­­­All for one and one for all !

This is how I would call the spirit of my company.

First let me say some words about the things, that inspire me on writing this and gave an example of such things worked out.
It is an article from Harvard Business Review, September 2008, “How PIXAR fosters Collective Creativity”; and the book by Klaus Kobjol “MotiveAction”.

Below I will structure my mind and yours understanding of the topic I am going to write about.
1. I believe.
2. Creativity?
- What is it
- Benefits
- How to improve and keep alive bootstrapping?

1. I believe.

- Talented people are the Driving force of your company.
It’s not surprising you, but still… People are more valuable than the ideas! At least because, their lives, their power and effect on the environment and world’s development, are PERMANENT, UNPREDICTABLE, USEFUL (sometimes – just FUN), and made for the other PEOPLE!

Resume of my opinion: Invest in people! Not in ideas!

Troubles, connected with talented people:
- Not easy to find;
- Hard to get such people to work effectively with one another;

Thing, that I am convinced in (agree with [1]), and you MUST understand while working with creative people (sometimes it is about showing them, that they are smarter, just to improve their will to improve and be creative) :

- It is OK to hire people, who are smarter than you are.

2. Creativity?

- What is it?

At first. It is an attitude.
To the life.
To the way of solving the problems.
To doing things and making your thoughts/goals/dreams/demands REAL.
Other words – being creative during the process – the way to the creative result.
When it comes to work. Creativity – is the view “Outside the box”.
· I am talking about useful creativity in business world.

- Benefits

Inspiration for the team, as well as personal inspiration
Motivation and effective work
Results (product\service with either good quality and originality)
Happy people and strong demand to work
Competitive advantage (human resources)
Such atmosphere takes Innovations easily (or finds them)
And some others, I will discuss below.

- How to improve and keep alive bootstrapping?

I will try to define the main principles of stimulating and keeping the spirit of creativity inside:

- Make the work on ideas be passion about the topic, not personal!

- Show work in an incomplete state to all the crew! Although the leader makes decisions, everyone is encouraged to comment!

I like this idea (from [1]) very much, because :
- members are not just showing work “still in progress” (they can stop and see the result, analyze and be more creative about the future part of work)
- managers can communicate important points to the entire crew at the same time
- people learn from, inspire each othe

- Enjoy what you are doing!

- Learn together!
I am sure, that learning together is a good team-building and relaxing thing about managing creativity.

- Interact with new people.

It would be great to organize, for ex., “creative Thursdays on the 9th floor”, where from 3pm (before the end of the working day) would start the meeting for the students and all the people, that know about it. (the ads – are in Universities)
The meeting should be related to the 2 topics –
1) the News, that someone liked or not, but it makes him think. (Goal – is chatting, relaxing, eating, getting familiar with the comers and etc.)
2) any of the aspects of company’s project (if there any cases, that can be issued with outsider’s idea), sharing experience and getting fresh view from young audience.

- Analyze! And post the results inside the company!
Because, when you look at pluses and minuses, you define a balance, and can easily make the decision on what to improve and what to keep.
This is about financial results from one side, and about the employees relations and feedback from the other side. The first can be reached by the corporate (inside) site, and the second – by anonymous blogs of the employees (I really like this idea with blogs! :) ).
It stimulates the discussion, and discussion generates creative ideas!

These are some rules, I would use in my company.

I did not discuss the disadvantages of hyper-creativity, because this topic is too huge and different.

[1] Harvard Business Review, September 2008, “How PIXAR fosters Collective Creativity”
[2] Klaus Kobjol “MotiveAction”