Build your own garage

Establishing an effective organizational structure to foster creativity requires clearly defining three key elements. First, senior management must unambiguously communicate that innovation is a top priority. Unless creativity is expressly positioned as a vital strategic goal, it tends to get overlooked amid day-to-day operations. An explicit statement from leadership underscores that regularly generating, capturing, disseminating and leveraging creative ideas is imperative, not an occasional pursuit. This priority must permeate the mainstream corporate culture so all employees recognize the paramount importance of ongoing creativity.

Second, management must determine the optimal structural approach for the “garage” dedicated to creativity. Several options exist, each with distinct advantages and disadvantages. One approach entails acquiring an external creative firm and integrating it as an autonomous business unit. This allows leveraging an established creative culture while avoiding many internal political challenges. However, integration risks diluting that culture. An alternative approach incubates an internal or external group until it can spin off as an independent entity. This facilitates providing substantial resources and oversight during the fragile incubation stage. Eventually integrating the successful spinoff can then inject creative energy into the parent organization. Another viable approach simply establishes an internal group that grows over time until it transforms the broader culture. Initially running the group as a radical outpost unfettered by bureaucracy can foster unprecedented innovations. Gradually its creative ethos then spreads through the organization. Each approach has merits and downsides, but the chosen structure and autonomy must be defined early on to enable success.

A good corporate toolbox for creativity contains three main sets of tools: working tools, communication tools, and resource tools. The working tools are used by individuals and teams to generate new ideas collaboratively. There are five key tools for individuals: Think big picture but attend to details, as grand visions need feasible specifics to work; Be reflective when planning but intense when executing, combining broad plans with focused action; Innovate to surpass competitors, overcoming common obstacles in creative ways; Take risks but own mistakes, learning from failures; and Leverage creative tension between ideas as a starting point for major new concepts.

Many creative projects also require teamwork. Five main working tools for effective teams are: Know everyone's strengths and trust them to contribute meaningfully; Enjoy interacting together with a critical yet constructive atmosphere; Include thinkers to generate ideas, implementers to actualize them, and buffers to maintain focus; Use quiet periods to prepare for intense creative bursts, since innovations tend to come in waves; and Celebrate achievements but keep aiming higher, always trying to surpass them. Smooth communication flow enables a productive creative environment. Five communication tools facilitate this: Be clear and direct without ambiguity; Be concise in stating needs without excess; Provide target completion dates for shared deadlines; Share all available information so everyone has needed data; and Be action-oriented so people know what they need to do.

The three indispensable creative forces of an organization are technology, branding, and customer experience management. If utilized well, these forces provide an organization's life and energy, acting as catalysts for productive creativity.

No company can afford to stop looking for new technologies that add value. Competitive advantage often comes from creative uses of technology not available to competitors. Competence in evaluating and integrating new technology is thus important. Today, technology impacts how customers interact with a business across communications, service, marketing and more. Some firms creatively use technology to transform their entire business model. Any organization failing to competently and creatively use technology will fall behind competitors.

Key modern technology developments are the Internet, which enables supply chain efficiencies, and mobile communications, allowing continuous reachability for work anytime, anywhere. Future developments likely to impact productivity include: easier data transfer between devices, enabling communication; greater software integration, enabling single data entry across applications; easier, cheaper and on-the-fly software upgrades; enhanced personalized interfaces for efficiency; dissolved distinction between business and personal computing; and dramatic effects like changes to sales when all customers have mobile devices. The technology force focuses on capitalizing on these opportunities as they become viable.

Specifically, technology mastery involves communications tech awareness, website excellence, and supply chain management. Communications competence requires knowing emerging tech, planning implementation and training, and developing scenarios for business change upon uptake. Websites should align with customer aims, have appealing and functional design, and handle transactions smoothly. Supply chain steps like direct customer sales channels, open and collaborative partner networks, linking chains to marketplaces, and configuring the chain as a circle rather than sequence all drive out inefficiency.

The corporate garage presents a new way of conceptualizing business, moving away from the purely mechanistic, hierarchical, and analytical model underlying traditional management. Rather than a business managed solely by rational objectives, the corporate garage focuses on flexibility, opportunities, and direction. Constructing a corporate garage within an existing organization requires three crucial steps. First, key decision-makers must prioritize creativity, dedicate resources to establish a garage unit, and recruit people with the necessary creative skills. Next, creativity must infuse projects and initiatives at all levels of the organization. Finally, the organization needs to apply core creativity competencies like branding, technology, and customer experience across all operations.

As the corporate garage takes shape, it also allows rethinking other traditional management concepts: The business mission becomes an informed direction rather than foregone conclusions or vague generalities. For the corporate garage, progress matters more than the illusion of progress. Thus, the garage team leverages the mission statement to provide direction, which evolves daily in response to external changes. The mission operates as a living, breathing process rather than static words on a wall.