Here is an excerpt from a classic article written by Theodore Levitt for Harvard Business Review (August 2002). To read the complete article, check out others, sign up for email alerts, and obtain subscription information, please click here.
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Ted Levitt, a former editor of HBR and one of the most incisive commentators on innovation to have appeared in our pages, takes dead aim at the assumption that creativity is superior to conformity. He argues that creativity as it’s commonly defined—the ability to come up with brilliantly novel ideas—can actually be destructive to businesses. By failing to take into account practical matters of implementation, big thinkers can inspire organizational cultures dedicated to abstract chatter rather than purposeful action. In such cultures, innovation never happens—because people are always talking about it but never doing it.
Often, the worst thing a company can do, in Levitt’s view, is put innovation into the hands of “creative types”—those compulsive idea generators whose distaste for the mundane realities of organizational life renders them incapable of executing any real project. Organizations, by their very nature, are designed to promote order and routine; they are inhospitable environments for innovation. Those who don’t understand organizational realities are doomed to see their ideas go unrealized. Only the organizational insider—the apparent conformist—has the practical intelligence to overcome bureaucratic impediments and bring a good idea to a fruitful conclusion.
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“Creativity” is not the miraculous road to business growth and affluence that is so abundantly claimed these days. And for the line manager, particularly, it may be more of a millstone than a milestone. Those who extol the liberating virtues of corporate creativity over the somnambulistic vices of corporate conformity may actually be giving advice that in the end will reduce the creative animation of business. This is because they tend to confuse the getting of ideas with their implementation—that is, confuse creativity in the abstract with practical innovation; not understand the operating executive’s day-to-day problems; and underestimate the intricate complexity of business organizations.
The trouble with much of the advice business is getting today about the need to be more vigorously creative is, essentially, that its advocates have generally failed to distinguish between the relatively easy process of being creative in the abstract and the infinitely more difficult process of being innovationist in the concrete. Indeed, they misdefine “creativity” itself. Too often, for them, “creativity” means having great, original ideas. Their emphasis is almost all on the thoughts themselves. Moreover, the ideas are often judged more by their novelty than by their potential usefulness, either to consumers or to the company. In this article, I shall show that in most cases, having a new idea can be “creative” in the abstract but destructive in actual operation, and that often instead of helping a company, it will even hinder it.
Suppose you know two artists. One tells you an idea for a great painting, but he does not paint it. The other has the same idea and paints it. You could easily say the second man is a great creative artist. But could you say the same thing of the first man? Obviously not. He is a talker, not a painter.
That is precisely the problem with so much of today’s pithy praise of creativity in business—with the unending flow of speeches, books, articles, and “creativity workshops” whose purpose is to produce more imaginative and creative managers and companies. My observations of these activities over a number of years lead me firmly to this conclusion. They mistake an idea for a great painting with the great painting itself. They mistake brilliant talk for constructive action.
But, as anybody who knows anything about any organization knows only too well, it is hard enough to get things done at all, let alone to introduce a new way of doing things, no matter how good it may seem. A powerful new idea can kick around unused in a company for years, not because its merits are not recognized but because nobody has assumed the responsibility for converting it from words into action. What is often lacking is not creativity in the idea-creating sense but innovation in the action-producing sense, i.e., putting ideas to work.
Ideas Are Not Enough
Why don’t we get more innovation?
One of the most repetitious and, I am convinced, most erroneous answers we get to this question is that businessmen are not adequately creative and that they are enslaved by the incubus of conformity. It is alleged that everything in American business would be just dandy if industry were simply more creative and if it would hire more creative people and give them the chance to show their fructifying stuff.
But anybody who carefully looks around in any modern business organization and speaks freely and candidly with the people in it will, I believe, discover something very interesting: namely, there is really very little shortage of creativity and of creative people in American business. The major problem is that so-called creative people often (though certainly not always) pass off on others the responsibility for getting down to brass tacks. They have plenty of ideas but little businesslike follow-through. They do not make the right kind of effort to help their ideas get a hearing and a try.
All in all, ideation is relatively abundant. It is its implementation that is more scarce.
Many people who are full of ideas simply do not understand how an organization must operate in order to get things done, especially dramatically new things. All too often, there is the peculiar underlying assumption that creativity automatically leads to actual innovation. In the crippled logic of this line of thinking, ideation (or creativity, if you emphasize the idea-producing aspect of that term) and innovation are treated as synonyms. This kind of thinking is a particular disease of advocates of “brainstorming,” who often treat their approach as some sort of ultimate business liberator.1 Ideation and innovation are not synonyms. The former deals with the generation of ideas; the latter, with their implementation. It is the absence of a constant awareness of this distinction that is responsible for some of the corporate standpattism we see today. (Lest there be any confusion, it is not essential that innovation be successfully implemented to qualify as innovation. The object of the innovation is success, but to require in advance that there be no doubt of its success would disable its chance of ever getting tried.)
Many people who are full of ideas simply do not understand how an organization must operate to get things done.
The fact that you can put a dozen inexperienced people into a room and conduct a brainstorming session that produces exciting new ideas shows how little relative importance ideas themselves actually have. Almost anybody with the intelligence of the average businessman can produce them, given a halfway decent environment and stimulus. The scarce people are those who have the know-how, energy, daring, and staying power to implement ideas.
Whatever the goals of a business may be, it must make money. To do that, it must get things done. But having ideas is seldom equivalent to getting things done in the business or organizational sense. Ideas do not implement themselves—neither in business nor in art, science, philosophy, politics, love, war. People implement ideas.
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Here is a direct link to the complete article.
Theodore Levitt was a professor emeritus of marketing at Harvard Business School and former editor of Harvard Business Review.