|
|
|
|
|
|
Institute for Manufacturing |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Centre for Technology Management
|
Creating Audit as part of an Intervention for Enhancing Creativity: A case study of a commercial R&D organisation
N. Raftis, D. Probert and J. Moultrie Centre for Technology Management, Institute for Manufacturing, Engineering Department, University of Cambridge, UK AbstractThis paper illustrates the deployment of a creativity audit which combines the theory of constraints (TOC) Thinking Process (TP), the KAI inventory of preferred thinking styles, and a simplified climate measure, within a commercial R&D organisation. A creativity audit helps to understand the current situation in an organisation in order to facilitate change for enhancing creativity. Although the concept of a creativity audit is not new, previous approaches have been based on survey-type diagnostics and while most of them provide some form of feedback to the participants with the intention of facilitating change, they have many limitations. The effort to enhance creativity in an organisation is in fact a change process. It is necessary not only to identify and understand individual factors that can affect creativity, but also to understand their interactions. People are often not in a position to describe the problem, rather what they can easily do is describe the symptoms that they see. This information is collected through a series of semi-structured interviews with a sample of key employees at different levels and is analysed using the TOC thinking process. This paper discusses a case study based on a large commercial R&D organisation. The “creativity audit” is explained and findings are discussed. The triangulation of results through the TOC TP tools, the KAI profiles and the climate profile is illustrated and examples are given on specific areas of concern. Finally this paper discusses how the audit was used for the organisation to move towards implementing change. |
a-z site index | about the IfM | the Institute for Manufacturing is a part of the Department of Engineering | Go to top of page
This page is from the Institute for Manufacturing, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge
www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk