In a high-velocity global marketplace that reverberates daily with rapidly changing customer expectations and market demands to respond immediately, companies may no longer be resting on their laurels or continuing to do things the way they do. they have traditionally done. The smartest and most successful companies, for example, strive to pursue not only the wants of customers today, but also the anticipated, as yet unexpressed, needs and wants of customers in the future. Such projections require research and imagination.

Take Toyota, for example, perennially ranked among the top five sellers of cars and trucks in the U.S. Its management is constantly toying with new ideas for customizing its vehicles to meet customer desires, each year introducing more models, materials lighter weights, faster cruising speeds, even a first-of-its-kind hybrid engine that uses gas and electric fuel sources. Managers at Toyota look day and night for ways to do things better and differently.

“Companies that are innovative ask totally different questions than those that aren’t,” says Jack Ricchiuto, a Cleveland-based creativity consultant and author of Collaborative Creativity: Unleashing the Power of Shared Thinking (Oakhill Press). “A traditional set of management questions starts with ‘How can we better listen to our market?’ and ‘How can we meet customer requirements?’ But creative companies like Toyota ask ‘How can we SURPRISE our market?’ Responding to that requires a high level of commitment to management creativity.”

For such reasons, creative companies and managers continually reassess, update and revise what they are doing, always looking beyond the horizon, eager to glimpse what is to come. However, their transition from traditional to creative is seldom easy, especially with so many managers conditioned from the first grade to toe the line and think they lack creativity.

Research in this area reveals, for example, that differences in creative behavior between adults and children represent a very wide gap. One study found that only 2% of adults of any age level can be accurately classified as “highly creative,” while more than 90% of children age five and under can be classified this way. The big drop begins at 6 and 7 years (only 10% in these age groups were found to be considered “highly creative”) and at 8 years the adult levels begin. Only 2% of children aged 8 and over turn out to be highly creative and this figure does not increase again for any age group thereafter.

The researchers who led this study concluded that repeated instructions throughout our school years about how to do things “right,” after years of hearing warnings like “no,” “bad,” “wrong,” and “wrong” go invoice. Negative signals burn little minds with the impression that there is only one way to do things. If you don’t agree with that, you’re officially “deficient.”

With society officially downgrading the idea of ​​creativity so forcefully, it becomes problematic for companies to get their managers and other employees to truly think freely and “outside the box.” Furthermore, genuine creativity, by definition, subverts the status quo by challenging entrenched assumptions and discovering new ways of approaching things. Therefore, both employee and manager may resist attempts to uproot established company traditions or play with risky and untested procedures. Their responses to creative initiatives may, in fact, take the form of vigorous, unyielding, and fearful.

“I always ask my clients what they’re experimenting with,” says Ricchiuto. “The scariest response I hear is: ‘We don’t like to experiment, it’s complicated and we don’t like to fail.’ Of course, that’s just a joke. Innovative companies understand that they have to endure ‘disorder’ and failure to succeed.”

Ricchiuto continues: “The truth is that if you want to learn how to do better, you have to try a lot of things, a lot of which won’t work. Most artists will tell you that the biggest item in their studio is their dumpster. A leading design firm uses the motto: ‘Fail often to succeed sooner.’ This is how successful companies and people who really harness their natural creativity think.”

So it’s wise for a company to consider injecting innovative thinking and action into its corporate atmosphere. However, considering that creativity, by definition, has no limits, there is no absolute or guaranteed formula to take the step. However, creativity experts agree on a number of vital principles that must be observed. Here are four:

Let the “ideas” flow. Our schools and workplaces have fostered relationships dependent on the intellect for centuries. The “right” answers are the ones on the mind of a teacher or boss, it is thought, the “wrong” answers are on the heads of everyone else. Of course, variances play out in the workplace every day, especially during meetings, meaning someone offers an idea and is then quickly dismissed by the manager, moderator, or someone else at the table. Naturally, the effect will be that all such volunteering will soon cease.

Managers must resist the temptation to say, “No, no, that would never work!” The essence of brainstorming, after all, is letting ALL ideas fly, no matter how wild, impractical, or outrageous. Spend a few minutes first writing down everyone’s ideas on a topic before discussing them in practical terms. Even putting totally outlandish ideas on a white board or flipchart, where everyone can see them, could end up inspiring, at the end of the meeting, the most viable solution.

Make failure right. Many companies talk about the idea that it is okay to fail, to make mistakes, to do things wrong. But then whenever something really goes wrong, KA-BOOM! There are screams, recriminations, cries and lamentations.

Instead, truly creative managers invite open discussion of mistakes and failures on the theory that there is always a lesson to be learned from them. Taking risks, after all, by definition, means that sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. Failure is understood as a possible outcome in the global game. Don’t try to play without it!

When creative managers really understand this, they show their support in extraordinary ways. One of the vice presidents of Henry Ford the First once made a colossal inventory mistake, for example, that cost the pioneering car company more than a million dollars, a lot of bread in 1920. Assuming he would be fired anyway, the vice president drafted his resignation and handed it to his boss.

Mr. Ford looked at the piece of paper and then tore it up on the spot. “Do you think I’d fire you after what just happened?” he asked him. “My son, I just invested a million dollars in your education. Now go back to work!”

Mix color and music. The first things lost when budgets are tight in our schools are “non-essentials” like art and music. However, much brain research over the last twenty years has found that creativity is amplified when combined with traditionally “peripheral” educational activities. In addition to drawing, painting, singing, and dancing, brain scientists also harness all the practical value of taking breaks, relaxing, meditating, playing (recess!), and daydreaming.

So creative companies find ways to add music to the office or factory air, keep decorations colorful, sponsor (fun) company events, and reimburse programs or seminars that allow employees (as Stephen Covey says) “sharpen the saw”.

Travel on roads rarely traveled. If a company intends to truly transform itself into one that routinely practices high creativity, it must take risks as a culture by choosing unknown directions, trying grand experiments, jumping off cliffs!

Has an old marketing approach failed to produce results lately? Try something dramatic, different, crazy. A salesperson I once knew named Jed, for example, had a terrible time getting a prospect to look at his marketing materials. Every time he made his follow-up call, the prospect insisted that he just wasn’t interested in Jed’s service, so why should he look at Jed’s stuff?

One day, out of frustration, Jed did the complete opposite of what he had learned in sales training class by packing all of his marketing materials into a large cardboard box and writing warnings like “DO NOT open this! ” and “DO NOT look inside!” and “Whatever you do, keep this sealed!” He then mailed the box to his prospect, with no return address.

You can guess what happened: the prospect couldn’t help but look inside, so he immediately came across Jed’s lively marketing materials and before long read them all, called Jed and gave him his business. By taking a road little traveled, actually, a road NEVER traveled, in this case! – Jed’s search for his prospect was finally successful.

The ability to be highly creative resides within all of us. Despite pressures and suggestions to the contrary, it comes into the world the same day we do, and although it is rarely used for many years, it never dissolves or disappears. Fortunately, it can be reactivated surprisingly quickly, and managers who understand this can activate their employees’ creative abilities to gain extraordinary competitive advantage. Yes, it can take time, patience, newly acquired skills. But in fact it can be done. The smart companies, then, the winners, the leaders, make a firm commitment to do it, and then move forward boldly and effectively.