5 - Creating and Discovering a Creative Strategy Process

In general, there is great enthusiasm at the prospect of radical strategies that transform markets, reshape firms and industries, and change the rules of competition - but at the same time there is little understanding of how to go about formulating those strategies. The authors' intent in writing this book is to suggest "creative strategy" as an answer.

Their approach has been to "think backward" from the outcomes of an initiative in order to discover how the strategy itself was originally cultivated, across a wide range of organizations in terms of their industry, size, and culture. In so doing, they discovered that there are four elements involved in creative strategy formulation:

• Innovative- The ability to generate a new idea
• Entrepreneurial - The ability to recognize the value of it
• Leadership - The ability to champion it
• Organizational - The ability to execute upon it

The authors further complicate matters by mapping these four characteristics to a helix-shaped diagram that also considers the degree to which each is present in a given process, as well as whether each is considered in an outward-facing or inward-facing manner. They then suggest that the remainder of the book is grouped according to the four characteristics, ultimately suggesting that executing on a creative strategy entails "keeping an organization actively interacting across the four bisociative filaments that constitute the creative strategy helix.

(EN: between the use of pseudoscience and an unnecessarily complicated model, I'm catching a strong aroma of utter hogwash. My plan is to set the book aside for a week or two to let that dissipate, but I'm very apprehensive.)