This was my response when asked about my thoughts on creativity as a “process”, and only later did I realize how well this analogy could describe the creative process. To create lightning, there are many variables that need to come together, such as the perfect atmospheric pressures, temperatures, geography (on the ground), and other such conditions. To create anything, from lightning to products, many factors need to sync together perfectly to create that spark and deliver it.
You may ask, now that we have learned what makes lightning strike (creativity), how do we get it to strike in the same place twice? This is where the creative process, the structure, or the lightning rod comes into play.
With any creative role I have ever worked in, part of that role was documenting what I have done so that others could learn from what I was doing and replicate it, so that I could move onto greater creative endeavors for the organization.
From my experiences, to replicate creativity with consistency, some sort of process must be created to encourage and develop new ideas that matter. Without this process, creative savants can find themselves lost in a web of pointless projects, or worse yet stuck in a stagnated position, not knowing how their wonderful skills that they have worked so hard to develop can be utilized in a real-world scenario.
Using a version of a Customer Experience Map to document the journey of the user of a product is a great way to begin building a structure to help generate and screen new ideas. While there are many versions of Customer Experience Maps available, the important part is that the one you choose is a tool that is tapered towards what your organization is focused on.
“Process Maps” are documents that record the journey of developing or completing each task. These will help the next person in line know what they should be doing in order to help replicate such a success. For example. If research was done in a certain area, through certain sources, in order to create a product for a customer, a process map can outline these things in detail so that another creative, yet unique offering can be generated for a new customer with slightly different demands.
Creativity can happen through inspirational “eureka” moments, but it can also happen through the act of simply doing. "Doing" is what creates the every-day innovations that often snowball into larger areas of progress for the entire industry. It is when we are doing, that our processes can be recorded and therefore made valuable to oneself or others when attempting to replicate the process in the future. It sounds paradoxical, but when an innovator spends all of their time shooting for the next “big” life-changing innovation, they tend to miss out on the bigger picture.
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