How university faculties and enterprise hubs can remove the barriers to creativity and innovation

If you recognise any of these nine barriers you know what to do. Tips for Research, Innovation and Enterprise leadership teams.

Let’s face it - you know when creativity and innovation are flowing and when they’re not.

You know it because you feel it.

There are few things as fulfilling as being creative, working with creative people and solving problems with innovative ideas. Applying imagination to bring something into being is transformative and part of who we are as human beings.

So it’s not good when these fundamental capabilities are held back, particularly at work where we spend so much of our time.

Some barriers are organisational, some are personal – external and internal obstacles – but they overlap and interplay.

This article isn’t about apportioning blame (an innovation killer if ever there was one). It’s about mature reflection on what it’ll take to grow, as an organisation and as a person.

There are three key areas where you should start – Purpose, People and Culture.

Purpose

THE BELIEF BARRIER

Do you know why your faculty or innovation hub exists, beyond the obvious?

What does your organisation believe about its role in the world and the role it has in the lives of those it interacts with? What problems does it solve? Belief is a creative energy that can transmit through your teams. It can unite them, large and small, across multiple locations, all around the world. A shared belief can unite the organisation and its partners too.

Belief releases creativity because it provides an overall context for what your organisation is and can be. Ideas can flow because there is clarity.

THE TIME BARRIER

How does your organisation value time?

Finance directors love this question. They don’t always like the answer though. Of course, no one likes an inefficient organisation, particularly one where time is wasted. There’s nothing worse than expending creative energy for no gain. 

But what too many people forget is that being busy for 8 hours a day can easily be a waste of time too. The time spent at work can be totally revolutionised by focussing on creating things of value by solving Real World problems, driven by insight. That could be re-thinking a process, improving staff engagement or coming up with a promotional campaign. And it’s not the preserve of one department.

Focus on the value of your time and see how it can be used more effectively by creating value beyond ‘selling’ hours by the metre.

THE AMBITION BARRIER

What is your organisations ambition and what is yours?

This is a real kicker, but you’ve got to ask the question. It’s possible you share the same ambition, maybe that’s what drew you to it in the first place. Maybe there’s enough of an overlap in what you’d both like to achieve. Or maybe they’re totally opposed. If that’s the case it’s likely to be a barrier you’ll never remove.

Leadership teams should be able to articulate what the ambition of the organisation is. If your ambition doesn’t match it maybe it’s time to move on.

People

THE FEAR BARRIER

What are you frightened of?

Everyone can look at the clouds and see an enormous happy face appear then merge into a frog playing table tennis ... a telephone riding a camel … (can’t they?) So how come all that stops at work?

One of the main reasons is fear. Fear kills imagination. And no imagination, no creativity.

Fear is usually irrational, in our heads rather than an objective reality. So work out where this fear is coming from. It’s safe to assume that you and your team will have done scarier things than trying to be creative at work. Universities exist in a competitive environment, but they should also be a safe space where failure isn’t fatal but a learning process. Leadership teams create fear or allow it to persist. If this barrier isn’t removed creativity will not survive.

Imagination was something everyone had as a kid, until it was taught out of them. Right now removing the fear of failure barrier could be the most valuable thing you could do.

THE MOTIVATION BARRIER

Are you happy with things just as they are?

Let’s hope not otherwise you shouldn’t have read this far. So you’re someone who wants to change things, or at least try. You see problems and want to solve them even when people don’t ask you to. That motivation comes from within.

So you need to remove any obstacles that prevent you or your team’s intrinsic motivation. One way is to encourage people to ask ‘why?’ or ‘what if?’

Too many project briefings, team meetings, project reviews are full of head-nodding when a problem or objective hasn’t been clarified. So how can you create or innovate? Stop nodding and ask ‘why?’

Prepare to be the fool in the room because you’ll almost certainly be the smartest person in the room – the person who wants to clarify the objective and be effective.

THE EXPERTISE BARRIER

Do experts get in the way of fresh-thinking?

Academic research has provided evidence that expertise in a subject is a prerequisite for creativity. It seems to fly in the face of the prevailing idea of the madcap, uninitiated genius being the real innovator.

But it makes sense. Deep knowledge about a given topic should provide the foundation to build on, knowing what’s been done before, what’s worked and what hasn’t.

Critically though it subsequently requires the capability to break from those conventions – some might call it intelligent naivety – the ability to know enough to be useful but still be open to fresh thinking.

There’s another obstacle within expertise – diversity. Get a quorum of knowledgeable people together and it’s quite likely group-think will be the result. Beware!

Diversity of experiences, cultures, genders, age and the rest simply have to be factored in to increase the breadth of inputs as well as the depth of expertise. So remove barriers to diversity of inputs.

Culture

THE BEHAVIOUR BARRIER

What kills creativity and innovation?

Culture. That’s a simple fact. And culture comes from the top so it should be a priority for leadership teams. Culture manifests in behaviours – the interaction between people and even between people and technology.

I talked about fear in a previous section, and the point is relevant here too. But I’d like to highlight social capital as a key barrier-breaker for behaviour.

Simply put, social capital is built on evidence that teams of potentially less ‘gifted’ people who have learnt to trust each other, share mutual respect, values and identity are more successful than more ego-driven star players.

Seek and destroy bad behaviours that limit participation and reward status over capability and growth.

Encourage diverse groups of people to work together solving problems – building social capital. New behavioural norms can emerge if they are supported. Your organisation could become as famous for its culture as it’s outputs.

THE SUPPORT BARRIER

You’ve given people a job description, a desk and a mug so now they should just get on with being creative and innovative, right?

Well, we’re all for empowering people but that’s not how to do it. Creativity and innovation are fragile things, partly because it’s easier to not make the effort to do either. It’s hard work, and that requires support, whether that’s technical, external expertise, or increasing the diversity of folk on a project. But the area we suggest focussing on is time. Yours.

There’s not many things more powerful than believing your boss/senior is interested in you and your development, success, welfare and ambition.

The time you spend listening, course-correcting, encouraging and advising, both formally and informally is of the highest value at smashing down barriers to creativity and innovation.

THE ENVIRONMENT BARRIER

How many times have you come up with a great idea in the office?

There’s no reason to believe you’ll be more creative between the hours of 9am – 6pm. In fact, there are a whole load of obstacles ensuring it won’t happen. One of those key barriers can be the working environment.

Many universities now have state-of-the-art (or at least very modern) innovation hubs either as part of the campus or connected to it (like our home at Engine Shed in Bristol).

The prevailing wisdom was that open-plan offices would democratise organisations. It hasn’t, but it has hampered creativity. Being able to intensely focus as a team (large or small) on a task is best done in discrete spaces. Some form of flexibility for workspaces is important to release creativity, freedom to stick stuff on walls, turn up the music (or turn it off), and make a mess as you sift through ideas. Create a stimulating environment – both physically and emotionally.

A great environment is less about what it says to visitors and more about what it does for staff. Colour, light and sound have a material effect on people and can stimulate or hold back creativity.

GDPR notwithstanding, clean desk policies might make an office look efficient but often at the expense of creativity. As Einstein posed "If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?"

Remove the barriers

So there you have it – any single one of these, or any combination, could be blocking your progress.

There isn’t a magic wand that will break the chains. There is ruthless organisational and self-reflection required to identify the blockers and then systematically remove them.

All of the lessons noted above we’ve discovered through personal experience, either suffering from or being complicit in, non-creative environments. Which is not great!

Consequently, Firehaus has made it part of our mission, to be the change we want to see, to challenge and support leadership teams, and to remove the barriers in Purpose, People and Culture that hold back creativity and innovation. Not everyone listens, but leadership teams reap what they sow and will discover what great feels like. 

It’s not easy. But what’s the alternative? Be the change.

All of these barriers can be removed, though probably not all at the same time! Building up a clear picture of what might be standing in your way is the best place to start (unless it’s already obvious), and there are several ways to do that, including our Spark diagnostic.

Whatever you decide, releasing more creativity leads to a more enjoyable and productive environment.

Which has got to be good.