle, Washington.

Gerard J. Puccio, Ph.D., is Department Chair and Professor at the International Center for Studies in Creativity, Buffalo State; a unique academic department that offers a Master of Science degree in Creativity and a graduate certificate in Creativity and Change Leadership . In recognition of his outstanding work as a scholar, Puccio received the State University of New York Chancellor's Recognition Award for Research Excellence and the President's Medal for Scholarship and Creativity.

Based on his research, Puccio developed a self-report measure called FourSight  that identifies individuals' preferences within the creative process. He holds a Ph.D. in organizational psychology from the University of Manchester, England.

“A must-read for all leaders who want to improve the ways in which their groups find new and sustainable solutions to the ever-increasing challenges that organizations face.”

--Jim Kouzes, coauthor, The Leadership Challenge;

Dean’s Executive Fellow of Leadership,

Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University

“We live in an age of unprecedented and rapidly accelerating change, in which everyone wants to be innovative but few can define what that actually means or describe how to get there. . . this book creates awareness of the creative resources in your organization and offers a proven framework to harness them and achieve real, measurable results.”

--Dr. Casimer DeCusatis, IBM Corporation; recipient of the 2011 Sigma Xi Walston Chubb Award for Innovation

and the 2002 Mensa Copper Black Award for Creative Achievement