© 1997 Paul E. Plsek. All rights reserved.
For information on purchasing this book, visit The Creativity Bookstore.
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Adapted from Creativity, Innovation, and Quality
by Paul E. Plsek (1997: Quality Press).
© 1997 Paul E. Plsek. All rights reserved.
For information on purchasing this book, visit The
Creativity Bookstore.
Creativity and innovation are essential to business success as we enter the new century. Yet, the quality management literature is virtually silent on these topics.
The purpose of this book is to give quality management practitioners current knowledge on the topics of creativity and innovation, and to show how creative thinking can be used to advance the practice of quality management in organizations today. The overall objectives of the book are to enable the reader to:
The book is organized in four parts, with a Prologue and Appendix.
| The Prologue sets the stage for the rest of the book by presenting a concrete example of what I call "directed creativity." Directed creativity, as I define it here, is the deliberate mental action needed to produce novel ideas in targeted areas. I purposefully chose to start the book with a concrete example of creative thinking applied to a quality management issue to make a point: This is a creativity book for results-oriented, action-bent people who need to get something done. I hope that you will appreciate this application- and action-bias throughout the book. |
| Part I presents the case for bringing the tools of creative thinking and innovation into the quality management literature. Chapter 1 describes five generic factors driving the need for innovation in organizations today, two key challenges, and five reasons why practitioners of quality management should be interested in innovation. We will see that the goals of innovation and quality management are congruous. |
Having made the case for innovation, Part II takes a step back to present some essential theory of creativity. C. I. Lewis (1929) and W. Edwards Deming (1993) have taught us that learning cannot take place without theory. We cannot hope to learn how to direct ourselves to be more creative without some understanding of the theory of creativity and the workings of the mind. I believe that this section on theory sets this book apart from most of the popular literature on creative thinking. Most books on creativity present tools and methods only. These authors seem to assume that the reader will accept the methods and apply them on the basis of faith alone. This never worked for me, and I do not think that it will work for the largely analytical thinkers who are typically involved in quality management. This book stands apart from the crowd by presenting creativity for serious, analytically-minded individuals. Part II on essential theory comprises two chapters. Chapter 2 begins by presenting the insights that we can gain from the definitions of creativity and innovation, and then goes on to describe the processes of creative thinking and the mechanics of mind. Practitioners of quality management know that the quality of the output (in this case, creative ideas) depends on our continual improvement of the underlying processes (the mechanics of mind). In chapter 2, I will distill over 50 years of research from the fields of the cognitive sciences down to a set of core concepts that support directed creativity. Chapter 3 concludes the theory by describing heuristics and models for directed creativity. A heuristic is a rule of thumb that guides thinking and leads to expertise in an area. For example, the Pareto principle-search for the vital few-is a heuristic in quality management. There is no guarantee that we will find the vital few, but it is generally useful to think in this direction. Similarly, we will examine eight heuristics that summarize the accumulated experience and research from the field of creative thinking. Models are a step beyond heuristics. As practitioners of quality management know, models indicate flow and sequence. They guide thinking over time. I will review various models from the creativity literature and present a synthesis model that we will use to guide our thinking in this book. |
With a good grounding in theory, we are ready to move on to the tools and methods of directed creativity; the subjects of Part III. Chapter 4 opens this section by describing the three central principles that underlie all the tools of creativity. While other books on creativity hint at these principles, I believe that this book is the first to articulate them clearly. The key point here is that once we know the principles behind the tools, we can generate our own methods for creative thinking that are uniquely suited for our specific needs. I will show you how. Chapters 5 through 7 describe the variety of tools that support the four phases of the directed creativity cycle. Chapter 5 focuses on the tools that help prepare the mind for creative ideas. Chapter 6 describes the methods and attitudes that enhance imagination and the generation of new ideas. Chapter 7 covers the practical development of creative ideas and outlines the challenges of putting them into action. Throughout these chapters, I will stress the dual themes of inventing one's own methods and understanding how these apply to the issues we face in the pursuit of quality in our organizations. |
Part IV is the culmination of the book. While the entire book is about applying directed creativity in quality management, Part IV really drives the applications home. In chapter 8, I will describe how we can help our organizations be more creative in process design and reengineering efforts. Many practitioners of quality management find themselves leading or facilitating such efforts and many are frustrated by final designs that are not much different from the current processes they were supposed to replace. Fortunately, there are specific tools that we can apply in such efforts to increase the probability of generating truly innovative designs. Chapter 9 continues the applications focus by examining specific creative thinking techniques to enhance customer needs analysis. Chapter 10 presents methods that will help quality managers contribute creatively to new product and service design efforts. Chapter 11 describes creative problem solving. The purpose of these applications chapters is to enable readers to see that creative thinking is a widely useful and easily accessible skill. It is my firm hope that the methods of directed creativity will become part of the generally accepted techniques of quality management. Chapter 12 concludes the book with my thoughts on the future of these methods in the pursuit of quality. Finally, the Appendix contains several resources and bibliographies to aid your continued practice and learning. |
This book is directed primarily to engineers, managers, scientists, technicians, and other professionals in the field of quality management. Beyond the quality professional group, the book will also attract attention from managers and other professionals in organizations pursuing quality management. The primary attraction for this group may be the notion that quality management can be more than analytical methods. Many people in TQM-oriented organizations feel that quality professionals over-emphasize analytical methods, while dismissing intuition and non-analytical thinking. While I too am a quality professional, I hope through this book to legitimizes these other modes of thinking. A third audience that I hope to appeal to are organizational trainers. This group will appreciate both the background (research-based) information, and the specific creative thinking tools I will present.
In summary, this book is targeted to the needs of individuals engaged in quality management activities in business. My goal is to present the topics of creativity and innovation to this audience in a way that enables them to incorporate new skills into their daily work.
I hope that you enjoy reading the book as much as I have enjoyed preparing it. It is a major milestone for me in a journey that I began several years ago, and that I believe will continue for several more years beyond.
Like many of you, I have a strong background in the largely analytical methods of quality management. After receiving electrical engineering degrees from Texas A&M University and Brooklyn Polytechnic in the late 1970s, I took a job in the Quality Assurance Center of the AT&T Bell Laboratories--the organization where quality pioneers like Walter Shewhart, Harold Dodge, and others practiced. I progressed through various engineering and management positions in Bell Laboratories and was the founding manager of the AT&T Corporate Quality Planning Office during the 1984 break-up of the Bell System. In 1985, I went out on my own as a consultant. In 1987, I co-authored the Juran Institute's Quality Improvement Tools training series. I have since taught quality management and statistical methods to literally thousands of managers in several industries.
But the more I practiced quality management, the more I noticed the occasional failure of analysis. Slowly, I began to understand Deming's (1993) teaching that "the most important numbers are unknown and unknowable."
It was around 1991 that I began my serious study of innovation and creativity. As you will see from the list of books and articles in the bibliography, I am not kidding when I say serious study. I tried to read everything I could get my hands on. This book summarizes what I have learned so far. I am sure that I have much more to learn. But of this I am firmly convinced: creative thinking is something that analytical people-like myself and many of you-can and must master. Our organizations need innovation in order to thrive into the next century. We can help. But we must learn first.
I hope you enjoy the book. I also hope that you will share your successes and failures with me, in the same spirit that I am sharing my learnings with you. Please write or e-mail me at the addresses below. Happy creating!
Paul Plsek
1005 Allenbrook Lane
Roswell, Georgia 30075
paulplsek@directedcreativity.com
Prologue: An Illustration of Directed Creativity
1. The Need For Creative Thinking In The Pursuit Of Quality
2. Definitions and the Theory of the Mechanics of Mind
3. Heuristics and Models: Attitudes, Approaches, and Actions That Support Creative Thinking
4. Three Basic Principles Behind the Tools of Directed Creativity
5. Tools That Prepare The Mind For Creative Thought
6. Tools That Stimulate The Imagination To Come Up With New Ideas
7. Development and Action: The Bridge Between Mere Creativity and the Rewards of Innovation
8. Process Design, Reengineering, and Creativity
9. Creativity and Customer Needs Analysis
10. Innovative Product and Service Design
11. Creative Problem Solving and Incremental Improvement
12. Summary and Future Directions in the Application of Creative Thinking in Quality Management
Appendix: Resources for Continued Practice and Learning (11 pages)
Bibliography (180 references)
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Adapted from Creativity, Innovation, and Quality by Paul E. Plsek
(1997: Quality Press).
© 1997 Paul E. Plsek. All rights reserved.
For information on purchasing this book, visit The
Creativity Bookstore.
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