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The frenzy of sessions, workshops, plenary speeches, dinners, and parties that is the four-day World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, is over, and two things, at least, are clear. First, top managers of global corporations are convinced that innovation and creativity are critical to the future success of their companies. Second, to make that happen, a massive hunt for creative talent around the world is under way.
If any single business theme emerged from the 22 sessions on innovation at Davos, it is that CEOs realize that their current corporate organizations and cultures need to be dramatically changed, and that new people with new skills have to be hired.
This was brought home to hundreds of senior corporate managers at Davos when they went through a series of six CEO workshops designed to get them to think and act creatively. The workshops were set up to show business leaders how to design new processes, systems, and products by taking on new creative capabilities. In short, it pushed CEOs to personally try to "operationalize" innovation, and in doing so, showed them how hard it is to get it right.
FINDING NEW PROBLEMS. Most executives, for example, were blown away by the first workshop on innovation and design strategy when a group of eight people steeped in that area competed for the best creative ideas. Google's (GOOG) vice-president for search products and user experience, Marisa Ann Mayer, won with her twin ideas of embracing constraints, rather than fighting them, while simultaneously "maintaining a healthy disregard for the impossible." This yin-yang approach focuses innovative efforts while opening up the realm of opportunities for solutions.
Tim Brown, president of IDEO, the innovation and design consulting firm headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif, came in a close second with his idea: approach problems with a beginner's mind. "We learn our way to solutions," he said, and it helps to find a problem you've never worked on. Brown combines that perspective with fast prototyping techniques that visualize and build possible solutions, allowing them to make (and learn from) many mistakes very quickly.
Both ideas jolted and energized the CEOs in the audience. In succeeding workshops, CEOs were asked to develop their own open-sourced innovation by diversifying the people in their organizations, globalizing their R&D and creative teams, and simply changing the framework of the problems with which they are dealing. For many, it was liberating to see that shifting the frame of a problem -- and solution -- could open new and very lucrative business opportunities.
SCARY MESSAGE. People kept returning to the iPod example, in which Apple (AAPL) shifted the frame of the MP3 market to seeing the business model as managing personal music -- and video -- libraries. As one panelist said in the conference, the iPod and cell phones with small screens turn daytime into prime time for TV broadcasting. It shifts the entire broadcast paradigm.
Not every CEO got it. Paradoxically, many of the high-tech CEOs, especially of software-based startups, didn't. They thought they already knew about creativity and design because they were software engineers. They didn't get the message of consumer-centric innovation, of social production, or of co-creation with consumers.
Managers of more traditional, nontech companies did get that message. And it scared them because it is so different from the quality and cost-control management they're comfortable with. But at least these CEOs were open to the new innovation and creativity message, and appeared willing to hire managers who could move their companies in this direction. In this, the CEO workshop series was a success.
SEEKING LIKE MINDS. It also got CEOs involved to discuss what kinds of new talent they need to compete and succeed in a creative economy. In workshops focused on how to hire innovative talent and how to build your own creative companies, CEOs learned that the incentives for creative people differ from those of current employees. If they want more talented people, they would have to change their organizations and cultures. How do you attract creative talent?
Creative people want to be part of a great, creative team and culture. Community is very important to them. Shaping and managing that organization is critical. Creative people need compelling problems they can feel passionate about. These are problems that can change markets, solve social ills, and build new product categories.
This kind of talent also needs to do other things, often outside the corporation. They need validation within their own peer group and often within a global set of like-minded people. And they often like to be personally branded -- identified with innovations. The grey corporate organization man/woman is gone.
Sound hard to manage? You bet. Sound hard to find and retain? Yes. But just one Jonathan Ive (who is British) and a creative team of designers at Apple can generate a paradigm-shifting iPod that remakes the world and redefines a company. This is the takeaway from Davos. A very powerful message.
Nussbaum is an assistant managing editor in charge of the magazine's innovation and design coverage. In 2005, he was named one of the 40 most powerful people in design by I.D. Magazine
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