By Pier Vittorio Mannucci
Successful creative ideas go through four phases on their journey to becoming a reality: generation, elaboration, championing and implementation. At each of these stages, tensions can and do arise. So how can you stop your creative idea dying an early death? Here are four ways.
Don’t get too attached.
When you’re trying to generate a novel and a useful idea, don’t get too emotionally attached to any one idea. The core concept needs to be sufficiently bare bones, to allow for elaboration in future phases of the journey. Too much information at this stage makes cognitive pathways rigid. Without an open mind, it’s less likely that you will be able to create – connecting previously disconnected elements to develop a great idea.
Resist temptation: don’t generate ideas in homogeneous networks.
Research shows that, in the generation phase, if you only seek information from people with whom you have a high degree of emotional closeness, you will miss out on access to new knowledge that differs from what you already know. Moreover, you are also likely to spend less time considering different options. The greater the variety of perspectives you receive at the outset, the more creative you can be.
Creative confidant.
Alfred Hitchcock, the famous director, used to present all his ideas for new movies to his wife, Alma Reville, before pitching them to producers. She was his closest confidante and provided feedback and encouragement to pursue ideas.
Access to new knowledge is critical in the idea generation phase, but when you are elaborating on an initial concept, seek support from one person who is emotionally close to you; someone from your “inner circle”. The strength of your emotional attachment will enable you to make yourself vulnerable, and will buffer the anxiety associated with sharing novel ideas. Remember, lots of creative projects look like bad ideas to start with, but once developed and shared their full potential can be spotted. Your idea could be one of them.
Get yourself an audience.
Next, when you start to evaluate the potential of an idea and further develop it, try to develop it in such a way that you can share it more with others. Take screenwriters for example. Once they have generated and selected an idea, they develop a synopsis, and develop it into a pitch to present to producers.
But this stage, where you champion your idea to those with the power to green light or reject it, is no easy task. To be successful you need to possess influence and legitimacy. Influence will enable you to protect your idea from encroachment and criticism, remove obstacles to acceptance, and persuade decision makers to provide approval and resource for the implementation phase. A green light is most likely when decision makers perceive you to be legitimate and competent.
Reputation matters, but research suggests influence and legitimacy can be borrowed. So think about well-regarded contacts you might associate with to champion your idea. Decision makers will oftentimes attribute your contacts’ well-regarded attributes to you too.
Post based on research by Jill E. Perry Smith and Pier Vittorio Mannucci.
