McKinsey Commentary: Sparking Creativity in Teams

Why does creativity in the work place matter? By creating new ideas, your company can drive additional revenue and lock it down so competitors can’t tap into the same market. Apple and Google are prime examples.

McKinsey’s “Sparking Creativity in Teams: An Executive’s Guide”, addresses how to spark new ideas in non-traditional ways. Gray Suit Marketing provides a synopsis and commentary.

Immerse yourself

• To spark creativity, throw your employees into situations different than what they encounter at the office everyday.
• Often this means sending them to an office or retail store that is in direct opposition to how your company operates.
• See what ideas come out of the experience and how they can be implemented in your company’s operation and culture.

Use Analogies

• Compare your company to a seemingly unrelated company in brainstorming sessions and see what comes out.
• Start by creating questions based on how a different company would conduct your operations and let the conversation evolve.
• A question like, “How might Disney engage with our customers” might spark a creative idea about customer service.

Create Constraints

• Impose artificial constraints on employees to start this outside the box thinking.
• Questions such as “ what if we can only interact with customers online” might spur ideas about online customer service and feedback from online sources.

Gray Suit Marketing frequently conducts workshops for a variety of San Diego businesses. Through these workshops, companies can turn their marketing departments around and truly make them profit centers.