“I wouldn’t start from here… “: Framing the right questions for innovation in business

Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice seminar

This session reviews why successful creativity and innovation in business so often deviates from expectations. The title derives from the old chestnut about the lost traveller who asks a local leaning on a fence how to get to the nearest town. “Well,” says the yokel after a long pause, “If oi was you oi wouldn’t start from here… And so it is with much successful innovation. Whereas conventional logic often suggests ‘evolution’ rather than ‘revolution’, great breakthroughs have frequently come from unexpected places.

Speaker(s)

David Cox FCIM FRSA 2016

Description

The session will use three cases to illustrate the point:
a) Apple – benefitted from extraordinary early success through the radical vision of Steve Jobs. Then John Scully became CEO. What happened next is the stuff of legend…
b) LEGO – enjoyed many years of compound growth, but in the early 2000s profits dramatically became losses, due to a perfect storm of unprecedented factors. This is how they deployed counterintuitive solutions to restore their pre-eminent position in the toy market.
c) Wiley – a go-ahead CEO recognised complacent performance in a rapidly changing market place and issued a wake-up call. How was this received within the organization?

Using these examples, innovation patterns are highlighted – breaking the patterns; the dangers of groupthink and its consequences; how overt and covert limitations govern decisions the real world.

David epitomises the life of a maverick creative in the modern world. From his roots as a student of fine art, he graduated in psychology and after his postgraduate studies at Oxford became a clinical psychologist there before moving into the business world as a consultant to advertising agencies and their clients. Developing his early interest in the subject David has become a leading global expert on creativity and innovation. His book ‘Creative Thinking for Dummies’ reflects his interest in bringing the principles of creative thinking to a wider public. He now focuses on coaching and mentoring industry leaders and their teams on the impact of disruption in the 4th industrial revolution.

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