Ideas Worth Dime a Dozen

 

 

 

Ideas worth dime a dozen – execution is all that matters.  When you’re talking with a person with an idea for a business, but is reticent to share that idea – you know they’ve never launched a business before. Good entrepreneurs can spot this from a mile away.

How you may ask? Well, it’s simple. Ideas are easy – it’s the execution that’s the hard part.

When you’re able to bring together people who are capable of generating good ideas AND have the ability to execute against it, that’s where the magic happens.

So, how do you find people who are creative and can execute?

Finding the Common Thread

The 21st century workforce is heading towards an uncertain future.  Manufacturing jobs are constantly being offshored; practically everything is becoming global; much of existing work demands complex and creative thinking with high-tech tools used in almost all lines of work.

Figure 1: Economy-wide measures of routine and nonroutine task input: 1969–1998 (1969 = 0). SOURCE: Levi and Murnane (2004).

Hence, organizations are looking for not just expert and knowledgeable thinkers, but also for creative thinkers and innovators.

We wanted to figure out the easiest way to find these innovators, so we can use it for our recruiting and development practices. Hence, we did a formal search into individual industries to determine if there was a link between individual’s Creativity Quotient and the three key factors:

• Individuals who have generated new ideas for product development or improvement
• Individuals who have implemented new ideas
• The industry where the individuals are currently employed

Here’s a look at how the data broke down.

Industry

The industry breakdown is as follows.  Majority of our participants were part of Sales, Computer and Technology and Healthcare organizations with the rest divided across quite a variety of industries.

Creativity Quotient and Idea Generation

Generating new ideas for product development or suggesting new ideas for improvement, are valuable attributes of an innovator.

Participants completed a set of open-ended exercises, such as mind-mapping, mini-saga, object-usage and improvement activities. These exercises are all part of our patented process to measure one’s creative thinking ability, which uses four key indices: Fluency, Flexibility, Originality and Elaboration.

Next, we looked at the top and bottom 25% performers and asked them if they have suggested ideas for new product/process development or improvement to existing ones.

Figure 2: Idea generators in top and bottom 25%  performers: Pie-chart on the left displays that 73% of top performers did suggest ideas for new product/process development or improvement to existing ones.  However, only 50% of bottom performers (pie-chart on the right) suggested such ideas.

As shown on the graph, the top performers did generate more ideas for new or improvement to existing products and/or processes.  But this still is not enough.  We want to take this one step further.  Were these ideas and suggestions implemented and did they provide any value(s) to the organization?

Creativity Quotient and Idea Implementers

To take this one step further, we looked at the top and bottom performers who were idea generators (73% and 50% respectively).   We wanted to see if those individuals were able to not only suggest ideas, but also implement them.

Figure 3: Idea and Suggestion Implementers in top and bottom 25% performers:  Pie-chart on the left displays the 63% of top performers who make suggestions were also able to implement them.  However, only 16% of bottom performers (pie-chart on the right) were able to to do so.

63% of top performers who had made suggestions, were also able to implement their ideas.  But only a mere 16% of bottom performers who also suggested ideas, were able to implement them.

So, what does all this mean? How do I find the creative executors?

Finding the Creative Executors

In today’s uncertain economy, innovators are more valuable than ever before.

• Look for candidates that are not just knowledgeable, but they are also creative and innovative.
• Look closely at their past experience.  Ask them what innovative works they’ve done in the past.
• Be diverse.  Innovators from one industry could be innovators in another one as well.
• Don’t let them stop there. Ask them what their innovation’s impact was and how it affected their organization

And last but not least, keep their innovations alive.  If you are lucky to find one, let them do what they are good at and give them the freedom they need.

If interested in a full report, please contact us through SparcIt’s contact us page.