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1 9 6 3

Are great ideas

destroying your

company?

Creativity Is Not Enough by Theodore Levitt

Ted Levitt, a former editor of HBR and one ofthe most incisive commentators

on innovation to have appeared in our pages, takes dead aim at the assumption

that creativity is superior to conformity. He argues that creativity as it’s com-

monly defined-the ability to come up with brilliantly novel ideas-can actually

be destructive to businesses. By failing to take into account practical matters

of implementation, big thinkers can inspire organizational cultures dedicated

to abstract chatter rather than purposeful action. In such cultures, innovation

never happens-because people are always talking about it but never doing it.

Often, the worst thing a company can do, in Levitt’s view, is put innovation

into the hands of “creative type5”-those compulsive idea generators

whose distaste for the mundane realities of organizational life renders

them incapable of executing any real project. Organizations, by their very

nature, are designed to promote order and routine; they are inhospitable

environments for innovation. Those who don’t understand organizational

realities are doomed to see their ideas go unrealized. Only the organizational

insider-the apparent conformist-has the practical intelligence to overcome

bureaucratic impediments and bring a good idea to a fruitful conclusion.

“CREATIVITY” is not the miraculous road to business growth and affluence that is so abundantly claimed these days. And for the line manager, particularly, it may be more ofa millstone than a milestone. Those who extol the liberating virtues of corporate creativity over the somnam- bulistic vices of corporate conformity may actually be giving advice that in the end will reduce the creative anima- tion of business. This is because they tend to confuse the getting of ideas with their implementation-that is, confuse creativity in the abstract with practical

innovation; not understand the operat- ing executive’s day-to-day problems; and underestimate the intricate complexity of business organizations.

The trouble with much ofthe advice business is getting today about the need to be more vigorously creative is, essen- tially, that its advocates have generally failed to distinguish between the rela- tively easy process of being creative in the abstract and the infinitely more difficult process of being innovationist in the concrete. Indeed, they misdefine “creativity” itself. Too often, for them,

THE INNOVATIVE ENTERPRISE AUGUST 2002 137

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“creativity” means having great, origi- nal ideas. Their emphasis is almost all on the thoughts themselves. Moreover, the ideas are often judged more by their novelty than by their potential useful- ness, either to consumers or to the com- pany. In this article, 1 shall show that in most cases, having a new idea can be “creative” in the abstract but destruc- tive in actual operation, and that often instead of helping a company, it will even hinder it.

Suppose you know two artists. One tells you an idea for a great painting, but he does not paint it. The other has the same idea and paints it. You could easily say the second man is a great cre- ative artist. But could you say the same thing of the first man? Obviously not. He is a talker, not a painter.

That is precisely the problem with so much of today’s pithy praise of creativ- ity in business-with the unending fiow of speeches, books, articles, and “cre- ativity workshops” whose purpose is to produce more imaginative and creative managers and companies. My observa- tions of these activities over a number of years lead me firmly to this conclu- sion. They mistake an idea for a great painting with the great painting itself. They mistake brilliant talk for construc- tive action.

But, as anybody who knows anything about any organization knows only too well, it is hard enough to get things done at all, let alone to introduce a new way of doing things, no matter how good it may seem. A powerful new idea can kick around unused in a company for years, not because its merits are not recognized but because nobody has as- sumed the responsibility for convert- ing it from words into action. Vtfhat is often lacking is not creativity in the

Theodore Levitt, a longtime professor of marketing at Harvard Business School, is now professor emeritus. He is the author of numerous HBR articles. His most re- cent books are Thinking About Manage- ment (1990) and The Marketing Imagi- nation (1986), both from Free Press.