Scott Berkun is a noted public speaker on the topics of innovation and creativity and is a best-selling author of books that include Myths of Innovation and Making it Happen. In an interview with Perspectives, Berkun answered this question:

What’s needed to move creativity from idea to action?

The essential elements to move an idea into action are passion and conviction. Ideas are lazy – they don’t do any of the work themselves. That leaves it up to the person or people who believe in the idea, and are passionate about it, to see it through. Anyone can talk about an idea, but who will invest their time or money in making it happen? Only someone with conviction. 

Conviction is like a muscle. You have to use it to grow it. If you have a good boss or good co-workers, they'll help you, but there is a good chance you will have to fight for your ideas on your own. It’s no secret that most people are afraid of failure and being wrong, so they avoid getting completely behind their own ideas. But the only way to get better at working with ideas is to stand behind them, listen to feedback, and make them better.

This is what separates the people we call “creatives” from everyone else: They work on their ideas instead of just talking about them. If you have an interesting idea, make a list of the resources you need to make a prototype or to do a trial run of putting the idea in action. Money? Time? Skills? Then consider who you know that has those resources, and pitch them on the idea to get them involved. Or if you have the resources yourself, even better. The point is to stop only thinking about your idea, and start doing it.

“How to Innovate Right Now”

Throughout this issue of Perspectives, questions frame our look at creativity. In an essay on his website, Berkun declares that questions, along with experiments and self-reliance, form the tool kit of every innovator. Here is an excerpt from the essay “How to Innovate Right Now.” 

Ask Questions.

The easiest place to start is with things you do every day. Simply ask: Who else does this, and how do they do it differently? If you only know one way to do something, you’re making a big assumption. You’re betting that of the infinite ways there are to do it, the single one you know is the best. I’m a gambling man myself, but I wouldn’t make that bet, as those odds, one against infinity, are embarrassingly bad. Even simple things like washing dishes or tying shoelaces have dozens or hundreds of alternative approaches in use by different people around the world. Those methods are all potential innovations for you and everyone you know. The problem is that people have to go out of their way to find those alternatives and bring them back.

Not sure how to start? It’s with more questions. Useful questions for innovators include these:

• Why is it done this way?
• Who started it and why?
• What alternatives did they consider, and what idea did their new idea replace?
• What are my, or my friend’s, biggest complaints with how we do this thing, and what changes might make it better?
• How is this done in other towns, countries, cultures, or eras of time?
• What different assumptions did they make or constraints did they have?
• How can I apply any of the above to what I do?

Many great innovators asked better questions than everyone else, and that’s part of why they were successful. It wasn’t genius, whatever that means, special top-secret brain exercises they did every morning, or even how much money they had. It was through the dedicated pursuit of answers to simple questions that they found ideas already in the world that might be of use.

Isaac Newton asked how could the force of gravity affect apples as well as the moon? And by framing the question that way, he made observations and developed mathematics related to gravity, something no one else had done to his level of satisfaction. Many of Leonardo da Vinci’s inventions started with him asking the question: How does water flow? It was his many studies of rivers, streams, and the way water moved that led to his inventions for water-powered wheels, ways to move water in aqueducts and canals, and pumps for wells. Without asking questions and looking around, even at obvious everyday things like water and gravity, Newton’s and da Vinci’s creative talents would never have had a chance to surface.

We all know creativity matters. Hardly a communications RFP is written that doesn’t emphasize a need for creative ideas. But exactly how does creativity move the needle? And how can a company or team become more creative? In this installment of “Viewpoints,” Ketchum counselors address these basic questions by answering four more specific ones:

• How can creativity enhance reputation and brands?
• How do you stimulate creativity inside organizations?
• How can communicators shift from left-brain thinking to right-brain thinking?
• How can creativity drive news?

In one word: communications.

Of course, no one thing alone can set the stage for an environment where people feel motivated, empowered and inspired to think about a problem a company or a product in a different way. It takes a critical mass of factors to bring a creative culture to life. But for virtually any strategy an organization pursues to promote creativity, communications can be the catalyst.

Here are 10 tried and true ways to stimulate creativity inside organizations with a focus on how the communications functions, in particular, can help.

1. Champion creativity at the C-suite level. There is a growing realization from the C-suite that fostering creativity is good business. Corporate communications departments can take the lead in helping senior leaders deliver the message to employees that the company welcomes their ideas. A place to start might be using employee meetings, videos or internal blog posts to share stories about what inspires top executives to be creative.
2. Tap ideas from all ranks. A good idea can come from anywhere within an organization, whether it’s a marketing executive with regular access to the C-suite or a factory worker in a far-flung location. The challenge is capturing those ideas. Communications can create the tools and channels for employees to exchange ideas with one another or share them with management – no matter where an employee sits in the organization. Such tools might include an internal chat room or a dedicated e-mail address.
3. Dedicate time and give permission to fail. Time is essential to creativity. Yet, in the current economy, employees are being asked to do more with less, leaving little time for deliberate exercises in creativity. Managers looking for great ideas must understand that they probably cannot get creativity “on demand.” Creative ideas need time to gestate. When those ideas do come, it’s also important to accept that there will be 10 bad ideas for every good one.
   
   Communications professionals can play a critical role in helping to frame messages around failure and risk taking. The right messaging can help cultivate a culture that celebrates failures by recognizing that each one offers a lesson that can help move the organization forward. For example, the technology industry often weeds out unsuccessful ideas through what it calls “beta testing.” The messaging behind the term is brilliant; it lets creative thinkers know their ideas will be given a shot and that they won’t be stigmatized. 
4. Reward risk taking. Employees who suggest new ways of doing things are bound to meet resistance. And even if co-workers embrace an idea, there is the risk of failing in execution. Organizations can counter both these situations by rewarding employees who present creative ideas despite the risk. Peer recognition can be just as important as financial incentives. Communications can help management develop signature programs or awards to recognize those who contribute and champion ideas
5. Collaborate and integrate. The typical organization is made up of multiple groups of employees with designated responsibilities. Bringing some of those groups together to share perspectives can produce insights that lead to the “next big thing.” For instance, moving the communications function closer to R&D might spark new ways to tell a company’s story to external stakeholders.
6. Minimize hassles. Any sizable organization is bound to have some level of red tape. That could mean an employee might need to fill out multiple rounds of paperwork or complicated online forms just to share an idea. Communications should play a part in streamlining processes by making sure language is clear and easy to understand – and that employees don’t have to write or type out the same information in multiple formats and forms.
7. Be open to diverse perspectives. Companies need to communicate that they are looking to recruit talent with diverse backgrounds. And they need to find a way to harness the voice of the customer to spur new ways of thinking. Communications can help with both.
8. Seek stimuli beyond the cubicle. A short walk, a good book or a song lyric can all inspire new ideas. Communications managers should encourage their teams to get out of the office from time to time.
9. Co-create with customers. Those who use a company’s products or services likely have the best ideas about how to improve them. Communications can help companies get better input from customers earlier in the process of development or change.
10. Live it every day and in every way. The reason some companies succeed in creating a creative culture where others fail is because there is authenticity in their commitment. They focus on it every single day. And their success brings about more success. Creativity begets creativity.

When it comes to generating earned media for product and brand stories, the bar can be quite high. Media outlets typically are leery of touting a brand’s promotional message, and even when they deem it newsworthy, rising above the noise of other news is a challenge. Corinne Gudovic leads the Ketchum account team that has developed award-winning PR programs for the Friskies cat food brand two years in a row. Here, she explains how creativity can drive news coverage.

If a creative idea is truly novel or big enough, that alone can be enough to drive news. But more often, creativity needs to move from simply being different to addressing a need or solving a problem. What worked so well for the Friskies cat-cam program was that the creativity behind it drew on a true insight that struck a chord with cat owners and other consumers, including members of the media.

“The creativity was that it drew on the media’s own comments, as well as comments  from their readers, so members of the media served as ambassadors for the story to their editors.”

Our team arrived at this insight by studying the target audience: cat owners. We did extensive online research to see what people were saying about their cats on places such as Twitter. A lot of what we found were questions and conversations around people wondering whether their cats whiled away time sleeping, eating or playing when no one was around. That insight became the impetus for a PR program that allowed the brand to answer a burning question for cat owners: What does my cat do all day?

The program attached mini-cams to the collars of 25 cats and the cats became roving “repurrters,” with the cameras snapping a photo every 15 minutes. This problem-solution approach, along with the idea of findings from a feline focus group, resonated with media.

For the second year of the program, we knew we needed both a creative idea and creative approach to media. So, this time, our research focused on reactions to the previous year’s news articles. We read every single reader comment on the online articles. And there were hundreds, if not thousands. One thing that stood out was this comment at the end of an article by an AP reporter: Will the cats get movie cameras next? Readers wondered, too. So, that question not only sparked the idea to outfit the cats with video cameras and turn the footage into a movie, but it also became part of the media approach.

The creativity was that it drew on the media’s own comments, as well as comments from their readers, so members of the media served as ambassadors for the story to their editors. Once the second-year story was out there, “newness” did not drive it. Instead, it spread quickly through social networks because it fit into conversations people were already having. It’s online popularity then bubbled up to traditional media. Similarly, any brand can drive news when its creative ideas speak to topics its target audience wants to talk about.

Roundtable: Creative People Talk about Creativity

This installment of “Roundtable” gathers three creative thinkers to talk about using creativity to communicate their ideas and about what inspires their creativity. Unlike traditional “Roundtable” discussions, where each participant answers the same questions, this issue’s “Roundtable” poses questions to each participant based on their areas of experience. Esra'a Al Shafei and Joy Anderson — both of whom made it onto Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business list for 2011 — each talk about using creativity for social change, and Lisa Linke of the Second City discusses the importance of a creative environment in both improv comedy and business.

Esra'a Al Shafei Lifts Voices for Social Change

Esra'a Al Shafei has founded three organizations that take a creative approach to advocating for social change. Mideast Youth, a nonprofit movement, uses digital media to amplify diverse and progressive voices advocating for change throughout the Middle East and North Africa. CrowdVoice.org is a user-powered service that tracks voices of protest from around the world by crowdsourcing information. And Mideast Tunes is a platform for underground musicians in the Middle East who are using music as a tool for social change.

Perspectives: You’re working on several projects with related themes. Let’s focus on one, CrowdVoice.org, which is powered by users contributing content. How was the idea born and how have you communicated it to others to get them involved?

Esra'a Al Shafei: The idea of CrowdVoice.org was born when I was stressing to find relevant news and coverage about social justice causes that I care about in a way that was visually organized. I wanted to create an open community that allowed anyone to contribute coverage, videos, articles, blog entries or photos about a specific issue that activists in a certain country are protesting about. The issue wasn't that content didn't exist. It did. People were blogging about these events in different places, posting videos anywhere from YouTube to Vimeo and using Facebook and Twitter to publish direct images from these locations. The problem was that it was a monumental task to look for these sources. It required using multiple browser tabs, hopping from one website to another in a distracting fashion, monitoring multiple feeds, and subscribing to multiple people’s commentary. That's overwhelming. CrowdVoice was created to eliminate that noise and organize all of these sources in one place where people can quickly access and navigate through this content so they can better witness each protest or human rights movement from various perspectives, and it uses a crowdsourcing model to ensure that the content is up to date and accurate. 

Users and contributors of CrowdVoice find out about the site primarily through Facebook and Twitter, but many also find it organically through search engines. We have blog widgets, and some users find it through the various blogs and sites that place our widgets on their page.

Perspectives: Where do you turn for creative inspiration?

Esra'a Al Shafei: I turn to innovative advertising models and creative Internet startups for inspiration. They really allow me to challenge myself in finding new and interesting ways to involve diverse communities in causes that typically do not get much attention and in figuring out how we can apply those new experiences or technologies to generate interest, awareness and direct action. 

For instance, I really enjoy studying how companies communicate their products, especially via guerrilla marketing campaigns. An example would be the numerous agencies that adopted QR or quick response codes in fun and unique ways to get people curious and excited about their products. It inspired us to use QR codes to raise awareness about important causes, such as the right of education in Iran. The campaign is called "Can You Solve This?", and QR codes are used by the campaign as a strategy to bridge offline content with online content, so that people who would normally not be exposed to these messages would have the chance to be informed about the topic of education rights in Iran. The code is distributed internationally by volunteers and can be found anywhere that is likely to get a person’s attention, from public transportation and outdoor banners to T-shirts, stickers and car magnets. Once someone scans the QR code with their phone, the user is taken to the campaign site where they can view an animated video about the cause and send letters of concern. 

Perspectives: What do you consider your most creative idea ever? And how did you use communications to bring it to life?

Esra'a Al Shafei: I would say Ahwaa.org, which is a bilingual tool for LGBTQ youth in the Middle East that leverages game mechanics to facilitate authentic, high-quality interactions.  Communication is essential to making the site successful, but the topic of LGBT rights remains taboo in most parts of the Middle East. So we needed to create a place where people felt encouraged to share their stories, advice, and experiences with regards to LGBT issues in the region — safe from prejudice and abuse.

The game aspect of the site helped communicate to users that Ahwaa was that place. It also is a key way users communicate to each other about the kind of content they want to see on the site. The more each user participates with responses that others mark as "helpful," the more points a user gets. Once a certain number of points is obtained, the user has the ability to access parts of the site that are restricted, with access given only to those that the community feels are trustworthy enough, which is judged by their points (and, therefore, the quality and helpfulness of their contributions). We employed this strategy to encourage communication on a difficult topic and ensure the site contains quality content to make it a strong resource for the gay community.

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Joy Anderson Launches Social Ventures to Create a Better World

Perspectives: As founder of Criterion Ventures, what communications challenges did you face in bringing the concept to life? And how did you use creativity to address those challenges?

Joy Anderson: There is always the challenge of balancing between the leading edge and the bleeding edge. The idea that you can change how a market works — which is what our various ventures aim to do — can be difficult for people to grasp. So, our ongoing challenge is figuring out how to expand people’s beliefs about what is possible.

One of our key areas of work involves getting people to look at investing based on how it impacts women and girls, and not just on profits. In putting forth an idea like this, our communications approach focuses more on being patient than on being persuasive. We’re not going to change people’s minds. Instead, it is about continuously putting an idea in front of them until our communication about it, along with ideas from elsewhere, shifts the way a person perceives it. We have cultivated some people for two years on an idea before getting it to click. It could be that I’ve said something 45 times before, but today I said it in a different way.

We continuously look for ways to be more creative in the way we communicate, and we’re exploring being more creative through social media. However, because of our focus on personal relationships, we’re still trying to figure out how to involve social media while staying true to our ideals about how we invite people into a relationship or a specific concept.

Perhaps one of the more creative things we do is something we call “convergence,” which is a different style of conference. We invite people to come together for an in-person, two-and-a-half day meeting to discuss a specific topic, but there are no set speakers or agenda in the invitation. Only after people sign up to attend do we design an agenda, putting group discussions together based on the conversations we imagine those specific individuals having with one another. This approach has been successful in attracting 50 to 60 thought leaders to each convergence and helping to create sustained conversations.

Perspectives: Where do you turn for creative inspiration?

Joy Anderson: All of us at Criterion Ventures get our inspiration from the conversations we have with people every day, including those with family and friends. I’m a great networker, but on the weekend I want to hang out with my kid and husband and putter from one thing to the next. There’s inspiration in that. Also, because some of the issues we deal with are very serious — including sex trafficking and the role of gender in investing — we can also find inspiration in not taking ourselves so seriously. To inspire creativity in our clients, we use a tool called Structure Lab, which includes a box of colorful cards we created to help people think about the structural challenges of their ventures in new ways. We are now working to take this process online.

Perspectives: How do you get your creative ideas heard over other ideas out there?

Joy Anderson: I spend time with people, practicing the art of conversation. I think many people believe that every conversation has to have a certain outcome to be meaningful, but I think you have to keep an open mind. If you go in already knowing what specific thing you expect, you gain little to nothing. If you listen carefully, you can wind up hearing input that makes your idea stronger and helps lift it over other ideas. That doesn’t happen without real conversation. We have to protect time and space for the conversation before we arrive at the answer.

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Lisa Linke Facilitates Improv Workshops for Business Executives

Perspectives: Creativity seems to naturally come to mind when we think of Second City’s comedy. Do you talk about what it takes to be creative?

Lisa Linke: At Second City, we spend less time talking about being creative and more time creating a culture where people are comfortable taking risks. The fear of failure doesn’t lend itself to creativity, so we aim to have an environment where every idea is valued. We don’t want anyone to be afraid to offer an idea that may be seen as too edgy. At the same time, we recognize that overconfidence can hinder creativity, too. If you get a lot of creative people together who have big egos, the interchange that’s often needed to bring an idea to its fullest potential doesn’t happen.

A critical component of our approach is that no one comes in with “the” solution. Everyone has to be willing to listen to everyone else’s ideas, and then be willing to add to those ideas or be comfortable with someone else adding to theirs. That takes trust and vulnerability, and these two things aren’t always common in theater or in the corporate world.

Perspectives: What is the most common question you get from business clients?

Lisa Linke: People always ask, “How do you process or test an idea once it has been created?” It’s a great question, because what people tend to fall short on are not ideas, but getting their ideas to their fullest potential. With improv, the best way to test ideas is simply to put them out there. You act in the moment. You see how people respond and you adjust the idea based on the response. The key is not to lose the idea, but to make it better.

In the business world, the job of keeping a new idea or product alive might fall to someone with the title of product champion. At Second City, championing the product is a team function, not an individual function. Similarly, product champions in business can be most successful by getting others to believe in the idea and help champion it. It’s also important to test your ideas outside of your usual circle. In comedy, we have a saying that “we’ve been in the monkey house too long,” which means we can no longer tell when something smells bad. To avoid this, we work in ad hoc teams so there is constant discovery and new input. Sometimes it might be necessary to seek a perspective from outside the organization.

Perspectives: Comedy, like public relations, tries to elicit a specific reaction from an audience. How does Second City use creativity to get the reaction you’re looking for?

Lisa Linke: A lot of times creativity is about perspective. How people perceive our ideas is subject to what else is happening in their world or in the world at large. Thinking creatively about a sketch performance is critical to getting the intended idea across. But creativity is not always about creating something new. It can be about seeing something in a different light. Even the tiniest modification to a performance can have an impact on people’s reaction to it. Our process of listening to everyone’s ideas and trying new things helps determine what that modification might be.

Trying new things is important, because if we’re trying to be creative by doing the same thing again and again, we can yield product but it will feel like harder work every time. Many of the companies we do workshops for have a meeting cycle that revolves around the same team, the same room, the same time every week. That may be efficient, but it is not an ideal setting for creativity. You have to find ways to be creative within the boundaries of business.