The Role of Technology in Innovation

June 18, 2014 - PRLog -- Article Written by Greg Satell (http://www.innovationexcellence.com/blog/author/gsatell/)- on Innovation Excellence (http://www.innovationexcellence.com/blog/2014/06/15/how-technology-enhances-creativity/).
I recently wrote a post about how marketers will need to learn to rely less on judgment and intuition in the era of big data.  It’s a controversial subject, especially since many marketers pride themselves, in fact have built their careers, on having a reputation for instinct.

So I expected a certain amount of pushback, but instead many people seemed to think that I was arguing that technology was diminishing the need for creativity in marketing.  This is clearly not the case.  So let me set the record straight.

Technology does not quell creativity, in fact, there’s a great deal of evidence that suggests that technology enhances creativity.  Certainly, we are expected to be more creative in our working lives than a generation ago. The truth is that by expanding possibilities and automating part of the creative process, we can all be more creative and productive.

Defining The Creative Process
While many like to think of creativity as a mysterious process, researchers generally agree that there are clear principles at work, such as a lucid formulation of the problem, knowledge and practice in a particular field, crossing domains and persistence.

I previously summarized these principles in formulating a creative process in a post about creative intelligence:

1. Forming intent: Every creative act starts with a purpose.  Whether it is a marketer trying to solve for a particular business objective, a designer working with a specific brief or an artist looking to express a distinct idea or emotion.  It is through forming intent that we establish the constraints under which creativity thrives.

The process of forming intent is inherently human.  There are some things that machines will never do: they will never strike out at a little league game, fall in love, have their heart broken or raise a family.  It is out of human experience that our wants and desires arise.

2. Searching The Domain: All great artists—or for that matter, anybody who is good at anything—are students of their craft.  By thoroughly examining their domain, they become aware of a variety of techniques, alternative approaches and different philosophies.  The larger the creative toolbox, the greater the possibility for creative excellence.

One particularly famous and well studied example of the benefits of searching the domain is Picasso’s encounter with African art that led him to pioneer cubism and marked a turning point in his career. His later work, combining aspects of both European and African style, set a new course for the art world.

3. Tangling Hierarchies: Truly revolutionary creative acts come from synthesizing across domains, as Picasso did with African and European art or Darwin did by combining insights from economics, geology and biology to come up with his theory of natural selection.

The idea of combination comes up prominently in research into the psychology of creativity, such as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s discussion of creative flow and Douglas Hofstadter’s concept of strange loops.  Innovation is largely the art of combination.

Eliminating Barriers To Creative Excellence
Luck and chance have always played a role in creativity.  What if Picasso had not wandered into that African art exhibition or Darwin not taken the voyage on The Beagle? These happy accidents are interesting and exciting, but luck is not a strategy.  In fact, history is full of examples of missed opportunities because of deficiencies of information.

Darwin’s theory remained incomplete for half a century, because he was not able to specify a mechanism by which traits were inherited. Ironically, his contemporary, Gregor Mendel, had discovered the principles of genetics shortly after Darwin published his famous work, but they remained completely unaware of each other for their entire lifetimes.

Clearly, technology has transformed human experience.  We are no longer separated by time and space, but are largely working off of the same massive database.  The sum total of human knowledge is merely a few clicks away.  Domains are no longer hidden behind barriers of circumstance or tradition, but are accessible to anyone with a search engine.

And it is not just information that has become accessible, but personal contact.  Whether through social media or web video conferences or MOOC’s, it’s far easier to people to meet and collaborate than ever before in human history.  Searching the domain is no longer a matter of chance. Technology and automation have streamlined the process.

The fact that everyone has access to a wealth and diversity of ideas and the means to actualize intent means that we all can be more creative.  As Jaron Lanier put it, “in a virtual world of infinite abundance, only creativity could ever be in short supply.”
——————————————————————————
Here at Innovbook (https://www.innovbook.com) we believe that technology give us the time to reflect on problems as well as give us the power to collaborate on ideas. This concept is at the core of our solution, which allows for companies to collect, organize, and implement ideas with the highest return on investment. Technology in Innovation has allowed people to jot down ideas on a smartphone, and instantly share them with thousands world wide, enabling feedback and peer review from a distance. This article only details the great lengths technology in innovation have allowed the idea management process to integrate seamlessly with everyday life.