As I mentioned previously, I have become a fan of iTunes U and have begun to make use of my drive time to and from work to listen to some of the lectures and podcasts available from a variety of colleges and universities. This morning I honestly laughed out loud listening to a lecture from Robert I. Sutton, a professor at Stanford University.
Why, pray tell, would I find a lecture entitled “Stimulating Innovation and Creativity in the Workplace” just so darn amusing? Perhaps you need to work in a big corporate environment to appreciate it, but I will give it a whirl.
The above link will take you to the iTunes store where you can download the lecture for free. The amusing part starts at 9:36 and concludes around 10:20. Anyone who has worked in a large corporation can appreciate the little nugget driven home in the lecture: that it’s not exactly ideal to be urged to be creative… but hey, hey, hey! Only be creative according to our rules… you know, ’cause otherwise, you just being seditious. And we don’t need that.
It’s really not surprising that if you work really hard at developing a corporate culture of sustainable, repeatable work to ensure absolutely quality… hey… you can get just that. As Professor Sutton points out in this lecture, that’s not a bad thing. No one wants a lot of crazy variability in how their appliances operate or how planes fly.
It just gets tricky when you need to shut that standard methodical thinking off to be creative. Once the beast is awoken, it doesn’t nap easily.
Speaking of naps, that’s all I’ve got for now. Time to wind down the brain and rest up for tomorrow. Be good, people.