Crowbars for Creative Thinking

1. Crowbars for Creative Thinking Chapter Eleven How Customers Think Chris Njunge Maksim Feofanov

2. Creative Thinking • The difference between creating an idea and imitating someone else’s • Focus is on thinking of marketing professionals and managers

3. New Ideas and thinking-The challenges for managers • Create or identify new ideas themselves • Understand new ideas that they encounter • Critically examine those ideas • Leverage them imaginatively in their own work

4. Assumptions on Thinking • Imaginative thought and Routine Thought involve the same cognitive processes • Everyone can be creative • Not everyone is equally creative • People with many diverse experience have highest capacity for creativity • Exposure to many ideas enables people identify, asses and if necessary change ideas easier

5. Assumptions on Thinking • Organizational Environments are critical Elements in Managers’ Creative Capacities • Organizational climate and workplace attitudes matter more than individual imaginations • They can hinder or strengthen creative thinking • The organization must explicitly value originality and welcome creativity

6. Practices that can stimulate creative thinking • Hiring people with graduate degrees from diverse backgrounds e.g. molecular biology, math, engineering and broad work experience. (J. Walter Thomson ad. Agency) • Introducing one idea from a non business source and asking “what would happen if we acted on the idea” (Proctor and Gamble) • Sometimes banning “business as usual” approach in business plan review meetings (McNeil Consumer Healthcare)

7. Assumptions on Thinking • Managers can find more Knowledge about consumers outside the Marketing Discipline • Willingness to tour other fields and the ability to find relevance where others see triviality

8. Assumptions on Thinking • Shared Themes Connect Highly Diverse Areas of Study • “Consilience”-Unity of knowledge that connects seemingly unrelated disciplines”(E.O.Wilson Pulitzer Prize-winning author and scientist) • The more overlap among multiple disciplines the more valuable those disciplines are to marketing • “Combination Therapy”-application of ideas from overlapping fields (J. Walter Thompson ad. Agency)

9. How to Think Creatively Ten theories in use

10. Favor Restlessness over contentment • Motorola-help device for customers applied to employee’s safety • Hallmark VP emphasis on single most important question left unanswered by research

11. Wonder about the Cow’s Crumpled Horn • What irregularity can we create in a standard way of thinking or in a standard practice to wrinkle the issue at hand? • Irregularities interest us • Managers must detect both anomalies and patterns

12. Play with Accidental Data • Consumers present data to marketers in accidental form I.e. they haven’t conveniently arranged cues so managers can easily fill in the blanks • Managers need creative thinking, which requires active play in this case

13. View Conclusions as Beginnings • Ask questions about: • Effect of additional information • Relevance of information for work • What would disrupt current results • What’s missing and what next • Are results analyzed thoroughly enough

14. View Conclusions as Beginnings • Treating results as starting point can reveal what is missing

15. Get Outdated • How can I make what currently know look outdated or old fashioned. • Ford • GM

16. Stop squeezing the same baby chicken • Improve ideas and practices • Don’t get stuck with same ideas • Ask for a consumer opinion

17. Nurture Cool Passion • Passion (emotion) + coolness (reason) • Be part of your ideas and apart

18. Have the courage of your convictions • Try new and unpopular • “Yea, but”, “It won’t work”. • Organizational climate and risk taking • Look for solutions, not the reasons

19. Ask generic questions • Generic questions – expanded mind • Example: modern society> effect on family and human development>problems identified>solutions sources • Society: lack of time, lack of socialization. • Effect: Nervousness,stress. • Problem: Need for more interpersonal interaction • Solutions – from other disciplines (Psychology, biology and medicine, arts, computer science, engineering) – online communities, online games, clubs, events, astrology and palm reading, religious sects, amulets, yoga and eastern teachings, PD classes etc.- keep your mind busy!

20. Avoid premature dismissal • Idea (new) rejection – nature of humans. • Narrow mindedness and opportunity loss effect • Change – via pragmatic quest for applications (opportunity cost analysis).

21. Integrating Creative-Thinking Principles • Restlessness – keep moving • Appreciation of the irregular – be open minded • Idea identification skills – keep asking • Idea generation skills- keep searching • Reasonable stubbornness – stick to your opinion • Six “why’s” in operations management: • Customer likes the product: why? • Because it is easy to use: why? • Because it is easy to hold in hands:why? • Because handlers are not sticky, etc: why? • Because of new materials used – use material elsewhere

22. Integrating Creative-Thinking Principles • Thought contagion – get sick • Take risks (and allow others to take risks). • Spent time to get know the unfamiliar • Apply research questions to other disciplines

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