CHAPTER THIRTY CREATIVITY TOOLS FOR NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
Teresa Jurgens-Kowal
Creativity is intelligence having fun.
– ALBERT EINSTEIN
Even those working in the field of innovation shy away from creativity. Many, if not most, adult professionals express doubts of their own creativity. Yet, everyone can be creative. Product development practitioners, especially, must harness creativity for success.
Creativity is not limited to the arts, though it is prominently recognized in literature, music, and painting. Children are deemed creative and imaginative, creating small worlds and stories for playtime. Somehow, over time, we begin to view creativity as a specialized function for the performing arts or story time for toddlers. School systems and working environments often reward serious behavior and accurate answers over creative play and exploration.
The fall-out from conforming to pre-determined solutions is that people take fewer risks, and we end up constraining product development to easy tweaks of existing features. New products then fail to intrigue customers, and companies become trapped in an endless cycle of incremental improvement. Product launches are met with yawns from the marketplace rather than delighted consumers purchasing exciting products that generate profit for the firm. For example, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase lamented the lack of “creative combustion” ...
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