Why is creative thinking important in business?
When we think about the hippest and coolest businesses today, they’re all doing something different. There’s something that sets them apart. I’m not going to use the typical Apple Computers or Toms Shoes example. Let’s dig a bit deeper to something maybe only a few of us have heard of.
www.icebreaker.com
Here’s something interesting to ponder, a company that lets you source your product to the exact farm it came from. It let’s you follow the process it went through to land in your closet. This type of company will become more and more common in the future. Why is it cool? The creators were able to think outside the box when designing the company. The web developers were able to think outside the box creating an effective interface to transmit what the target market would view as important.
So how can such a creative idea reach the point that icebreaker is at? Tim Brown’s simple approach of inspiration to ideation to implementation is a good framework to start with. Tim also points out the personality profile of a design thinker: empathy, integrative thinking, optimism, experimentalism, and collaboration. These are surely the traits of a design think but there’s something missing to change these traits into a design business person.
Every single CEO we talked to in our class possessed the traits mentioned previously, however, they also shared another common trait. They are all risk takers. Anyone that can take an idea that is not explored or already being done is a risk taker.
Listening, interpreting, and addressing is an approach Roberto Verganti writes about for finding new creative business ideas. I can think of no better example of someone that does this than the CEO I got to work with, Colin, from rain city strategies. I am still almost overwhelmed by his business. A model built simply off connections and current trend opportunities is unlike anything we would be taught in the constricts of Sauder.
Design thinking and Sauder:
As I mentioned in discussion in class, the sort of exercises we are all taking part in is stressing my creative side greatly. I used to think of myself as quite a creative person. After being in Asia for 8 months I could honestly say I was probably the most creative person in my classes as locals are raised in such a different way. In Canada we are lucky to have more of an opportunity to shape our own education and think in a way that does not have to be the status quo.
Saying this, and reflecting back on my four years of UBC and Sauder I feel a lot of this has been lost. University has become a game of juggling free time with assignments, competing for a grade that in the grand scheme of things is going to be meaningless in any time other than the near future. I have rarely been pushed to think outside the box in my classes in Sauder. Instead assignments are done, ranked against each other, and returned to the student with a number for a result. There’s no regard to what was learned, and I would say more often, what was not learned.
I recently made friends with some students that went to Quest University in Squamish. This is a private university that has a progressive way of teaching. They take one module, 3 hours a day, 5 days a week, for three weeks. Most classes are project based which gears grading towards the learning process more in my opinion. Although it’s not possible to do this at UBC, it’s an interesting approach to designing a program and was designed while thinking outside the box.
Should the Sauder faculty planners be put in a studio?