To Think Outside Box, Get Back Into Sandbox

From Wall Street to Los Angeles’ financial district, executives are stalking the Big Idea.

They have awakened and smelled the cappuccino: Gray-flannel conformity is a slow trip to financial stagnation. Innovation, or “cosmic fishing,” as Buckminster Fuller called it, can reap fortunes.

Witness the emergence of Silicon Valley’s anything-goes culture and the ascendance of a new breed of chief executive, led by Virgin Group’s highflying balloonist, Richard Branson, whose schoolmaster once warned, “I predict you will either go to prison or become a millionaire.”

Board members, marketing VPs and antsy shareholders are urging workers, “Express yourself.” But when employees, bombarded with deadlines, downsize-aphobia and years of lock-step programming, try to scuba dive into the depths of their minds for big ideas, they often come up with driftwood.

Why?

They’ve forgotten how to play, and, worse, they’ve forgotten how to be themselves. Anthropologist Ashley Montagu once called adults “deteriorated children.” A study by author and scientist George Land, reported in James Higgins’ “Escape From the Maze” (New Management, 1997), gives this theory credence.

In 1968, Land distributed among 1,600 5-year-olds a creativity test used by NASA to select innovative engineers and scientists. Ninety-eight percent of the children scored “highly creative.” Land retested the children five years later. Only 30% of the 10-year-olds scored in this category. By 15, just 12% of the adolescents tested “highly creative.” And when Land gave the test over a period of years to 280,000 adults, he found that only 2% fell into the “highly creative” category. “What we have concluded,” wrote Land, “is that noncreative behavior is learned.”

Until recently, the business world contributed to adults’ creativity drought. “Soft” or “fuzzy” thinking was discouraged in favor of logical, analytical decision-making. Only “creatives”--in such vocations as graphic arts, advertising and marketing--were granted license to dream on the job. But the Information Age has changed all that. Ideas have become the currency of commerce, and executives are eager to fill their corporate rosters with “smart” bombs possessing high IQs--imagination quotients.

IBM offers cash incentives ranging from $50 to $150,000 to workers who come up with cost-saving ideas. Fortune 500 giants including AT&T; Corp., Procter & Gamble Co., Nike Inc., Johnson & Johnson and Walt Disney Co. have reportedly shelled out $120,000 each to send their executives to 2 1/2-day “capitalist creativity” sessions, led by former P&G; master inventor Doug Hall, founder of Richard Saunders International outside of Cincinnati. Hall and his associates try to “shake executives out of their corporate stupors,” as he puts it, by encouraging childlike perspectives and stimulating their imaginations.

But must unconventional thinking be rekindled at such a dear cost?

Sometimes, it can be had for free. In 1995, managers at Irvine-based Fluor Corp. invited a group of gifted children from a local school to a management training meeting. The children sat with a group of executives, while a second group of Fluor managers worked independently. At day’s end, the mixed group of executives and children had generated far more innovative ideas than did the executives-only group. One idea, for a “Vision Room” containing master schedules and project engineering models, was later implemented by Fluor.

“We lock ourselves into paradigms and box ourselves in,” says Roko Sherry Chayat, abbot of the Syracuse Zen Center in New York. “Creativity comes when we view our situations in a fresh way.” Children, who possess what social philosopher Arthur Koestler called “innocence of perception,” possess an innate ability to see the extraordinary in the ordinary.

Theirs is a Zen-like “mindfulness.” They observe nonjudgmentally. Their imagination is uncorrupted by outside constraints. In play, they pay passionate attention to activities. Time stands still. But in later years, the world intrudes. Many develop what Montagu called “psychosclerosis,” a hardening of the attitudes. Predictability, routine and preoccupation--mental cholesterol--intervene, blunting their innovative abilities.

Re-visioning--reclaiming a childlike vision--in adulthood takes courage. Occasionally, it requires sacrificing deeply held perspectives. Woe to those who refuse, for a deadly closing of the mind’s eye may result. Galileo clung to the theory that all heavenly bodies moved in perfect circles. He refused to believe in comets, branding them “optical illusions.” In 1899, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office director announced that “everything that can be invented has been invented” and requested that the patent office be dismantled. Twenty-eight years later, Harry Warner, president of Warner Bros., asked, “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?”

Re-visioning may provoke painful metamorphosis, as Schwinn and Vancouver’s MacMillan Bloedel can attest. After filing for bankruptcy protection in 1992, the nearly century-old Schwinn needed to pop a wheelie to regain its market share. According to Gregg Bagni, Schwinn’s senior vice president of marketing, the company’s executives realized that an image make-over for the conservative cycle maker was urgently needed.

“We had to put the fun back into the business,” says Bagni, who’s been known to attend staff meetings in Elvis Presley outfits or Mexican wrestling masks. Schwinn Holdings Corp. moved its headquarters from Chicago to Boulder, the “mecca of cycling,” and launched a very un-Schwinn-like “Cars suck” campaign, to the surprise of competitors. Today, through emphasis on innovation and play, Schwinn holds the No. 2 position in its industry.

Meanwhile, Canadian forestry titan MacMillan Bloedel faced a similar crisis last year.

“Crisis” comes from the Greek word krinein, meaning “to decide.” And MacBlo’s CEO, Tom Stephens, had some serious deciding to do. Environmental activists were boisterously protesting MacBlo’s clear-cutting practices. Consumers were clamoring for “green” products.

But with the company’s stock prices and revenue at a four-year low, MacBlo was reluctant to venture into costlier, more environmentally friendly forestry methods.

After much soul-searching, however, Stephens announced that MacBlo would break rank from Canadian foresters to phase out clear-cutting. His solution defied decades of forestry tradition, but seemed right.

Greenpeace activists, whose organization previously organized boycotts against MacBlo, gave Stephens a bottle of Dom Perignon. Time will tell if his decision reaps financial rewards.

Not all leaps of faith result in success. Not all innovations are inspired ones. But, says Bill Boon, an Iowa State University professor whose creativity classes have garnered widespread media attention, failure is one of the most important catalysts of change.

“The only way out of our boxes is by failure,” he says. “Without failure, we’d go on doing the same drab things. I feel sorry for people plagued by success, because they don’t know the rewards of failure.”

Like a Zen koan, which cannot be understood or solved through logic, we must ask ourselves puzzling questions: How can we become children again? How can we play at work? How can we contribute to the boxes of our professions, industries and society without letting them enclose us?

Children have the answers. And if we open ourselves to innovation, so do we.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Ways to Free Up Your Brain

Creative thinking is a skill that can be enhanced with diligent effort. Here are six ways you can improve your own imagination.

Become a knowledge sponge

An IBM mainframe computer can generate far more solutions than a laptop. If you’re working on a problem in need of a creative solution, bombard your mind with relevant information. Read books. Watch videos. Speak to experts. You’re dumping “fruits of knowledge” into your mental Cuisinart, to your conscious and unconscious minds.

Become an explorer

Monotonous routine breeds monotonous thinking. Dare to escape from your mundane habits. Sleep on the other side of the bed. Take a new route to work. Journey to a neighborhood you’ve never visited. Sign up for courses outside your field. Jolt your mind from its workaday trance by taking short, daily “field trips” away from your workplace.

Learn to play

Make time for mischief. It stimulates creativity. Visit a toy store and purchase things that make you laugh--bubble blowers, magic wands, kazoos and giant rubber dinosaurs. Keep whimsical articles at your work space to remind you not to take yourself and your work too seriously. Find something that surprises you each day. Retain a sense of wonder about the world and, as singer Buffy Sainte-Marie once advised, “Keep your nose to the joy trail.”

Take “breakations”

“Learn to pause . . . or nothing worthwhile will catch up to you,” poet Doug King said. Fatigue, dullness and irritability are creativity’s enemies. They’re also signs that you need to break from heavy thinking. Ward off burnout by taking walking meditations, doing deep breathing and visiting inspiring natural environments. Catch up on sleep, which Wordsworth called “the mother of fresh thoughts.” Even when you’re on “breakation,” your unconscious mind remains hard at work, beneath awareness, searching for answers.

Follow your rhythms

Spend a few days observing your biological rhythms. Do you wake up invigorated or do you perk up at night? Do you slow down in midafternoon? Once you’re aware of your daily rhythms, synchronize your activities with them. If you’re a night person, schedule your creative endeavors after sundown. Plan repetitive, nonthinking tasks for the times of day when you’re least creative. Take mini-naps or practice five-minute breathing exercises when your body tells you it needs regeneration.

Ignore the “boo leaders”

“Boo leaders” are people who discourage your new ideas before you’ve had a chance to nurture and develop them. Shelter your creative thoughts from the naysayers who chant, “It won’t work” and “That’s not in the budget.” Debut these creative notions only after they’re fully ripe.