20 May 2012
The Innovation Conversation features guest posts from the world?s top and up-and-coming thinkers around the broad theme of innovation. We know Richard Hylerstedt through the Sandbox Network, the world?s foremost global community of extraordinary young achievers below the age of 30. Richard currently explores the intersection of communication, creativity and design at the D-School in Berlin. In this guest post, Richard summarises his research on creativity and organisational communication.?
How can creativity and ideas be promoted and supported by communication? In this post I present my research findings on the connection between organisational communication and organisational creativity.
To be creative is simply to generate ideas that are original and simultaneously useful. Communication between people naturally affects that process. But which are these mechanisms? Can organisational communication be shaped to promote creativity?
Practices and values in organisational culture
To understand the complex relationship between communication and creativity we need a model. The model I have created is based on the concept of organisational culture, where communication is one part. At the same time, culture is expressed through communication. This means that communication shapes the culture that it is also a part of.
My model contains practices and values in organisational culture. The model is based on Edgar Schein?s classic three layered theory of organisational culture.
The practices describe how the communication that promotes creativity concretely takes place. Values are the basic principles that lay the foundation for and are expressed in communication for creativity.
Most components in the model are easy to interpret, but some might need some explanation. Intellectual exchange is fundamental for the creative process. It is important that the members of the organisation exchange not only information, but also knowledge, experiences, ideas and insights.
Networks for creativity have a low density and strong couplings. This means deep relationships between people. But everyone should not have a direct relationship with everyone else in the organization. This lack of redundant connections prevents centralisation and unification of thinking and communicating.
At the same time, communication for creativity takes place without barriers in a way that encourages participation and engagement. This tolerance and trust is necessary to create space for ideas that challenge the established norms.
Looking at the values, creativity is the central one. It might appear obvious, but communication that promotes creativity must be based on a valuation of creativity itself. In combination with the other five values, creativity is the motivation why communication should happen according to the practices. When this happens, there is a feedback situation because it is this kind of communication that makes the values something more than just empty talk.
The core of the creative communication
I have analysed previous research on organisational creativity and from those results I have extracted the communication factors. My model of communication is the result of this analysis. This is a big step forward since earlier theories of organisational creativity tend to stop at the imprecise concept ?open communication? without explaining exactly what that is.
I want to emphasise that the creative process in organisations to a large extent is a communication process. Simply put: creativity happens through communication. Three main characteristics of communication are the foundation of creativity:
- Unmediated communication face to face is the base of the complex and unpredictable process of coming up with new ideas.
- Open thought exchange as a free flow of ideas, knowledge and experience is realised and encouraged through communication.
- Positive climate and feedback in organisational communication give rise to more ideas by decreasing the fear of critique and by forming a creative identity in the organization.
These conclusions are obviously generalisations. Each organisation is unique and has its specific circumstances. That is why my model is not an exact guide to creativity-enhancing communication. The model is a starting point for thinking about how communication can improve in your organisation and a reminder of how essential communication is for organisational creativity.
20 May 2012 Last Updated on 20 May 2012
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