“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” – Charles Darwin
Graham Williams
Curiosity
One of science’s most important discoveries is that the physical and neurological symptoms of fear only differ slightly from those of curiosity. Fears of failure and insecurity can be driven out by the stronger drive: inquisitiveness. This leads to freedom, exploration, discovery and improvement as we find ourselves “wandering around in unknown territory, in a search for connections where there seem to be none”.1
Fun
Laughter is good for our well-being. Twelve hours after a bout of prolonged laughter the effects can still be detected in the blood stream (vascular flow and oxygenation). Laughter reduces stress, relaxes and calms us, counters negative thought patterns and introduces a state conducive to creativity. Incidentally, humour and creativity are
neurologically similar. We laugh because of an unexpected, incongruent punch line of a joke – a shifted frame of reference. Groups that have fun are more relaxed and more creative.
Diversity Diversity of perspectives, roles, intelligences, thinking styles and focus, views, approaches and cultures significantly stimulates creativity and originality in a group. Implicit in the idea of diversity is teamwork.
that collaboration is at the heart of innovation. 3
Thought-leaders are currently shifting the emphasis from individual to groups in their creative endeavours. 2
profitable Reckitt Benckiser group (merger of Reckitt & Coleman and Benckiser) which relies heavily on innovation says, “…we also work in groups all the time…so team spirit is also very much part of our culture…” 4
Bart Becht of the highly successful and Steven Johnson believes
Mindful reflection
is from Jon Kabat-Zinn who has pioneered the use of mindfulness in the medical world, and his research shows that mindfulness has positive effects on the immune system, cell health, our biology, and it lights up the narrative network in our prefrontal lobes. There has been a recent plea to introduce
the concept of scientific mindfulness to international business research: “The road ahead: scientific mindfulness. Because of the
“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” – Steve Jobs
September 2011 | Management Today 39
awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment by moment”.6
This quote
Umair Haque suggests that we need to make time to break away from ‘doing’ and to reflect more. He observes that “the most… breakthroughs, that re-imagine, reinvent, and re-conceive a product, a company, a market, an industry, or perhaps even an entire economy rarely come from …busier and busier work. Rather, in the outperformers that I’ve spent time with and studied, breakthroughs demand systematic, structured periods for reflection – to ruminate on, synthesise, and integrate fragments of questions, answers, and thoughts about what’s not good enough, what’s just plain awful, and how it could be made radically better.” 5 Mindfulness can be described as “…the
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