{CHAPTER 15}

SATURDAY SESSIONS
AT NOMA AND THE
WEIRD ONE WE
KEEP IN THE CLOSET:
MAKING CREATIVE
PROCESSES POSSIBLE
AMONG EMPLOYEES

In this chapter, we will take a closer look at creative processes themselves, especially those in which numerous employees work successfully together to produce innovation. These stories provide the common lesson that the involvement of employees, space for experimentation, new associations between materials, and the breaking down of barriers are central to effective creative processes.

We continue our interview with CEO Peter Kreiner from Noma, which we began in the previous chapter. We ask Peter to tell us the secret behind Noma’s success. Besides the necessity of control, perfection, limitations, walking along the edge, and close collaboration between managers, what are the important parameters in the creative process?

Peter Kreiner is sure of the answer. He says that, in contrast to his own experience as an apprentice in French and Spanish kitchens, head chef René Redzepi strives to include his employees to an unusually high degree relative to the international restaurant scene. Noma has reduced the distance between managers and apprentices and is moving along the edge of the traditions that characterize the cooking profession. René demands that his cooks and waiters think for themselves, and he seeks to avoid the kind of negative competitive atmosphere that he particularly recalls from kitchens in France, where all the cooks battle one another to obtain one of the sought-after chef roles.

Team thinking is important, and René says of his best cooks that they “understand things quickly. They have a sense, a feeling for truth. They’re not fixed in their thought processes. They quickly understand the way we do things.”

A skilled cook can quickly find his or her place in the context and understand how things fit together. At the same time, René stresses the importance of skilled cooks thinking for themselves because the last thing he wants are human robots who just follow a recipe to the dot. His cooks need to be intuitive, solid, and have the self-confidence to taste and see differences and nuances. These are necessary for cooks and waiters at Noma, and it is clear that the requirement of being able to fit in yet also think for oneself is a decisive one. Creativity – understood as the ability to think differently, innovatively, and appropriately – is a requirement in the kitchen, which seeks to live up to the ultimate standards.

Peter explains further: “Our Saturday Sessions are vital,” he says. “Over the course of the week, selected sections or parties at the restaurant – for instance, the cold party – experiment with a dish that they later serve to René and the sous-chefs on Saturday night. They can do whatever they like with the ingredients and the dishes. Sometimes, it’s just for fun. Other times, we get the feeling we’re on to something. The sous-chefs get to discuss the dish. If it makes it through the eye of the needle, maybe we’ve got inspiration for a new dish for the menu. This way, we also make sure the cooks see there’s space for experimentation and development. We want cooks who can think for themselves. Sometimes, of course, it can be pretty tightly controlled. Obviously, when the guests come through the doors at Noma, they need to get what they expect. Quality and security for the money invested. So we leave some space for more wildness with our Saturday Sessions.”

This chapter focuses on what we can learn from Noma’s Saturday Sessions. More generally, however, it concerns why employee involvement is a key ingredient when it comes to creative processes and perhaps even financial growth. It is in this context that we will also take another visit to LEGO, the recent growth of which its head of design, Torsten, ascribes to what he calls “soft values”: employee involvement, dialogue, and a short distance from top to bottom.

THE MAN ON THE FLOOR

When it comes to seeing creativity and business as prerequisites for one another, then some degree of employee involvement is necessary. In a striking 2010 radio interview, the British sociologist Richard Sennett said, “Sometimes the man on the floor is smarter than the management. He’s close to the company’s daily operations. The longer the distance between the top and the bottom, the greater the likelihood that central and essential knowledge of importance for the company’s running isn’t making it all the way to the top.”

In the interview, Sennet goes so far as to assert that the financial crisis that hit the Western economies five years ago was caused because the distance between managers and employees had become too large in the leading companies in the West. If the management had had the insight into the financial mechanisms that the core employees in the banks and businesses must have possessed, then they would have reacted. If they had been close enough to the employees, this knowledge would have entered their sphere of knowledge. In their ignorance, however, they simply continued going about their business.

Virtually all creativity studies stress that creativity – understood as the ability to create something new in a sustainable manner – requires employee involvement. There needs to be room for dialogue, debate, and freedom to identify problems. The more permeable an organization is, the easier employees will find this. We will now delve into some specific cases concerning precisely this issue. Product development processes at LEGO and hummel take place in close dialogue between the various professional groupings: engineers, designers, sales and marketing, communication, and management. Both Christian and the designers at LEGO speak of breaking down barriers as the most important aspect of the process. But first, back to Noma.

SATURDAY SESSIONS

In our interview, Peter Kreiner speaks of hard work as the path to success. Another significant element, however, is always being ahead of the game by coming up with something that is better than that which already exists. This has become no less important, for the pressure of expectations continues to rise. According to Peter, it is necessary to remain energetic, and “we simply can’t fall down and be slow and fat and inefficient. We’re not allowed.”

We ask whether this need for perfection also serves to attract and retain the right workforce.

“I definitely think so. However, I also think that it obviously has a self-reinforcing effect that we’re named the world’s best because it helps attract people. But every Saturday, the cooks present dishes to one another. They come up with the craziest, most insane ideas you can have. That’s what they do. I mean, after the guests have left and other guests are maybe out on the town having drinks, and it’s one or two in the morning, our cooks are out here presenting things to one another,” Peter says, laughing.

Noma’s Saturday Sessions give the cooks room to think for themselves, which is something René values. It creates “a crazy space” in which experiments can play out. Noma’s Saturday Sessions keep creativity running and become a space freed from the restaurant’s usual tight control and limitations. This is where new dishes arise, and where the buds of new restaurants and new chefs first spring forth. The involvement of employees and faith in their ideas is thus a central tool at Restaurant Noma. Let us, however, move on from Noma to LEGO. At LEGO, the key principles include not only employee involvement and maximized organization of teamwork but also user-driven innovation.

WOW!

At LEGO, little is left to chance. By the time new boxes of LEGO bricks or computer games reach the market, they have already passed through the hands of more than 700 children. Product development is always about having a sense for what children will find interesting to play with three to four years in the future. Consumption patterns and market trends are subjected to close analysis, and the product development phase involves weekly tests with children who are invited to LEGO and given free rein to play. “The children come here, and we get a gut feeling as to what’s good. And then we include new aspects and changes. They say what they see and would like to play with, and we change the ideas accordingly,” says head designer Erik. LEGO thus hosts a continual process of user-driven innovation and co-creation. Erik, a trained carpenter in Sweden and later a Bachelor of Toy Design in the USA, says incisively:

“When you see over time that a lot of boys have that same ‘Wow... That’s so cool!’ reaction, then you know it’s good. I’ve watched boys play with LEGO for over ten years. Then you get a sense for when you’re on the right track. When they’re flowing and building upon the story. When they do that, then you sense it’s good. Of course, there are hardcore results in terms of consumption patterns and so on, but the most important thing is being able to sense, ‘Yes, that’s just it.’”

The product developers’ gut feeling as to how the children are reacting and their knowledge of children’s play patterns and typical reactions when presented with new toys have been honed over the course of many years and are central to the creative process. Whereas Andreas Golder borrows from the old masters, and Peter Stenbæk and Bjarke Ingels sample from their surroundings and from elements of the city, the LEGO designers draw upon their observations of children’s experiences. The creative process at LEGO is thus collective in the sense that it uses both prior experience and specific inputs in the here and now.

BREAK DOWN THE BARRIERS

Another key concept involved in LEGO’s current success is what the product developers themselves call the necessary breaking down of internal barriers. In other words, a greater degree of internal interdisciplinary collaboration has contributed to ensuring that product ideas from the designers are not merely wild and exciting but can also be produced at a reasonable price.

Erik says, “We can take the development of LEGO Atlantis and Ninjago as examples. The close collaboration between marketing, design, prototyping, and communication has definitely been key to our success. We work together closely day in and day out. It’s about combining different skills.”

“Is it new?” we ask.

“Yes,” Torsten explains, “that we’re working together as closely as we are. We’re participating in a number of these new teams across the organization. Earlier, we spent a lot of time separated and in our own areas. We’ve got better at mixing. I think we’re unique in that. A lot of other companies have trouble getting everything running together. Before, we might’ve made a really complex design without checking whether it could be produced, but it’s also about our ability to communicate.”

Torsten continues, saying that the divisions between groups previously took on physical form, manifested by three rows of shelving. The new closeness is not just physical, however. Throughout the interview, the designers talk about what they term their “wake-up call” in 2004. The company was experiencing a crisis, and the mood was, “If we’re going to survive, we have to do something radically different. The crisis in 1998 hadn’t been so bad, so we weren’t taking that so seriously. Now we’re sticking to a strategy and doing it wholeheartedly. We got some real shockwaves in our business.”

LEGO was confronted with a dramatic situation and was forced to rethink things and do things in new ways. This experience of being pushed into change is one that many people will surely recognize. “But we’ve also got better at portfolio management,” the designers say. They are working with more iconic models and themes that have been on the market for a longer time, and they are making new models that the children already know. In addition, LEGO succeeds at serving various age groups. It is not just children who know the products but also adults.

STAYING CREATIVE

During the interview, Lene asks about the designers’ experiences with creative breakthroughs. In other words, what do they do to stay creative?

Torsten says that they sometimes use workshops and creative seminars but that they have cut back on these activities significantly. “We could probably do some more, but we’ve actually got nervous as to whether it’s being transferred.” He mentions, for instance, a three-day seminar in Ebeltoft at which all 120 designers worked with the European Film College to produce a Dogme film. In this case, what they brought back with them was a greater understanding of one another.

Erik continues by saying that the challenge is that they need to deliver a product, and unless the idea is directly transformed into a better product, it is difficult to retain it. “But we do have something,” he says. “There are some of us who track websites and distribute them to the rest of the group. What’s happening in the toy world, what’s coolest and hottest and newest? What’s happening in Tokyo?”

The most important thing, however, is that, despite the hierarchies and structures at LEGO, it is possible for a designer to make his or her mark on new products from the first day on the job. “You have your own signature on the products,” says Erik, “whether it’s colour choice, the story about the product, or the production process.” The designers say that the LEGO family and current leadership – Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen and CEO Jørgen Vig Knudstorp – are both especially open to a management style that prioritizes employee involvement – and that this support makes a difference. “If you have an idea, then you get a response, and they’re always ready to come and have a chat. Jørgen also has his own blog, and the close involvement and listening means you feel you’re part of it all and have greater responsibility because you’re told you’re valuable.”

CREATIVE TECHNIQUES

LEGO ensures a high degree of employee involvement and the breaking down of internal barriers. In the following, Christian offers a number of examples from his own businesses concerning processes in which divisions are dissolved both vertically and horizontally. He also goes into more depth about different techniques that can encourage creative processes. Christian explains:

“In my companies, we seek to create a culture that makes idea generation systematic. We do this in part by using variations of idea generation techniques. Some techniques and methodologies are better suited to one type of company than to another, and these processess can take place either individually or at the group level.”

IDEA DEVELOPMENT AT THE GROUP LEVEL

“If it’s about getting an idea or solution generated at the group level, it’s important to put together a group in which the right dynamic can emerge. It requires you sometimes put together a group that’s as varied as possible, with people from as many different departments as possible. At hummel, there could be participants from design, product development, sales, and marketing, who together need to develop a new campaign or direction for design. If it’s about our technology firm Sanovo Technology Group, it could be brainstorming about a new service concept or the further development of a machine, with contributions from engineers, sales, and marketing.

“It’s also good to think in terms of further differentiations within the group. Preferably with a good balance of men and women, young and old, introverts and extroverts, and so on. You can also combine on the basis of employee experience. Novices who’ve just been employed or have just left school often view challenges and problems from new perspectives. They’re not limited by the history of what’s possible and what isn’t. Some people think it can obstruct a process if you mix managers with people who report to them directly since this can block people’s desire to open up and let go or otherwise can cause people to show off and act dominating. That hasn’t been my experience though, and if it were the case, you’d need to take a long, hard look at your managers or your culture,” Christian says.

PREPARATION AND RULES

“Sometimes, it can be good to let people come to the session prepared. In other words, it can be good if they have thought about the subject a bit ‘at home’. You can also make rules. For instance, you can state that people can only participate if they have come up with five ideas to add to the pot.

“The disadvantage is that people could get too locked into particular ideas from the start, meaning that this is once again dependent on the situation with which one is working. The advantage is that participants could already be subconsciously working away at the problem at the start of the meeting. It’s important that the session has a clear goal from the very beginning. Simply put, what do you want to get out of the process? What should participants be able to walk away with in the end?”

CLEAR AND SIMPLE GOALS

“It’s important to work with clear and simple goals, preferably expressed as questions, such as, ‘How can we create a unique service concept?’ It’s also beneficial to write the goal on a whiteboard, blackboard, flip chart, or sheet of paper hanging on the wall so that all of the participants have the idea in front of them.

“Before you get started,” Christian says, “it’s a good idea to have set out an idea quota. For instance, you can set the goal of getting 100 ideas on the board before the session is over. This ensures that the necessary critical mass has the chance to accumulate, and it suppresses our inner critics. It’s also good to limit the session’s length since that also helps create a group dynamic, a feeling of having to achieve it together.”

Christian continues, “Then you start presenting ideas, and as far as this is concerned, it’s most important that, in the beginning, you don’t criticize the ideas that are presented. You have to be open to everything, even the weird input, and not censor yourself or others. Ideas being shot down immediately is one of the most obstructive things for this kind of process. It’s a good idea to write all of the ideas on a flip chart and hang the sheets on the wall as they get filled up.

“The person who’s leading the session needs to encourage the desire to offer unusual ideas and preferably ideas that are exaggerated or extreme. It’s also good to encourage people to build upon and stand on the shoulders of ideas that have already been presented and to do so with a smile or a ‘Now we’re really getting there!’ It’s about creating an atmosphere in which the individual goes from ‘me thinking’ to ‘we thinking’.

“I’ve sometimes had success starting a session with a mini-brainstorm about a completely different topic in order to warm up. The warm-up can get delegates to forget themselves and their self-censorship. I once got people to think of porn movie titles inspired by real films. Definitely not an approach that was to everyone’s taste, and it of course comes down to culture and ways of doing business.”

CATEGORIZATION OF IDEAS

“After you’ve achieved the target number of ideas, you’ll usually get to work categorizing them. But even more important at this point is to juxtapose and combine ideas.”

Christian continues, “Only after that can you finally start evaluating, prioritizing, and analyzing. You select and highlight the best ideas. Then it’s good to finish off by agreeing on what happens next. It could be a matter of letting people know that if they come up with other ideas after the session, they should send them in to the person responsible for the next stage in the process. It’s pretty common for people to get their best ideas later in the day, when they’re out running or maybe doing the dishes. The subconscious is always at work. It’s a spectacular tool that never sleeps.

“You can use other tools as well. Writing processes, for example. Some people could be scared of saying something stupid or could stress themselves about saying something brilliant if there are a lot of organizational levels taking part in the process. In this case, you could use brainwriting. This method can be executed in various ways, but the basic idea is that people write their ideas down instead of saying them. In this case too, it’s best if the session leader starts out by clarifying the essence of the problem or challenge and then writes it down so everyone can see it.”

MAXIMUM OF TEN PEOPLE
IN EACH GROUP

Christian explains, “My experience has been that these kinds of groups work best when you’re ten people max. If you’re more than that, you could make smaller sub-groups. Then give each group member a sheet of A4 paper, a Post-It pad, or some index cards. Then everyone writes three to five ideas on an A4 sheet of paper or the same number of ideas on Post-It notes or index cards, after which these are passed along to one’s neighbour. Again, it’s helpful to work within a time limit. For instance, coming up with three to five ideas within five minutes. Then everyone reads all of the cards or pages out loud, after which you can start a new round in which the ideas should preferably have been stimulated or based on the input you got from either your neighbour or from others in the group. Then the session continues, and you conclude the session as described for brainstorming.”

SYNCHRONICITY:
KEEPING A PHOTO IN YOUR POCKET

Another technique could be to keep a photo in your pocket as a reminder of the problem you’re tackling. The technique builds upon the idea of synchronicity, which we shall now briefly explain. Jung described the term alongside his contemporary – and later, the Nobel Prize-winning chemist – Wolfgang Pauli.

Synchronicity is the phenomenon of two apparently unconnected circumstances meeting and thereby creating meaning. For instance, out of the blue, you think of a former schoolmate from fifth grade – who then calls you up. Or perhaps you start a new hobby, then begin meeting people who share the same hobby, and you notice the hobby described in the media far more often than you did before. Or when you get pregnant, you start stumbling upon pregnant women everywhere. Or if you buy a black car, well, suddenly you start seeing black cars all over the road.

Christian says, “Some people are convinced there’s something esoteric about synchronicity. But I don’t necessarily feel the concept has to be interpreted so directly, and generally speaking, I think the preceeding examples are closely related to one another and are really relevant to the creative process, especially on the individual level. If I’m confronted with a given problem, assignment, or challenge, I might switch the picture on my computer’s desktop to one that relates to the challenge. Or perhaps I could go around with a photo in my wallet or my bag. Or I could start researching the topic in question, meeting people from related industries, or signing up for newsletters from businesses that work with something of particular relevance to my own challenge. For instance, this could be the case if I were going to take over a new business, or enter into a new industry or new product area.”

A CREATIVE ORGANIZATION

The very significant growth that hummel has experienced in recent years on both the top and the bottom line largely comes down to the fact that creative processes have resulted in concepts and product groups, such as sports fashion sneakers, that are closely linked to yet also on the edge of hummel’s design DNA and heritage, with international potential.

Elements within hummel’s latent framework thus encourage creativity in the company’s daily operations. These are as follows (and many more examples could be added to the list):

   Flat organization: The decision makers are close to the individual employees and see and hear reactions/developments as early as possible

   Informal culture: It feels natural to express one’s personal opinion when a good idea emerges or if an idea needs to be criticized

   Close and present management in a general sense: The employees can express criticism, which frees energy for constructive challenges and frictionless thinking.

Henning Nielsen, who is international marketing director (CMO) for hummel International, says:

“When a specific task needs to be completed, and we want to ensure the best possible conditions for success, then we involve key people from the relevant departments for the project in question. Then, it’s the individual’s responsibility to acquire the right amount of knowledge from his or her own area by sampling down through the organization in order to update the knowledge and not assume the status quo!

“For the development of hummel’s latest Indoor Recycled campaign, just about all of the organizational layers, partners, and a number of suppliers were brought in for part or the entirety of the project period in order to ensure the best possible commercial conditions for success. The framework was established by having sales and marketing work together to initiate a goal-setting workshop in which the relevant market conditions were analyzed, prioritized, and addressed as a commercial basis for a creative briefing. Input was integrated from sales and marketing, the administration, and from employees such as people responsible for merchandise and sponsor activation. The respective brand touch-point possibilities and limitations relative to the core message need to be looked at from a variety of perspectives before a campaign execution brainstorm can begin. The next step was a creative workshop involving all relevant creative actors. In this case, it was important to clarify the execution requirements for the relevant touch points: product, online, store, sponsorships, and PR.

“Success is dependent on a huge number of steps. A massive effort has to be made before a consumer even starts hearing about it: internal sales among one’s own employees, the distribution partners, the distribution partners’ agents, the store managers, the store employees – not to mention the consumers! In the case of our Indoor Recycled campaign, alternative platforms were used again and again to create message awareness and engagedness in the campaign execution process. For instance, we used hospitality rights at the 2010 Skanderborg Festival before the start of the season as a sort of kick-off for announcing the primary idea – and the following year in terms of the campaign and the specific products’ characteristics and possibilities just before the start of the sales season. One could, of course, win tickets on the basis of campaign-related criteria, and a festival with truckloads of plastic beer cups is the perfect setting in which to describe the inception of a recycled collection in which a collaboration with The Black Eyed Peas resulted in the gathering of 133,400 plastic bottles – the equivalent of 12,000 hummel recycled shifts – over the course of 24 concerts in Europe.

“Creating awareness and commercial involvement among chain buyers also occurred by using hospitality in relation to activating sponsorship rights for players, with an event being put on in Malmö, Sweden in connection with the handball world championships in January 2011 as well as in-store teaser displays in the street scene of selected sports shops.”

Henning hereby describes a good example of the sort of engaging and ownership-fostering process that hummel exploits. In the introductory design meetings, there is always a high degree of involvement, with sales, product development, design, and marketing taking part. Everyone has something to contribute. The sales department is skilled because it is out in the trenches every day, receiving input from customers. Sales is up to date on the status of competitors and has statistics and customer feedback at hand concerning which products sell and which do not. This also means that sales is aware that it has a role in the process and feels it has been involved in the campaign’s start itself. Similarly, the design department is important because it possesses better knowledge as to where the trends are leading in the long term. Design can identify “the new black” in Paris.

The product development department is also important, even if it is sometimes involved a little later in the process since its role is to assess whether hummel can actually produce a given model and, if so, at which factory this should be done. As a result, product development can be disruptive within an initial idea-generating flow in which it is important that the sky is the limit and that ideas are not shot down – hence product development’s later involvement.

The marketing department knows what is trending in terms of selection of marketing platforms, social media, store marketing, print, trade shows, film, events, and PR. It is marketing’s role to package the collections and ensure traffic into customers’ shops, elevated brand awareness (especially in emerging markets), and long-term brand construction. Marketing is responsible for all of this and is becoming increasingly important, in line with the increasing automatization taking place worldwide.

It has never been so easy to produce clothes as it is today. Shoes are still a bit more difficult, especially if you wish to have a special production, for which start-up costs can be high. This means that most people can start up a clothing brand – even one that creates clothes that are in this season’s colour, that do not itch, and that can keep you warm during the winter. Today, you can find websites where you can upload your own design and then allow production and so on to be undertaken by others, so that, in reality, all you need to do is designate where you would like the collection delivered.

This is why hummel, as a brand, needs to pay more attention to telling stories and differentiating itself. This is a role for marketing in particular. It is no longer enough to deliver quality and deliver on time. One has to do more.

The framework for creativity and the definition of the task at hand are important, as are the breaking down of internal barriers (between departments and between employees and managers) and external barriers (separating the business from customers and competitors). It is possible for employees to improvise within this framework. Freestyle improvisation, lacking goals and frameworks, can be a waste of time. This innovation could perhaps be described as a type of targeted creativity.

As we can see at hummel, organizational creativity is promoted when employees possess a certain degree of freedom to define and prioritize their work assignments as well as a certain degree of self-management. Trust between management and employees is thus a prerequisite. At hummel’s new head offices by the harbour in Aarhus, there has been a conscious attempt to strive for these activities. There will be a spontaneous meeting space where employees can meet informally and across working groups. There will be creative corners and rooms in which work can take place across design, product development, and marketing and to which all internal groups – including sales – will have access. There will be collection-oriented and season-specific mood boards, design overviews, and collages on the walls. Creativity, in other words, will be visualized and quite concretely hung from the walls.

In terms of the breaking down of barriers and involvement of various groups, which represent significant elements of the Company Karma business philosophy and in which Christian plays a crucial part, the involvement of customers or “the environment” are important when it comes to creativity. Social media such as Facebook, YouTube, and sometimes Twitter are particularly suited for this purpose. Here, one can ask consumers for advice on new designs, campaigns, etc.

One can improvise precisely within the framework that Henning Nielsen describes earlier. At a company like hummel, one has to make space in which creativity can emerge. In one of Christian’s other companies, Sanovo Technology Group, much of the creativity is dependent on customers’ demands and criteria. This is what research and development manager Jan Holst describes in the following example, which concerns exploring the edges of the box during the development of egg-cracking machines.

BOX DESIGN

Jan explains:

“Our customers have long requested complete automatic cleaning solutions for our egg-cracking machines. In a subsequent brainstorming process, this led to a rather unusual box design for our Optibreaker, where the machine, in principle, is designed as a washing machine that contains only vertical and rounded surfaces.

“The demand for better product quality led to a deeper investigation into what’s necessary for truly taking detection of egg yolks and egg whites to a new level, and the result of the study showed that detection improves significantly if you can transilluminate egg whites. This led to the idea of using food-safe plastic as material for the separation cups. You can say, then, that the requests contribute to idea generation, which contributes to introductory investigations, which finally result in the improved concept. We get ideas and inspiration, obviously, through available new techniques in the form of new materials (for instance, new plastics), new electrical control systems (for instance, new network-based systems) that make it more service-friendly, and new production methods (for instance, laser cutting) as well as from competitors and suppliers of related products.”

WHERE DOES INSPIRATION COME FROM?

It is also important the employees can be inspired at the individual level in the organization. Henrik Horak and Benedicte Damsted Nielsen, who are designers at hummel, and Fiorella Lee Groves, who is art director at hummel, tell us about letting themselves be inspired. Henrik says, “I personally get inspiration for the collections from my pleasantly large number of friends and colleagues within and outside of the industry, from the Internet, from magazines, and from inspirational travel. We travel as much as possible, getting impressions, purchasing inspirational samples, taking photos, and making doodles in little notebooks. As a designer, you’re always at work. Hunting after new impressions, colours, and inspiration, regardless of whether you’re with your aunt in the Danish town of Roskilde, in Le Marais, or with friends on a biking trip on the island of Bornholm. We often produce three drafts for the hummel Lifestyle men’s collection before we hit upon the eventual solution.

“A big and important part of the process are the discussions Benedikte and I have. They usually take place alongside a heap of magazines, cut-outs, foam sheets, and pins. Or over big mugs of caffè latte in downtown Berlin. By repeating the various forms in countless variations, you mould the silhouettes and the lines until you feel it’s right.”

Benedikte, for her part, says, “Where does inspiration come from? Personally, I start by surfing the Internet. Take a day when I’m not actually doing anything else. Look at the trend websites that interpret our society and the coming trends. A mix of art, music, leisure activities, the popular ideals of the day, blogs, and of course a couple of runways. I surf through everything that catches my attention without, however, considering where I’m going. One day when I just get overloaded with information. I collect the most interesting bits, print them out, and hang them up so I’m surrounded by it at work or at home.

“I also spend time selecting some mood music, which is an important part of my process. Then I go home or take a jog through the forest with headphones on. And then it comes to me, like a little symphony. The combination of the day’s impressions, the music, the light in the forest, and my breathing. Set my emotions in motion, and I start designing.

“I often work closely with my colleague, Henrik. We go places Berlin and London, peek into shops, look at exhibitions and street art, study people and their diverse personal styling and appearances. And then we hunt through our archives at hummel, where we find old styles and expressions that can be used anew.

“Then comes a process in which Henrik and I assemble our inspiration and ideas so they’re suitable for our end users at hummel. We make the first sketches, meet, and make adjustments... Sketch another draft, meet, and make adjustments with product manager Tina and production developer Sanne... Sketch a third draft, meet, and make adjustments with our sales team. And then we just about have a finished collection on paper. I’ve so often sketched a collection three times before it was finished. But it’s because it’s a continual process, and you feel you’re never totally done. But you have to stop sometime.”

Fiorella says, “The creative moments come when I least expect them. When I’m talking to a good friend, knitting, eating, reading a good book. In other words, when I’m most relaxed. And it’s like when I fall in love. It makes me blind to everything. I suffer from tunnel vision until I can get that idea down on paper – in the first instance as a sort of messy Frankenstein’s monster of notes and illustrations.

“So, how can we get more of these moments? In the creative industry, we always say, ‘Kill your darlings.’ But this requires that you first have something you love, and once you find it, the chain reaction can begin. This requires that I first forget about all the obvious ideas and begin exploring my theme with a clear mind. So I race through design magazines (on which I spend a fortune), I surf the web, see films, exhibits. Then I discuss things with colleagues, go for a walk, take a bath, or whatever. Quite often, your ‘darling’ will be the right solution, but you only find that out once you’ve killed her.”

There are many methods, and we wish to highlight a combination of brainstorming and brainwriting with the aid of mindmaps or a variation on this theme. The old Zen Buddhist saying, “A thousand people, a thousand paths”, is relevant here, for there are many ways of doing things.

Start by writing the topic in the centre of a sheet of A3 paper, leaving plenty of space. You could even draw it. The drawing process encourages creativity. Start making associations on the basis of the given topic, and write down keywords or central themes, connected to the main topic by lines or branches. For example, there can be a circle around it. Then it is a matter of letting go and making free associations on the basis of the keywords and central themes.

One good idea could be to make sketches or use symbols as you go. You could also write and draw in various colours, perhaps even prioritizing the most important point using colours and alternating between encapsulating subthemes in circles and squares.

It is important to remember that, at the start, the associations you make should be as off the wall as possible. Exaggerate, and come up with absurd suggestions. Michael Michalko describes one of the best examples of this kind of lateral thinking in the book Cracking Creativity. He takes the following question as his point of departure: how do you divide 13 by two? The normal answer, based on linear thinking and experience-based learning, is 6.5. Creative answers, based on how you think through the question, could be:

13 = 1 and 3

XIII = 11 and 2

Or “thir and teen, with four letters on either side of ‘and’”.

A variation of the mindmap is the fishbone method. This method is particularly useful for clarifying causes and effects of various conditions in an organization or value chain. The method was invented in the 1960s by quality management professor Ishikawa from the University of Tokyo and should be used to determine the primary causes of a given problem or result so that one can then optimize processes and correct any errors.

The fishbone method gets its name from its resultant diagram, which resembles a fish skeleton. You describe your problem in the fish’s head, describe the problem’s primary and secondary causes on the fish’s ribs, and under these, write the answers as to why they occur. You can then brainstorm or write your way toward the problem’s solutions on the fish’s tail. When you find these, write them into the diagram. Ishikawa recommended that people let the fishbone method bubble away in their heads overnight because he felt that our subconscious would find its way toward a solution.

There are, in other words, numerous methods for involving employees and ensuring large numbers of ideas. Let us reflect on the earlier stories with a couple of points from the research world concerning the importance of teamwork for creativity.

WHEN TEAMS WORK TOGETHER

Teams can encourage creativity but only if certain conditions are fulfilled. In 1984, for instance, Michael Kirton used his study of engineers as the basis for claiming that smoothly functioning teams often involve a certain balance between innovation and adaptation. Or more precisely, a smoothly functioning team needs some people who both think innovatively and come up with new ideas and some who keep sight of what is actually possible. Individuals need not always undertake the same roles – sometimes you will be the one who gets the ideas, and other times, you will be the one who focuses on how they can be translated into action. The specific delegation of roles will vary in accordance with the type of assignment, the characteristics of the situation, and other demands from the organization’s external environment.

According to Kirton, the most successful teams possess an appropriate combination of innovation and adaptation whereas less effective teams often consist of too many participants, who seek that which conforms or is familiar or too many people who exclusively chase new ideas. It is important to stress that one is not just one’s role in specific contexts. Kirton thus notes – precisely as a number of our contributors have done – the importance of varied group composition and the necessity of shifting gears and methods in accordance with the situation, the particular working group, and the company.

One of the greatest barriers to creativity is when what Kirton calls “locked thinking” occurs. In group contexts, this is also called “groupthink”. In some types of creativity research, it is asserted that groupthink can obstruct divergent thinking; that is, lateral, different, disruptive, or provocative thinking. We know groupthink from sports teams and other teams in which people develop as a group a strong sense of agreement, spirit, hope, and engagedness. The disadvantage to the phenomenon is that one can end up excluding information and knowledge that directly threatens the group’s cohesiveness.

The fatal aspects of groupthink arise when group members – for example, in a team or an organization – end up excluding important information when seeking to solve a particular problem, often doing so in an attempt to maintain agreement and consensus or to appear clever. This can lead to unsuccessful attempts at problem solving or blindness to any red flags that might be raised.

On the other hand, we know that a team-based organization can be more creative than a traditional, functionally constructed organization involving a great degree of individualization and specialization. Teams do not, of course, inherently promote creativity (groupthink, for instance, suggests the opposite), but they can promote creativity regardless since creativity is often built upon the work and contributions of numerous people.

Bilton writes that the leader of a group should disrupt or interrupt consensus and reintroduce diversity, preventing group members from becoming so specialized and self-operating that they cannot see beyond their own hedgerows and, as a result, fail to take a step back and assess their own contributions relative to those of other group members.

The theory of groupthink and ideal team composition has often been used to categorize workers and keep them in specific roles, which can lead to pigeonholing and stereotyping. This is obviously unfortunate and has never been Kirton’s intention, which is more to show how one can undertake different roles in different assignments and situations.

TRUST AND SECURITY

In his book, Bilton suggests that the missing ingredients explaining the unfortunate or creativity-obstructing aspects of the groupthink phenomenon are likely security and mutual trust. The dissonance that creativity represents can seem disruptive, meaning that it is important that group members feel safe with one another so they both can accommodate this disruption and pull back from it when the disruption becomes too, well, disruptive. The group member who maintains a particular perspective that perhaps conflicts with those of the others can appear to be carping, which is, of course, just the opposite of the activity expected of a good team player. It is clear that such tendencies must be managed in such a way that the team is socialized toward or learns to tolerate difference and avoid that which is agonizingly self-assertive.

The difference or variation in task delegation, which is a prerequisite for creative teams, needs to be managed to a certain extent so that it does not develop into anarchy and inexpedient conflict even though conflict is to some extent probably unavoidable.

It is thus important that a creative team or creative organization possesses a tolerant climate and open managerial style in which there is space for divergent thinking and free discussion. One should avoid letting the groups become isolated and should make sure to bring in critics to test out positions and perspectives. As a leader, one should avoid being too controlling precisely because this can prevent more marginal voices from being heard.

Knowledge mediation and exchange across teams and organizations is, in this sense, more important than internal knowledge control. Many – such as Chris Bilton – regard new creative alliances across organizations as vital to the creative economy. Because you cannot depend on keeping all accessible knowledge within the organization, it is important to be able to collaborate with external individuals who possess the knowledge and skills you need. This also means that those who manage to be on the edge of multiple organizations can have an advantage: the ability to cross boundaries and combine skills across contexts is advantageous for creativity. On the other hand, you cannot depend solely on those who cross boundaries since core employees also play a big role in the realization of creativity.

This chapter has placed particular focus on the role of employee involvement and teamwork in creativity. The following conditions are worth highlighting here, rather than at the end of the chapter:

   Employee involvement in creative processes plays a key role in all the examples we have considered. It contributes to an important exchange of ideas and likely to a sense of coownership over the process among employees. Employee involvement also provides the management with vital information and knowledge concerning life on the shop floor.

   Employee involvement processes need to be managed: brainstorming and brainwriting sessions require a clear agenda and a leader who can stick to it.

   There is no one method that works for everyone. It is necessary to take into account the special characteristics and tasks of individual employees, working groups, and organizations.

   Employee involvement requires consideration of group composition; preparation and rules; clear and simple goals; and free space at the start of the process, followed by categorization of the best ideas for further work in the process.

   It is important to be aware of processes that can constrain creativity. These include anxiety, fear of saying the wrong thing, and groupthink in which important information is excluded. There needs to be space for the individual in the organization and for the processes, as we can also see from the other chapters in this book, where we allow ourselves to be inspired by and to sample information from all kinds of sources.

   The breaking down of barriers needs to take place on numerous levels: internally between internal working groups; between employees and management; between the company and the company’s customers; between the company and companies in various industries; and between the company and companies in the same industry.