Creative Strategy

Acknowledgements Prologue: When Strategy Meets Creativity 1 False Separations and Creative Connections Overcoming five false separations Five creative connections for the future 2 What is Creativity? 1. Creativity's Content: Innovation + a purpose to add more than individual value 2. Creativity's Outcomes: transforming contexts and redefining problems 3. The Creativity Process: tolerating contradictions enables bisociative thinking 3 Uncreative Strategy 1. Creativity can't be planned directly 2. Creativity requires bisociation, going between things, seeing from the edges, both/and rather than either/or thinking and can be thwarted by rigid classification 3. Creativity requires plurality 4. Creativity requires mistakes and accidents, or at least an acceptance of their value 5. Creativity requires slack 6. Creativity correlates strongly with an expectation that one should be creative 7. Imagery is more likely to stimulate creative thinking than language on its own 8. Creativity is often spurred on by a competitive tension 9. Strategy is often associated with heroic leadership by individuals 10. Strategic management, like management in general, has been more enamored with innovation as opposed to creativity 4 A More Creative View of Strategy Strategy's content: plans, patterns, positions, ploys, perspectives The process of strategizing: designing, planning, positioning, learning, emerging, entrepreneuring, and so on The outcomes of becoming strategized: orientation, animation, integration 5 Creating and Discovering a Creative Strategy Process The ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY: Setting the Scene for Creative Strategy PART I The Innovative Act: Discovery and Creation 6 The Bisociations of Strategic Innovation The Importance of Being Innovative Defining strategic innovation: Discovering and Creating the New and Original 7 The Six Outcomes of Strategic Innovation 1st Degree of Strategic Innovation: Value Innovation The 2nd Degree of Strategic Innovation: Cost innovation The 3rd Degree of Strategic Innovation: Volume innovation The 4th Degree of Strategic Innovation: Market innovation The 5th Degree of Strategic Innovation: Boundary innovation The 6th Degree of Strategic Innovation: Learning innovation 8 Sparking Strategic Innovation Diversity Naivety Curiosity Urgency Beyond best practice The ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY Act I: The Innovative Act PART II Strategic Entrepreneurship: Dilettantes and Diligence 9 The Five Angles of Strategic Entrepreneurship The force of a creative strategy The five angles of strategic entrepreneurship 1st Angle of Entrepreneurship 2nd Angle of Entrepreneurship 3rd Angle of Entrepreneurship 4th Angle of Entrepreneurship 5th Angle of Entrepreneurship The Cycle of Strategic Entrepreneurship From Cycle to Interconnected Star The strategic entrepreneur as a 'diligent dilettante' Creative thinking games for diligent dilletantes 10 Three Angular Journeys of Entrepreneurship About a writer-entrepreneur 12 000 miles to market Deciphering Codemasters The ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY Act II: The Entrepreneurial Act PART III Strategic Leadership: Envisioning and Interacting 11 Leading from the Middle All Roads Lead to the Middle Route 1: The rise of the 'knowledge age' Route 2: Working with the 'wisdom of crowds' Route 3: Rediscovering of the importance of the 'gut instinct' and intuition Route 4: Tipping rather than charging Route 5: The power of networks and relationships Route 6: From IQ to many Qs Route 7: 'Post-heroic' leadership Route 8: Strategy from the middle 12 The Strategic Leadership Keypad Switching Positions: Introducing the strategic leadership keypad 13 Shifting Keys: Leadership as Envisioning and Interacting 1. Leading ugly: Billy Beane 2. Leading without 'leadership': Arsène Wenger 3. Leading by whispering: Bill Campbell 4. Reconnecting Leadership: Saatchi & Saatchi From Strategic Leadership to Strategic Organization The ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY Act III: The Leadership Act PART IV Strategic Organization: Focussing and Loosening 14 From Principles of Excellent Organizations to Organizational 'Virtues' SLT Icarus, Aristotle and The Virtue of Virtues 15 Seven Virtues of Strategic Organization The 1st Virtue: Integrating and fragmenting: Adaptive culture The 2nd Virtue: Democracy and dictatorship: Meritocratic politics The 3rd Virtue: Naïve and expert: Deutero-learning The 4th Virtue: Subjective and disembodied: development from everywhere The 5thVirtue Distracted and blinkered: A multi-tasking orientation The 6th Virtue: Open planned and closed planned: Ambidextrous architecture The 7th Virtue Static and flux: poised for change 16 Strategic Organization: Where Creative Strategy Ends (And Begins Again) Organizing for creative strategy: Getting the particular balance right Organizing Creative Strategy The ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY Act IV: The Organizational Act Sources and Suggested Further Reading References Index