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Creativity Comments by Winston J. Brill, Ph.D.

03/01 Creativity Comment

Collecting the Data

Since 1989, I’ve been studying the human side behind great ideas.  What I was looking for were themes in common to how people think of great ideas. I examined a diversity of disciplines including marketing, sales, research, administration, development, manufacturing and design, and investigated 350 of these great ideas.  There were some surprising (to me, at least) observations.  Through this Creativity Comment series, I’ll be pulling the observations into some interesting conclusions that should help you stimulate and focus creativity to innovative success.

I used many approaches to get the information.  For instance, when I consult for a company, sometimes I have an opportunity to ask a department or team what they are most proud of.  Then we backtrack to search for the factors that led to the key idea(s).  Usually most of the people in the group had no inkling how those ideas came about.  Through questionnaires and private interviews with each member of the group, including the person who had the key idea, I learned some of the more interesting details behind the idea's origins.  Frequently, I followed up with phone calls and emails.  

Next month's Creativity Comment summarizes some of the results.