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Creativity and Innovation for Information Professionals
by Dennie Heye
Creativity and innovation are two important and closely linked "soft skill" topics for information professionals. Creativity involves the production of new ideas (or combining old ideas in a new way); it is also the main driver for innovation. Innovation involves the transformation of a new idea into a new product or service, or an improvement in organization or process.
Creativity and innovation are a bit magical: it is very hard to be creative on the spot, but, by creating the right atmosphere and keeping an open mind, the magic can appear. As Tom Kelly, author of The Art of Innovation, once said: "The spark of innovation is not in what we do, but in how we do it."
Information Professionals and Innovation
As information professionals, we live in exciting times. With information management now more important than ever, new tools and creative ideas to help people manage information are being introduced almost weekly. Consider the developments in information organization and retrieval over the last ten years, such as Internet search engines, wikis, peer-to-peer file sharing, and blogs.
As an example, take a look at the development of Internet search engines over the past ten years. In 1996, the Internet was starting to catch on as the new information platform, and we saw the start of full-text search engines like Yahoo! Looking back, the capabilities of those early search engines were limited: they had an index of only one or two million web pages, could only index HTML and text files, and ranking was based on word frequency. In 1996, however, this was a major tool for information retrieval: for the world at large, this was unprecedented access to a wide range of information, using a straightforward search engine.
Now, in 2006, search engines add features and versatility every few months. They now index billions of web pages (including all common document formats), and offer more intelligent rankings, with engines such as Vivisimo offering categorization on the fly. The launch of Google Earth has shown us yet another innovative look at information, and this is just the tip of the iceberg for innovative information management tools.
This illustrates the high rate of innovation in information management, and that innovation and creativity can lead to new and exciting tools and services. But, it is not just about us creating new tools and services. As information professionals, we can also help our organizations support innovation by:
- Disseminating information: We can find internal and external
information relevant to innovation for our organizations. We should
not just send information as we find it, but extract the main
messages related to our organization, putting them into context and
delivering them to key groups involved in the innovation process.
- Providing resources: These include books, journals and electronic
resources related to innovation and creativity.
- Acting as a linking pin: As information professionals, we have networks both inside and outside our organizations. We can recognize opportunities for innovation and pass them on to the right people. (Ideally, we can support these by documentation such as a patent search or links to press clippings.)
Creativity and Innovation Tips
Even if you would not describe yourself as very creative, you can develop your creative skills or facilitate sessions where creativity is needed.
Take a Risk
There is no innovation without risk. When you propose something different and new, which has not been proven or accepted, you risk that your idea will not work, be criticized, lack support, or even fail. But, if you do not dare to risk all of this, your innovation will just remain an idea.
Recognize the type of risk involved with your idea. Is it financial or ethical? Will it be accepted in the culture you work in? Is your organization, your customer or the world ready for your innovation? When you have a good feeling about what the risk of your innovation entails, you can estimate the chances of that risk happening. In the end, it comes down to the question whether the risk outweighs the opportunity of your innovation.
I Wish...
When you were a kid, you used to close your eyes weeks before Christmas or your birthday and wish for the best present you could imagine. In your mind you could see, almost touch that awesome present you wanted most of all. As an adult, you can use the same wishing process to start a creative concept. Start with a wish that would help you in your life or work. This could be: "I wish I could finish this large project on time, but still have time to enjoy my gourmet cooking class." This wish can then be translated into a deeper wish, which in this case could be "I wish I could learn how to prioritize in my life and maintain a good work-life balance."
This can then lead into a creative thought process about how to achieve this much-desired goal.
Visualizing
Related to the wishing concept is visualization. Try to visualize in your mind what your want to achieve, for example, a redesign of your library. Think of all the details that let you picture how that redesigned library would look. What color is the floor? What feeling do you get in the new library? Where is the front desk located? How do you walk from the entrance to the reading table? By building a very clear picture in your head, your motivation to achieve your vision will increase, and you will also know exactly what you want and how you want it to be.
Be Curious
In order to become and stay creative, you need to encourage your brain to embrace creativity. You can do this by regularly learning about new things, which keeps your mind fresh and makes it easier to make connections between different topics. Make it a habit to study something new every once in a while, be it a new language, a new hobby, or a topic that just seems interesting. What can you learn about it? How does this new topic relate to what you already know?
Learn From Your Mistakes
When you do something new or different, there is always a chance of making a mistake. Don't let this scare you away from new and creative paths, but learn from them. Mistakes show you what did not work, and what should be analyzed so you can do better next time. If Michelangelo had thrown away his paintbrushes after his first concept sketches of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, we would never have seen this miraculous painting.
This article is a condensed version of a chapter of the author's book, Characteristics Of The Successful 21st Century Information Professional (ISBN 184334145X). More information can be found on his web site: http://www.dennie.heye.nl