Masters in Innovation, Creativity and Leadership

The very experienced Herbert Hoffmann, a former client at Coca-Cola, writes to say: “Based on 30 years of experience, I would seriously doubt that you can educate people in Innovation, Creativity and Leadership!”

When we were putting together the new Masters programme at City University London, which was to have nine different modules taught by seven different schools within the institution, the mix struck me as potentially of great value to students.

Included were modules on creative problem-solving, technologies for innovation, creative design, turning ideas into action, creative writing, the psychology of creativity and innovation, the creative industries, and intellectual property law. Altogether an exciting cocktail. And one for which there clearly was a market.

It only gradually dawned on me that the academic staff tasked with the delivery of these modules, academic experts in their particular disciplines, had little knowledge or understanding of the big picture. And what’s more, they seemed not to think that this was a problem. It was like having individual specialists in flour, yeast, eggs, sugar, salt, flavourings etc, but no one with real expertise in baking.  

Did it work in practice for the students? Probably, up to a point. What is clear is that a team of ingredient specialists who were also qualified as bakers would have been better. Maybe a lot better.

Creativity in academia

As founding Director of the Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice at City University London, I proposed to my boss that we start a programme to offer to academic staff across the institution an opportunity to think both about their own creative skills and how they might develop them systematically.

In the months that I had been there, it had struck me forcibly that the most important contribution to the growth and development of the university the new Centre could make would be internal.   

My boss, a senior professor, was absolutely appalled by my proposal. Pressed for a reason why, he declared: “It’s what we do.”

So we taught creativity skills only to a few paid-up students on our newly-launched Masters in Innovation, Creativity and Leadership ‒ and left the academics well alone.

 

The urgent versus the important

It always amazes me that so many senior executives have so much trouble managing their time. The idea that they might systematically sort their to-do list into four prioritised categories often seems to come to them as a massive new insight.

Just in case this might be useful for you, this is what I teach:

• Urgent and important things: get top priority and most of your time
• Important but non-urgent things: get the rest of your time
• Urgent but unimportant things: are delegated - all of them (or dumped)
• Unimportant, non-urgent things: are dumped immediately

In the case of a group of senior academics at City University London, all of whom felt desperately overstretched, they told me that I just didn’t understand. Of course, that’s true. But they doubtless remain continuously in borderline meltdown.

Get started then start learning

Last week I did a sort of lecture at City University London for the students on their Masters in Innovation, Creativity and Leadership degree course. I was founding director there of the Centre for Creativity – and the MICL (as in “Taking the MICL”) was and is the best fruit from that time.

In reality the “lecture” took the form of a conversation between Marshall Marcus and myself (and the students), and Marshall talked about El Sistema, the project in Venezuela where kids from all backgrounds get involved in playing music in orchestras.

In Venezuela there are now 400,000 children participating, and there are El Sistema-style projects flowering around the world.

“Usually, kids who start to play instruments first spend several years learning before they think about joining an orchestra,” said Marshall. “But in El Sistema they join an orchestra at the beginning and, through that involvement, start the journey of learning how to play.”

How many other areas could that thinking be applied to?

Transforming outrageous start-ideas

“Let’s offer a Masters in Terrorism.”

“Say some more about what you’re thinking,” I urged.

“Well, around this university we have all the skills you’d need to be a first-rate terrorist.”

I had encouraged the group to explore some absurd ideas, but perhaps this was not going to thrill the Powers That Be at City University London. By this stage we had several dozen other “start ideas” and when it came to the time to pick a few to work up towards practicality, there was a small group who thought there might be something in it. So off they went to cogitate.

Twenty minutes later, they came back looking rather pleased with themselves. “We’ll offer a Masters in Counter-Terrorism.”

Brilliant. So often what appear to be outrageously impossible ideas can be transformed into winners if they are given the chance. 

I think this may be the outcome, just launched some three years later – an MSc in “Information Security and Risk”.

http://www.city.ac.uk/courses/postgraduate/information-security-and-risk

Doesn’t sound quite so daringly innovative, does it? But hopefully it will do well.

Spending on marketing in hard times

When I started work on Rowntree’s Fruit Gums and Fruit Pastilles in 1967, my rather ancient and knowledgeable boss, Michael Evans, told me that the reason those brands had survived the Second World War was that the company had continued to advertise throughout that time, whereas many competitors had withdrawn from supporting their brands, which had in turn died post-war.

Now there’s a powerful article in the current issue of Market Leader magazine by my colleague at City University London, Vincent-Wayne Mitchell. He’s Professor of Consumer Marketing there.

The article lines up the reasons that marketing spend in hard times can be highly effective. Here are a few of his points (all derived from recent research):

Increased share of voice (as competitors rein back)
Increased saliency and perceived brand quality
Boosted consumer confidence
Helps to justify premium prices
Increase in brand switchers to our brand
Reduction in media costs in a recession
Market share gains

Mitchell adds: “Breakthrough innovations can build firm value significantly, while small innovations preserve firm value.”

Wise words!

UnConferencing: Un for All and All for Un

While I’ve spoken at dozens of conventional conferences, I’ve always felt that the format – rows of chairs in old-fashioned classroom-style, with “teacher” or a panel of “experts” up front – is quite inadequate, rarely releasing the potential in the room.

So much more can be achieved by radical transformation. I first started experimenting with all this some twenty years ago. Since that time I’ve tried all sorts of different processes and formats, and have evolved a flexible approach that deals with many of the main issues involved in the trad format. Most recently I ran two UnConferences in Manila.

The first was a meeting of the top 350 managers at Nestlé Philippines (one of the largest and most successful companies in the country) and the second at a Brand Renovation masterclass for some 60 senior managers from diverse backgrounds (blogpost 14 November 2011).

A while ago, I wrote another post (31 August 2011) about the first Big City Brainstorm we ran at City University London to launch the Centre for Creativity.

And in January I’ll be running an UnConferencing session within the Association of British Orchestra’s annual conference.

There are a number of important principles involved:

• Communication ceases to be top-down and token Q and A.

• There’s a minimum of presentation and a maximum of dialogue.

• The dialogue (whether brainstorming, problem-solving, debating issues, visioning, planning or whatever) moves from the podium to the body of the room.

• The whole thing needs continuous and skilful facilitation.

• The room can be set up in various ways. I have come to prefer either small circles of chairs or round tables.

• Each circle needs a flip chart, so that ideas/thoughts can be captured immediately.

• It’s important to set up some groundrules for working together. These include the usual stuff – no judgements, anything goes, headline first, speak for yourself and so on.

• I like to work with the maximum of human contact and the minimum of technology, but with groups of 50 or more, the facilitator will need a throat-mike.

• Often, when getting reports back from the floor, I like to have the headlines come up on a big screen at the front – so a skilled “technographer” is needed for this.

Is your organisation still stuck with the teacher/class model? What’s your experience of UnConferencing?

Truth and Reconciliation in the City

When we launched the Centre for Creativity at City University London we held a “Big City Brainstorm” which pulled together a very diverse group of clever people – including several from the financial community in the City of London.

We were searching for ways to address issues emerging from the global financial melt-down and in particular the “addictive behaviour” (as one of our participants, a psychiatrist, put it) of people in the banks so badly hit.

There were a number of interesting and exciting ideas put forward, prominent amongst them the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission along the lines of post-apartheid South Africa.

On the day, there seemed to be quite a groundswell in favour of the concept. But in the days following, it seemed as though all the City of London folk had had second thoughts.

Apparently we just didn’t understand…

I still think it could be enormously helpful. How about you?

Anyway, the video about it all was a pleasure to make. See what you think: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N83vCg7q36c

Taking the MICL

Top priority, since I joined City University in London to set up their Centre for Creativity, has been the development of an interdisciplinary Masters in Innovation, Creativity and Leadership – the MICL.

That’s done now and over the past two weeks we have started the marketing campaign for it. A real opportunity, it seemed to me, for the marketing communications folk in the university to strut their stuff with this unique new offering.

Not so fast!

Because the Centre itself is interdisciplinary, the marketing people in the School of Informatics, where we live, said, “Sorry, you’re not part of our School. Nothing to do with us, Guv.” And the people in the corporate team said, “We don’t market academic courses, that’s all done by the specialists in the Schools. Nothing to do with us, Guv.”

The consequence has been that we decided to hire a dynamic, hungry young team at Claremont, who helped us shape up a complete strategy and plan, and went on to develop a range of exciting and unusual marketing materials.

The one I like best is the video they created for us, which links a Big City Brainstorm we ran together with the new Masters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqVqU-c00lE

The MICL is designed to give innovation leaders all the tools to turn ideas into action. It’s a two-year programme for people with experience who are looking for accelerated career progression.

You can read more about it here: http://creativity.city.ac.uk/master/overview.html

Something for you? Or for a colleague?

The two stages of childhood

Discussing my seven year old and her process of growing up with my colleague at City University, Kristine Karlsen:

“There are two stages to child development,” said Kristine. “First we teach them to walk and talk. Then we teach them to sit down and be quiet.”

This seems to me the pithiest and most devastating of summations. It tells us so much about why children emerge into adulthood with their creative faculties diminished. And why too often we need to have that side of us re-awakened later in life.

I have been thinking a lot recently about the lack of creativity in our British education system and I have some ideas about it.

But what do you think?