Fostering Creativity And Innovation by Dr. Rashid Alleem - HTML preview

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DIVERGENT THINKING

Divergent thinking is the ability to generate many possible answers to a question, whereas convergent thinking focuses on a single answer, winnowing down the options. Let’s have a closer look.

Divergent Thinking

Divergent thinking is an idea generation technique (such as brainstorming) in which an idea is followed in several directions to lead to one or more new ideas, and, in turn, leads to still more ideas. Convergent thinking, by contrast, aims to solve a specific problem. Divergent thinking is creative, open-ended thinking aimed at generating fresh views and novel solutions.

Guidelines for Divergent Thinking:

• Defer Judgment. Deferring judgment isn’t the same as having no judgment. It just means “hold off for a while” and avoid judging ideas as either bad or good in this phase.
• Combine and Build. Use one idea as a springboard for another. Build, combine, and improve ideas.
• Seek Wild Ideas. Stretch to create wild ideas. While these may not always work, getting way outside the box provides the space to discover extraordinary ideas.
• Go for Quantity. Take the time necessary and use the tools in this guide to generate a long list of potential options. To make it easier to generate a long list, set a concrete goal such as at least 50 ideas in seven minutes for groups, or 30 ideas in seven minutes if solo, before going to the next step.

NANO: CREATING A CUSTOMER VALUE

PROPOSITION

It’s not possible to invent or reinvent a business model without first identifying a clear customer value proposition. Often, it starts as a quite simple realization. Imagine, for a moment, that you are standing on a Mumbai road on a rainy day. You notice the large number of motor scooters snaking precariously in and out around the cars. As you look more closely, you see that most bear whole families—both parents and several children. Your first thought might be, “That’s crazy!” or “That’s the way it is in developing countries, people get by as best they can.”

When Ratan Tata of Tata Group looked out over this scene, he saw a critical job to be done: Provide a safer alternative for scooter families. He understood that the cheapest car available in India cost easily five times what a scooter did and that many families could not afford one.

In the middle of difficulty

lies opportunity

Albert Einstein

Highly creative people are practical thinkers. Not only do they come up with more ideas, they come up with more good ones, too. They don’t mistake possibilities for probabilities because through time and experience anything is possible. Tata saw a great opportunity and was able to find a solution by offering an affordable, safer, all-weather alternative for scooter families. This was a powerful value proposition, one with the potential to reach tens of millions of people who were not yet part of the car-buying markets. Ratan Tata also recognized that Tata Motors’ business model could not be used to develop such a product at the needed price point and so in 2008 Nano car was born—an inexpensive rear-engine hatchback intended to appeal to current riders of motorcycles and scooters, with a launch price of $2,500 USD.

The purchase price of the Nano was reduced by eliminating nonessential features, reducing the amount of steel used in its construction, and relying on low-cost labor. The launch earned media attention and the Nano received much praise for its low price and status as “The People’s Car.”