FROM DILIP MUKERJEA

"Genius is in-born, may it never be still-born."

"Oysters, irritated by grains of sand, give birth to pearls. Brains, irritated by curiosity, give birth to ideas."

"Brainpower is the bridge to the future; it is what transports you from wishful thinking to willful doing."

"Unless you keep learning & growing, the status quo has no status."

Friday, March 27, 2009

ESTABLISHING A CREATIVE ENVIRONMENT

Don’t stipulate, stimulate!
Give people space-time to indulge in serious play! Recognise that play and laughter are strategic business weapons. Stimulate new conversations, new perspectives, new passions!

Motivate!
Extinguish fear and paranoia by involving, informing, intriguing, and inspiring everyone. The workplace should be safe, so that the workers are not afraid to take risks and make mistakes; this enables high standards to be set.

Spark off creative combustion!
Dissent demolishes stagnation; provoke and embrace multiple perspectives.

Sanction autonomy!
A sense of freedom, for its own sake, not freedom for or freedom from, liberates the spirit and catalyses creativity. Give people opportunities to pursue their personal aspirations.

Encourage thinking out of the coffin!
Obliterate corporate death by celebrating off-beat, way-out, points of view. Award prizes for the zaniest ideas.

Experiment constantly
with creative ergonomics. The work environment needs to be attractive, informal and relaxed, with ample room for spontaneous redesigning. Creativity is inspired, not acquired. Creative people require an atmosphere conducive to thinking in nonstandard ways.

Open up the system.
Paranoia is the bane of all passion-propelled creative work. One way to keep defences down is to encourage experimentation.

Encourage roles over rules.
Clock-punching routines can inhibit creativity, and erode trust. Instead, make people proud of, and accountable for, the results of their work. Inspire and encourage flexible thinking; this creates a shift from a value-added to a value-multiplied mentality.

Know that hybrid vigour emerges from the union between success and failure,
two mutually sustaining aspects of human development. Relentless innovation is allowed to happen when you blur the distinction between success and failure.

[Excerpted from the 'Igniting Innovation' edition of The Braindancer Series of bookazines by Dilip Mukerjea. All the images in this post are the intellectual property of Dilip Mukerjea.]

Say Keng's personal comments:

Reading the foregoing essay by Dilip Mukerjea reminds me of a beautiful quote often attributed to Steve Jobs, which goes something like this:

"You cannot mandate productivity, you must nurture the environment, create the space & provide the tools to let people become their best."

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