TED provides a forum and a hub for ideas – a way to take people out of the everyday, challenge their thinking and make the connection between disparate fields of enquiry. What can business take from this model? How can we incorporate the playful and the creative into the mundane to work and deal with new technology more effectively, to really embed innovation into corporate culture rather than merely giving it lip service?
The speakers at TEDxSydney 2012 took the audience from the atomic to the far reaches of the Universe. But perhaps the furthest frontier explored was the one closest to home: our imaginations.
For those of us who grew up with parents frustrated at our insistence on bringing our imaginary friend to the dinner table and setting a place for them, or who carried a stuffed toy around and imbued it with human characteristics, a la Calvin and Hobbes, the news is good. According to psychologist Evan Kidd, these are the children – and eventually the grownups – who excel at creative tasks and the ability to get into the minds of others. These are the children we’re going to need more of in the future as tasks become more complex and we move from hierarchical to networked societies and business models.
Kidd’s talk resonated with Angelo Estrera, Partner, PwC, who is a big believer in learning outside of the classroom.
“Kidd showed us that we really need to give ourselves that type of head space and freedom to learn and play at the same time. It didn’t really surprise me when he said that the analysis that they’ve done based on a playful versus a more structured and regimented learning environment that most of us are used to, that the kids in the play-based learning environment actually have better cognitive skills, are better able to handle difficult situations, and are a lot more creative.”
But how can businesses tap into this side of their people or even help nurture this ‘creative’ side?
“How,” as Paddy Carney, Partner, PwC, puts it, “do you apply play to make work more engaging for adults without it also feeling patronising?”
For Richard Shackcloth, Partner, PwC, the key is providing a working environment where people can have fun while competing and collaborating to solve problems. The analogy he provides is ‘gaming’.
“It’s a whole new spin on how you harness the workforce, and I think technology now gives us a platform to be able to do that. Your whole workforce could have an app on their iPhone and you could be posting a question, and they could be trying to compete for the best answer and rate each other’s answers. I think there’s a way that you can really apply that model in business.”
What happens too often, he says, is that companies “put innovation in a box and say it’s just about coming up with a new whizz bang product”.
“People will always look at it and say it’s a huge investment, where’s the ROI? Or, should we wait for the new technology trends to emerge and just be a follower? If you look at it more broadly and ask the deeper questions of how you are going to introduce innovations in the culture of a whole organisation, the benefits are much wider. It might be about internal processes, it might be about how you attract and retain employees as well as some of the customer benefits. I think if you can do that, that’s when it does start to change.”
‘Gamification’ is something the mining industry is interesting in using, according to Mark O’Neill, Senior Manager, PwC, as robots do more and more of the work on the ground and are controlled remotely.
“Gamification is essentially applying game mechanics to non-game scenarios,” O’Neill says. “I know that’s what our mining partners are interested in learning about. It’s a big change for them, from having lots of people work out on a camp to having people work from Perth in an office. How do you keep them motivated to operate a machine from a distance? The answer could be gaming – particularly around maintaining health and safety, for instance.”
He says there are three elements that are vital for true innovation and creativity to blossom: leadership, culture and reward.
“Culturally you need to be accepting of it, to allow people to do things that break the norm and reward people for innovation as well. Everyone thinks you have to be a Google or a new business, but that’s not the case. Any business can be innovative and can do things differently and support that kind of culture.
“To do so, you need to reframe the question; it’s all part of the sort of innovation you’re trying to drive towards, where you challenge the question that is being asked of you and you change the way you do that. You use the power of people and you get to a better outcome faster rather than the traditional method which is slower and where you check everything and then wait til you’ve done a report. At that point, you’ve over-analysed it. We’re classic for that.”
Steve Billingham, Partner, PwC, considers the entire ethos of TED something which captures the spirit of innovation, collaboration and creativity, if only because of the diversity of speakers on offer. He singles out ‘the bee guy’, Engineer & Neuroscientist MandyamV.
Srinivasan (whose research focuses on the principles of visual processing, perception and cognition in simple natural systems, and on the application of these principles to machine vision and robotics – hence his work with bees) and Lynette Wallworth who has created a multimedia installation featuring glorious footage of corals to commemorate the Transit of Venus, a once-in-a-century event which took place just recently. These sorts of people, Billingham says, are incredibly passionate about what they do, and are largely unconstrained by corporate culture. This kind of energy is something business knows it needs but can find difficult to truly embrace.
“You’ve got to bear in mind what we do,” he says. “We hire great people, then we train them and give them methodologies and structures and hierarchies that drives the creativity out of them. If you want creativity to be an inherent part of your company, and part of your culture, you have to be prepared to embrace a different kind of person and reward and encourage and support different behaviours. That’s not an easy thing to do.”
