Mengelola kreatifitas - dari Harvard Business Review

Dalam dunia sekarang nilai tertinggi adalah kreatifitas, kemampuan untuk mencipta. Dan ini tidak hanya berarti ciptaan dalam dunia seni, tetapi juga pada dunia usaha dan politik. Kreatifitas untuk mencari pemecahan persoalan yang tidak biasa dengan efek yang luar biasa, kreatifitas untuk menciptakan produk dan jasa yang unggul dari pesaing lain, kreatifitas untuk menarik perhatian dan kesetiaan pengguna barang dan jasa.

Ternyata, memelihara dan menumbuhkan oraganisasi yang secara keseluruhan menjadi gerak kreatif bisa dipelajari. Yang bisa dipelajari berarti bisa tarik manfaatnya, dengan menerapkan secara kreatif aspek tertentu yang mendorong organisasi kita menjadi unggul dengan berbasis kreatifitas orang-orangnya.

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Harvard Business Review Online | Managing for Creativity: "Despite such insights and advances, most businesses have been unable to pull these notions of creativity together into a coherent management framework. SAS Institute, the largest privately held software company in the world, is a notable exception. Based in Cary, North Carolina, SAS has been in the top 20 of Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For list every year it’s been published. The employee turnover rate hovers between 3% and 5%, compared with the industry average of nearly 20%. The governments and global corporations that rely on SAS’s sophisticated business-intelligence software are overwhelmingly satisfied: The subscription renewal rate is an astounding 98%. And in 2004, the company enjoyed its 28th straight year of revenue growth, with revenues topping $1.5 billion.

What’s the secret to all this success? As an academic and a CEO, the two of us approach this question differently, but we’ve come to the same conclusion. SAS has learned how to harness the creative energies of all its stakeholders, including its customers, software developers, managers, and support staff. Over the past three decades—through trial and error as well as organic evolution—SAS has developed a unique framework for managing creativity, one that rests on three guiding principles: Help employees do their best work by keeping them intellectually engaged and by removing distractions. Make managers responsible for sparking creativity and eliminate arbitrary distinctions between “suits” and “creatives.” And engage customers as creative partners so you can deliver superior products.

These principles are driven by the premise that creative capital is not just a collection of individuals’ ideas, but a product of interaction. As University of Chicago organization theorist Ronald Burt has shown, long-term relationships between employees and customers add to a company’"