What are the three main lessons that you learned from Creativity Inc.? Try for a thoughtful explanation that relates to your studies and your work experiences so far.
The work of Ed Catmull together with Amy Wallace titled Creativity Inc. (2014) encompasses new insights about the creativity in business. The book offers interesting and important lessons that can be useful for anyone studying or professionally engaged in the field of business management. First lesson taken away from the book is learning the importance of collaboration. Catmull mentioned that the primary characteristic of a creative and healthy organizational culture is allowing the people to freely contribute ideas, opinions, and provide criticism (86). People sometimes fail to imagine the importance of collaboration to organizational process. However, the book suggests that collaboration brings real success in the organization as Pixars can attest. In my own experience, I had been relying on my strength in accomplishing tasks that takes more than one individual to accomplish. It occurred to me at the moment that working out loud and being surrounded by individuals who are willing to share the same strength for me to overcome the challenges whether in school or at work. Collaboration provides a support mechanism that enables us to get from one goal to another; it is the same principle that applies in organizational settings when achieving goals through collaboration. This means that dedicating myself as a team player enables me to contribute with my talent in order to achieve a common goal. For example, in an organizational setting, working with another organization enables the company to create more competitive products and services.
Another learning aspect that can be taken from the book is the fact that in business management, it is the people such as employees that need to be trusted and not the process. This can be true in most organizations because the process cannot distinguish the good from the bad. However, the employees are most of the time very astute at determining what works and what’s not. As Catmull suggested, it is important that organization need to trust its people and believe in their creative strengths to allow them to do what they do best. It is ok to set certain parameters to keep everything in order, but there shouldn’t be a limitation placed on creativity. Sure there are roles and responsibilities and not to mention artificial deadlines, but with all the parameters set in place by the predefined processes, it should not be used as an instrument that impedes the flow of creative energy. Instead, the process should be cheaper and easier because they constitute the important aspirations that will increase the people’s productivity rate. Several organizations are working so hard to improve organizational process for the sake of higher efficiency, but it undermines the impact of changing circumstances and emerging ideas that can potentially improve outcome, which takes us to the third lesson learned from the book.
The third lesson learned from Catmull’s work is about managing with humility, according to him the job of a manager is to create a fertile environment, keep it healthy, and take notice of the things that could possibly ruin the work environment. What the author wrote has something to do with drawing the line between being a boss and being a leader. There is a difference in leadership when it is being exercised with humility. Leading other people as part of the daily work routine is no longer the norms in organizational management. In my perception, it is not always about the effectiveness of delegating or giving orders because as a leader, mentorship is more important.
Would the ideas in Creativity Inc. work in all kinds of organizations? Explain why or why not. In answering the question, draw on what you have learned as a business student.
It is apparent that Creativity Inc. has introduced me to new ideas in business management that I find difficult to grasp in a classroom discussion, and in the scheme of things, the ideas drawn from the book are potential lifesavers for any organization, but that is not always the case. This means that managing ideas such as trusting the employees’ creativity is an ideal strategy for any organization, which is a lifesaver in terms of allowing the employees to innovate and in return saving the organization from being defeated in the competition. For example, Catmull emphasized the importance of trusting on people’s creativity over organizational process. It is true that managers should trust in their people in terms of being creative, but that does not mean organizational process should only come next because not all organizations can afford to veer away from the process particularly if the process ascertains the effective delivery of products and services to the consumers. For example, the manufacturing is an industry built on the principles of producing something out of several components and materials.
In order to achieve the best quality of produced goods, specific production processes are being put in place to assure the efficiency in cost and use of materials. Not adhering to the production process would likely to compromise the quality of produced goods because an important step in the production process was ignored. The same with creativity, although ideas are great addition in improving certain aspects of the business it cannot be a priority in some industries. For example, creativity is not very useful in the financial business because it is difficult to imagine being creative with numbers when a single difference in numerical output would mean losses for the financial business. Therefore, the ideas discussed by Catmull in his book are theoretically useful for most organizations, but to the extent that the ideas can be practically put in practice.
Look at the strategic management process on page 6 of the textbook. To which parts of this process is Creativity Inc. most relevant? Explain why.
In strategic management process, the parts in which the ideas from the book can be most relevant are environmental scanning and strategy implementation. In environmental scanning, the organization collects and scrutinizes information in order to analyze the external and internal factors that impact the organization as a whole. Having to mention internal factors, the ideas from the book highlights the context of managing people within the organization, which are attributed to organizational behavior. The factors concerning organization behavior concerns the internal aspect of the business in which people management is an internal factor that influence organizational success. On the other hand, Strategy implementation involves actions such as designing organizational structure, developing decisions, or human resources management. That being said, the concepts presented in the book is most relevant in the process of implementing strategies that will improve human resources and employee productivity.
Which chapter of Creativity Inc. did you find to be the most interesting? Explain why.
The book is overall an excellent source of relevant insight on the subject of business management, but the most interesting chapter of the book is Chapter 8: Change and Randomness. In today’s age of globalization, those that are having difficulty adapting to change are often left behind in the competition. This is because in contemporary world, change is what remains constant, and the book explains the importance of being able to adapt to the change or be left behind. It should be a lesson for business organizations that are still clinging on the old practices when change is an inevitable norm towards success.
References
Catmull, Edwin E, and Amy Wallace. Creativity, Inc. Overcoming The Unseen Forces That Stand In The Way Of True Inspiration. New York: Random House LLC. Print.
