CEO Today - April 2023

65 Train your creative muscle Do you think you can learn to be more creative? You may be surprised by the research findings of INSEAD professor Nathan Furr, who looked at the balance between nature and nurture for both IQ (general intelligence) and CQ (creative intelligence). The results show that while IQ is roughly 80% genetic, only approximately 33% of CQ is genetic. Creativity is like a muscle; you can train it by using it regularly just like designers do. And like any muscle, creativity needs nourishment. You may get your inspiration from going to museums, theatres and movies, or from learning new things, reading, playing, cooking or inspiring conversations. It can be anything you enjoy that stimulates your curiosity and your senses. CEOs can learn a lot of lessons from designers, but let’s not forget that design is a collaborative process. You should not only create the desired result, and the road to get there, but also the team that will make it happen. Just like in any other project, people make the difference between an average design and a great one. In a traditional project management approach, you complete a project within a linear sequence. You plan the different steps from A to B, execute, finish, and evaluate. The scope of the project is defined at the beginning, with clear expectations, responsibilities, and stage- gates to decide when to go to the next step. For designers, the road from A to B is not a linear one but an iterative one. They learn by doing, experimenting, failing, and adjusting along the way – just like entrepreneurs do. Fail quickly and cheaply To create new solutions, designers embrace the unknown, challenge conventions and allow themselves to make mistakes. The courage to try out new things is often associated with having a high riskappetite, but you can learn from designers how to take calculated risks by starting out small with pilots. Just like the prototypes of designers, these smaller-sized experiments are designed to fail quickly and cheaply.

RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy Mjk3Mzkz