Place can best be described as your channel selection of where your customers will find your products. The channel mix should be determined in how much interaction is required for the customer to make the purchase decision. For instance, highly technical products require more purchase decision intervention then commodities.

When talking about Channel selection, the Product Manager needs to consider both direct and indirect methods of product delivery. Both channel types can be improved by increasing Creativity and empowering the sales force. Distributers, Manufacturers' Reps, Wholesalers, Account Managers, Salespeople may all benefit from increased creativity and innovation. Product Managers who's channel facilitate new uses for the products are the most successful.

To understand the critical thinking process, it’s important to know what creativity isn’t.

Creativity is not intelligence, domain-limited (i.e., restricted in anyway), eccentricity, morally good, insanity, serendipity (accidental), or dichotomous (either you have it or you don’t).

Definitions of Creativity and Innovation

Creativity is the production of novel and appropriate ideas by individuals or small groups (teams). Innovation is the successful implementation of creative ideas within an organization. Creativity and innovation are linked.

Component Model of Creativity

There are three components (factors) that describe or explain creativity for an individual or group. These are: expertise, creative skills, and task motivation. These are defined as follows:

• Expertise in the domain (knowledge, technical ability/skills, talent)
• Creative Skills (flexible cognitive approach, energetic/persistent work style, orientation toward risk/independence)
• Intrinsic Task Motivation (Interest/satisfaction/challenge of the work itself as influenced by external pressures)
  

  Creativity occurs at the intersection of these three components.

Intrinsic & Extrinsic Motivation

Intrinsic motivation is the desire to do something for its own sake. Extrinsic motivation is the desire to do something for some external goal. The Intrinsic Motivation Principle: People will be most creative when they feel motivated primarily by the interest, enjoyment, satisfaction, and challenge of the work itself, and not by external pressures.

Expertise and creative skills affects what the individual can do; whereas, motivation type affects how the individual will do it (i.e., performance).

Motivation Affects Knowledge

People will adopt one of two motivation orientations - a performance orientation, or a learning orientation. An individual’s orientation directly influences their thinking style. People with a performance orientation are motivated by "looking smart." Individuals with a learning orientation are motivated by "acquiring knowledge." Each motivation (personality) type exhibits a pattern of behavior.

The Performance Oriented type tends to ...

• Believe their own intelligence cannot improve
• Choose goals that allow them to demonstrate their ability
• Try to get positive assessments of their ability
• Try to avoid negative feedback
• Feel smart when they don’t make mistakes
• Feel relieved when things are easy
• Give up when problems are tough
• Stop learning when left on their own

The Learning Oriented type tends to ...

• Believe their own intelligence can improve
• Choose goals that allow them to improve their abilities
• Try to get accurate assessments of their ability
• Seek feedback
• Feel smart when they learn from mistakes
• Feel disappointed when things are easy
• Try harder when problems are tough
• Keep learning when left on their own
  

Example: The Creative Maze (Finding a path out of the maze)

The performance (task) oriented person will tend towards a simple, easy solution to the maze problem. But the learning (experiment) oriented person will explore the maze looking for different solutions.

The social and/or organizational environment of creativity has a strong influence on creativity, and therefore, innovation.

How Organizations Kill Creativity

There are six methods for killing creativity which have been identified and are supported by experimental evidence. These are: evaluation (job performance pressure), surveillance, reward, competition, restricted choice, extrinsic orientation.

There are nine work environment obstacles to creativity. These are: various organizational characteristics, constraint, organizational disinterest, poor project management, evaluation, insufficient resources, time pressure, overemphasis on the status quo, competition.

Work Environment Stimulants to Creativity

There are nine work environment stimulants for improving creativity. These are: freedom, good project management, sufficient resources, encouragement, various organizational characteristics, recognition, sufficient time, challenge, pressure.

Environmental scales are used to evaluate work environment stimulants or impediments to creativity which consists of three organizational innovation components.

Motivation to Innovate

+ organizational encouragement

- organizational impediments

Resources in the Task Domain

+ sufficient resources

- workload pressures

Skills in Innovation Management

+freedom, challenging work, supervisory encouragement, work group support

Note: The above model has be studied and validated.

Example: High Tech Electronics Int’l Study.

The strength of differentiating factors between high-creativity and low-creativity projects has been determined as follows:

First tier: workgroup support (+), challenging work (+), organizational encouragement (+)

Second tier: organizational impediments (-), freedom (+), supervisory encouragement (+)

Third tier: workload pressure (-), sufficient resources (+)

Observation: The intrinsic factors fall into the first or second tiers. while extrinsic factors are listed under the third tier.

Example: Downsizing Study: Creativity measures steadily declined from baseline figures during downsizing which occurred in several phases. All of the creativity scales moved in the direction as indicated above. Productivity scales also declined during downsizing. After the downsizing episode and return to normalcy, both productivity and creativity measures began to increase (i.e., rebound). The productivity measures ultimately returned to their initial (baseline) levels, but creativity measures remained well below the initial (baseline) figures. That is, creativity components were permanently downgraded.

Conclusions and Recommendations

There are three methods for keeping creativity alive:

• Have a high level of skill and experience
• Take the focus off extrinsic motivators
• Concentrate on intrinsic motivators

The key work environment stimulants to creativity are:

• Freedom
• Good project management
• Sufficient resources
• Encouragement
• Various organizational characteristics
• Recognition
• Sufficient time
• Challenge
• Pressure (appropriate)
  

The creative/innovative organization is characterized by:

• Innovative, risk-oriented management
• Strategic direction, with operational autonomy
• Challenging, interesting work
• Creativity recognized and rewarded
• Frequent, work-focused feedback
• Stimulating, diverse work teams
• Communication and collaboration
• Commitment of resources and time