thinking inside the right box

We are big believers in creativity here at Sea Change. But not creativity for its own sake. That’s just art. Creativity needs to live within the discipline of strategy — creativity with purpose.

I have always hated the “think outside the box” cliche, not because it’s a cliche, but because it inspires stupid creativity, not useful creativity. Mars recently blogged about a Harvard Business Review article outlining a process for fostering strategic creativity — in other words, not thinking outside the box, but thinking inside the RIGHT box.

This week’s UIE interview with the author of a new book called “The Myths of Innovation” sounds a similar theme:

I think innovation is overrated. Customers don’t care about how innovative you are. They just want to be happy and satisfied. And that’s about good design. . . . The best advice I can give is to focus on people and their problems. Few great innovators worried about anything else. The fact that they found a new idea had more to do with their passion for solving someone’s problem than anything else.

Creativity matters — we think it matters a great deal. But not without the discipline of strategy, which means listening and responding to real people with real needs.