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When to Use Creative Groups - Part 1

So far everything in this book has concerned itself with improving individual creativity. This, and the following two chapters, will be concerned with uses for a type of creative operation that is becoming almost indispensable in certain areas of business— creative teams and groups.

When our first Explorer satellite was put into orbit, American technology moved irreversibly, if somewhat belatedly, into the realm of 18,000 mph-and-up speeds. In spite of the wishes of many people, we can never go back to the relative horse-and-buggy days of even 1955 when the fastest man-made machine moved at the "leisurely" pace of 500 to 600 mph. The age of space-travel speeds is here, and we have to learn to live with them.

This means we also have to gear ourselves to new speeds in thinking and problem solving. Even pre-Explorer scientific prob­lems were so complex that it was a rare individual who knew all there was to know about just one of the subspecialties within a scientific specialty—let alone the complete science.

And, of course, complex sciences make problems just as com­plex. Nearly, if not entirely, gone are the days when a lone scientist can suggest a simple "formula change" that will immediately solve a major chemical or processing problem. We just don't use chemicals that way anymore! And in other fields, too, we seldom hear of a great individual inventor today. Most of our advances seem to come from groups, out of laboratories or engineering sec­tions. No single individual can claim invention of atomic energy; there is no name tag on the automatic transmission of your car; legal departments of large corporations will tell you that one of their biggest problems in planning patent protection for products is settling on just which three or four names out of a dozen or more should be put on the patent application as "primary in­ventor"!

This situation exists chiefly because research, development, and production people frequently find that today no one man has the knowledge or experience to solve the new "superproblems" they are meeting. Individualists will tell you that the solution lies in educating our scientists better—or more. Or in teaching them to use more than the 15 to 20 per cent of their mental powers that the average person uses now. Both of these goals are worth striv­ing for and should certainly be explored and encouraged. Unfor­tunately many of the problems of 18,000 mph-and-up science and business can't wait for the human element to catch up. Not if a company (or the nation!) wants to stay in business. And with technologies increasing at an estimated rate of 22 per cent a year, it seems somewhat doubtful whether we can catch up if we depend solely upon the improvement of the individual.

Related terms include managing a business and small business grants for woman.