You hear a lot about these two things in my line of work. This makes sense considering it’s an interdisciplinary work. Whether I’m looking at something from the communications and marketing side of things and trying to foster creativity or just get some creative thought around problem solving, I end up needing the skills of creativity to get to the core of these things. On the other side, when I’m undertaking things from an IT and Web perspective, we’re always looking to innovate, problem solve and find solutions to things that we haven’t been able to figure out before.

These, seemingly, right and left brain activities, depending on the area you’re working in, seem disparate, disconnected, and I’ve seen folks approach them in that way, but the reality is that whatever it is that gets one to innovate or create comes from the same place.

If you’re going to try and innovate or be creative, you need to put aside pre-conceived notions, “blue sky” as we sometimes call it in IT, just brainstorm and let the creativity flow. You can’t try to organize the thoughts, harness it, or whatever, not initially, instead you have to just let it flow, document what’s coming out of the sessions and then go back, later and start to begin the process of dissecting, reviewing and critiquing the ideas.

I’m thinking of this now, because innovation and creativity in most organizations is kind of like pushing a cart in Ikea, or even worse, pushing a cart against traffic in Ikea. You’ll get somewhere, but it will be an unpleasant experience and one that you won’t embark on again. At the end, will you have achieved the creativity or innovation that you had hoped to? Maybe, but probably not… Managing creativity and innovation is like cooking a small fish, too much poking ruins it…