RELATED CONTENT


After diving deep into the inner workings of the brain, the Summit program segued to the less tangible concept of the mind and its relationship with creativity. Vision Monday’s lens and technology editor, Andrew Karp, took to the stage to introduce, Ted Gioia.

Gioia, a musician, author and expert on management and business creativity began his presentation with a major reality check about creativity. In giving the audience the truth on creativity for people and organizations, he made it clear that organizations actually hate creativity. While they know they need it, businesses are highly suspicious of it, he explained.





“Organizations are afraid that someone’s creativity is going to put you out of business, and creativity is often not a compliment,” Gioia said. “Organizations believe that they need to step outside of their business to get creative.”

Gioia emphasized that for an organization to thrive, it needs goals, hierarchy, a specialization of responsibilities, data-driven decisions and routines. Highlighting creativity counters all of these objectives, but that is also why the particular creativity that thrives inside of a business environment is “the most unusual kind of creativity.”

Ted Gioia told the audience that creativity is often seen as disruptive and people who claim to support creativity actually oppose it in real-life situations.
Vision Monday’s Andrew Karp gave the audience some background on Ted Gioia, a musician, author and expert on management and business creativity.
“It’s the kind of creativity that challenges us, that forces us to think in different ways, the kind of creativity that takes us out of our comfort zone,” he said.

According to Gioia, while innovation is necessary for a company to move forward, creatives are praised only after achieving success or at times even punished for it. He went on to say that creativity is often seen as disruptive and people who claim to support creativity actually oppose it in real-life situations.

However, creativity is encouraged to counter the Vasa Syndrome. Gioia explained, that this takes its name from the failed attempt by King Gustavus Adolphus to build the most powerful warship in the world. After the crew followed every instruction by the king, the ship sank on its first voyage in 20 minutes, less than a mile from shore.

Through this illustration, Gioia clarified that creativity is encouraged to prevent people from blindly following orders even when they’re wrong. Therefore, cultivating creativity in an organization is the only way to defy the negative effects of bureaucracy and hierarchy.

And that’s where thinking “inside” the box came into the scheme of things because to effectively cultivate creativity, the traditional method of stepping “outside of the box” just won’t cut it.

Gioia showed the detriments of “outside of the box” thinking with examples of powerful companies who went too far outside of the box and missed a huge opportunity at its doorsteps with disastrous results. For example, Xerox invested $1.6 billion to enter the financial services business in the 1980s and ended up missing the office technology revolution led by Apple. They exited financial services in the 1990s.

It’s through The Lion King Approach—creating new concepts from ideas rooted in the familiar—that creativity within a business is the most successful, he explained.

According to Gioia there are five viewpoints or roles to help develop the skill of looking at the familiar in new ways:

A- Administrator
E-Entrepreneur
I- Integrator
O- Output maximizer
U-The person who wants to Understand

Out of these viewpoints, Gioia said there is no best role—each is essential and every person has one that they rely on most. However, the most creative people can move from role to role, even ones that aren’t natural to them, while the biggest cause of failure is someone overplaying their strongest role.

“Creativity is a lot more methodical than you believe. It’s a lot more anchored in what already exists,” he concluded.

jwilson@jobson.com