Creative company

Last a month a team of employees at telecommunications service provider Brightstar put together a proposal for improving the user-testing solutions offered by the company.

Within minutes, senior management gave them the green light to put the idea into practice.

“The guys were obviously very passionate when they presented and five minutes in, the leadership team said ‘Wow, this is a no-brainer’,” Brightstar director of strategy and innovation Kylie Savage says.

The proposal is the result of an innovation program implemented by the company last year in a bid to remain competitive and harness the creativity of its workforce.

“As an organisation, we have a long history of focusing on innovation but we only put together a formal program a year ago,” Savage says. “Instead of being a small group of people locked away in a room coming up with ideas, it’s about getting everyone in the business thinking not just about new products but about the way we do everything.”

Thanks to this program, the user-testing proposal will be turned around quickly and the employees soon will be able to see the result of their innovation.

“Before we had implemented this program, that process could have taken a long time to get legs, in terms of going through various chains of commands and processes,” Savage says.

The business case for unlocking the imagination and creativity of employees is clear. “In a service business it’s absolutely key,” she says.

“If you’re not constantly innovating and changing what you do, your customers can start to do your work themselves. Your relevance diminishes over time.”

To get all its employees involved, the company set up a social media platform where employees can propose ideas on anything and everything in the business. The ideas that generate discussion gain momentum and can be acted on quickly.

An incidental result from these conversations at Brightstar is a new dress code, Savage says.

“Someone remarked about not wanting to wear a suit because they weren’t client-facing,” Savage says. “There was a resounding message from people, so we changed the dress code. It seems like such a minor thing but the response has been remarkable.”

It also sends a powerful – and self-fulfilling – message to staff.

“The message is that we want their ideas and we want them involved,” Savage says. “And when they speak, we listen and we make changes.

“The more ideas we have, the more likely we are to have a great idea. We are driving quantity of ideas and the quality judgment comes later.”

It invokes passion in employees that Savage says is hard to quantify.

“It has great potential to drive ‘intra-preneurialism’,” she says. “We have lots of entrepreneurial people here and this allows them to do something they’re passionate about outside of their job.

“It’s a mechanism for them to try their ideas without having to go outside the organisation and give their ideas a crack on their own.”

Innovation psychologist at Inventium Amantha Imber says the accepted scientific definition of creativity – the creation of something that is both novel and useful – should encourage more businesses to take it seriously.

“In business, you don’t want creativity that’s just novel, you need the utility as well,” Imber says.

“Some people still see creativity as an artistic endeavour but if you demystify creativity, it’s clear it has a very important application to business.”

The chief executive of ad agency Leo Burnett, Todd Sampson, agrees. “Art and creativity are two different things,” Sampson told The Australian Financial Review earlier this year. “I would argue creativity is the last remaining advantage for businesses today.

“In a parity market, in which most businesses function, the imagination and the minds of the people who work there is the thing that separates it. That’s not art.”

Imber says smart companies recognise that creativity is the new productivity; that rewarding innovative thinking will reward the bottom line.

“Creativity and innovation allow you to out-think your competitors,” Imber says. “If you can solve the problems of your business more creatively than your competitors you’ll end up with greater profitability and growth.”

BRW

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