MBA613 Organisational Change and Innovation: Paper Clip Project

This project, part of the MBA613 Organisational Change and Innovation course, focuses on improving creative thinking in the workplace. The assignment utilizes the "paper clip challenge" as a metaphor for resource constraints, encouraging innovative solutions to a work-related problem. The student explores various strategies, including strategy formulation, design thinking, job autonomy, and idea generation, to enhance creative thinking. The Six Thinking Hats technique is applied to facilitate problem-solving. The project emphasizes the importance of identifying strengths and weaknesses, fostering a flexible cognitive approach, and promoting a culture of innovation within the workplace. The student references relevant literature to support the analysis and presents a conclusion on the effectiveness of the proposed techniques.

PAPER CLIP PROJECT
HOW TO IMPROVE CREATIVE
THINKING

Introduction
Creativity is a journey which continuously seeks innovation and evolution of ideas to shift
perspective on a situation and bring about positive solutions. In the wake of globalisation the
competitions in the workplaces have become more intense which requires improvising the
creative thinking abilities constantly. Innovations are derived from creative thinking and can be
incremental, evolutionary, revolutionary or disruptive innovations. This innovation leads to
change which can be either reactive or proactive (Matthews & Brueggemann, 2015). In my
journey to seek ways to improve creative thinking in my workplace I encountered many ideas
which I implemented to help in building creative thinking. The enhancement of creative thinking
among the staff is one of the primary objects of modern organisations. Innovation is the process
assisting the entrepreneurs to convert opportunities into products which can be marketed.
Discussion
To begin my journey in analysing the ways in which creative thinking can be enhanced it was
important for me to take into consideration the creativity score which identifies my strength and
weaknesses to approach the problem and achieve creative solutions. In the process I realised the
persistence in my weakness and I need to motivate myself to try and derive valid solutions in
spite of other good ideas being around. I realised that complex tasks can be effectively managed
by me and I'm curious to achieve valid solutions for the problem. Being able to work in
contradictory situations and striving to reach for a solution is also one of my strengths.
It is always advisable to identify the source of innovative ideas which can be either trends,
changes in market and industry, process needs, concepts which are knowledge based or any
unexpected occurrence. It is to be revered that creativity leads to generating ideas which can
help in generation of effectiveness of systems and improving efficiency.

The change strategy must include planned efforts which can be utilised to bring about
evolutionary and revolutionary changes (Shin, Jeong & Bae, 2018). The resources need to be
optimally utilized since it is mandatory to bring desired changes in minimal resources. The
paper clip challenge focuses on rallying minimal resources which need to be employed to bring
creative solutions and add requisite values. The paperclip is considered a euphemism for
constraints of resources and applies approach which is minimalist and can be achieved through
innovation or change strategy.
My first step towards analysing the skills in creative thinking can be improved at the workplace
was strategy formulation. Strategy formulation can be successfully achieved only when
environmental analysis at both micro and macro level are conducted to determine technology,
social, political and economic changes along with core competencies, competitors and suppliers.
While determining the needs of my workplace, design thinking proved to be an innovative tool.
According to Brenner & Uebernickel, (2016), design thinking makes use of the sensibilities of
the designer and aligns with the needs of people taking into consideration technological
feasibility and devising strategies that can help in tapping the maker opportunity and courier
value. The design thinking tool focuses on innovation keeping the consumers in mind. Design
thinking is an effective tool for me as it helps in tackling complex problems which is my
strength. The complex problems involved in the process of improving creative thinking at the
workplace can be resolved through taking a focused and flexible approach. It is required to
empathise with needs of the people, refraining from the problem in a human centric way,
undertaking ideation sessions for creation of ideas, taking hands on approach in prototyping and
testing the solutions developed. The design thinking approach can be effectively applied to
strategy of job autonomy which will help in achieving increased creative thinking at the

workplace. The job autonomy provides saying to employees regarding scheduling their work,
equipment selection and the procedure they will follow (Appu, Sia & Sahoo, 2015). This helps to
understand the problem of improving creative thinking by applying human centric approach by
empowering people to determine the sequence, pace and methods for accomplishing the job. It
creates a state for intrinsic motivational state which enhances the creative aspects of facilitating
exploration of new opportunities and being innovative.
According to me utilizing the creative thinking process is a viable solution to design a plan that
can be used effectively to enhance the persistence level to reach for better solutions regarding the
problem. It also helps in building confidence to take steps for expanding the boundaries of plans
beyond the conventional practices and eliminate the fears of people's opinions. The idea
generation is essential for picking up the promising idea from the pool of different creative ideas.
This requires a flexible cognitive approach. The evaluation of potentials of ideas is the next step
for discussing the further development of the idea (Perry-Smith & Mannucci, 2017). The
developed idea needs to be promoted forward to achieve desired results by applying requisite
resources and implementing it. The idea implementation helps in achieving shared vision and
understanding.
The idea incubators set up in the workplace will help in designing in-house programs which
provide ideas of employees that can be developed effectively without interference coming from
the office bureaucracy or politics. This will help in fostering cognitive style for stabilizing the
differences in processing of information and reared experiences and applying individuals ability,
skills and intelligence to resolve the issue. This will help in determining the level of flexibility
and imaginative powers that is provided to bring creative solutions to the problem. This will
improve creative thinking by processing and manipulation the information gained by an

individual through his interaction with the external environment and applying it to interpret
complex problems.
The need to be creative helps in driving the self-worth and fosters innovation (Brenner &
Uebernickel, 2016). It helps in uplifting the level of competition, providing a better customer
experience and satisfies the needs of the consumers and also increases the level of happiness and
productivity of the employees. There are two main constraints in enhancing the creativity which
are fixedness of bias and self-efficacy. For enhancing creative thinking I aim to apply going with
the flow technique as it acknowledges the fact that creative people are in a state of flow and have
clear goals for every step. It will help in achieving immediate feedback for the actions since
there is a merging of awareness and actions. It eliminates self-consciousness and avoids the fear
of failure. It is very important for improvement of creative thinking and helps in achieving
balance between challenges and skills.
The fostering of innovation requires appointing people who are consistent with the value and
belief of the organisations. There see values like risk taking capacity, inquisitiveness,
intelligence and diversity as few of the values to look within a person. Reward help in
motivating the people and shape their behaviour by providing autonomy and opportunity to
generate ideas and support the process of innovation. Re-evaluating the performance
management and incorporating training and development programs help in fostering creativity
and enhance the sense of importance to apply innovative strategy.
In enhancing creative thinking at the workplace the application Six Thinking Hats which is a
technique of lateral thinking is adopted by me for creative problem solving solutions. It applies
the various modes of thinking for reaching a creative solution for a problem and helps in the
process of decision making (De Bono, 2017). The Six Thinking hats are symbolic of differ

modes reacted to thinking, viewpoints and directions to be taken by exploring the situation from
every perspective. Thus by application of this critical meeting facilitating tool, I can easily
collaborate with people to enhance their creative thinking, improving the communication
channels which will increase creativity and team productivity. This tool helps in simplification
of the thinking process and allows making a switch in the thinking process. It also stimulates
parallel thinking and applying full spectrum thinking (Göçmen & Coşkun, 2019). The hats
signify roles that are broken down into six roles. The white hat is neutral thinking based on
figures and facts which allow making use of available data for analyse the problem and seeking
creative solutions. The red hat is based on feeling, emotions and intuitions which allows us to
put forward the intuitions without any justification. The black hat is for caution and judgement
which helps in evaluating the negative outcome of the decision and highlights the weak point of
the plan. The yellow hat is for positive and constructive thinking along with focusing on
optimism. It will help in calculating the benefits of the decision taken. The green hat symbolizes
new ideas and options representing creativity. The blue hat takes into consideration the control of
process and action plans and orchestrates the thinking process when faced with difficulties.by
application of tool minimum resources will be employed and an effective solution can be derived
by taking different scenarios into consideration. The teams are engaged in participating to
formulate and discuss the methods which can be adopted at the workplace for improving
creativity and discussing all the reacted aspects of the situation which are expressed freely in the
brainstorming session.
Conclusion
It can be safely concluded that improving creative thinking at the workplace needs analysing of
situations from different perspectives. It is important to employ tools and techniques which are

planned and analysed before implementing it in the workplace. The application of Six Hats tool
is helpful in providing better solutions of problems and making decisions using techniques which
are evaluated by the group.

References
Appu, A. V., Sia, S. K., & Sahoo, B. C. (2015). Creativity at workplace: Proposing some
contributors. International Journal of Innovative Research and Development, 4(5), 177-
183.
Brenner, W., & Uebernickel, F. (2016). Design thinking for innovation. Research and Practice.
Springer, Cham. Retrieved from <
https://www.hugendubel.info/annotstream/2244008898698/PDF/Brenner-Walter/Design-
Thinking-for-Innovation.pdf>
De Bono, E. (2017). Six thinking hats. Penguin UK.
Göçmen, Ö., & Coşkun, H. (2019). The effects of the six thinking hats and speed on creativity in
brainstorming. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 31, 284-295.
Matthews, C. H., & Brueggemann, R. (2015). Innovation and entrepreneurship: A competency
framework. Routledge.
Perry-Smith, J. E., & Mannucci, P. V. (2017). From creativity to innovation: The social network
drivers of the four phases of the idea journey. Academy of Management Review, 42(1),
53-79.
Shin, S. J., Jeong, I., & Bae, J. (2018). Do high-involvement HRM practices matter for worker
creativity? A cross-level approach. The International Journal of Human Resource
Management, 29(2), 260-285.

Appendix
Six Thinking Hats
Sequence to be followed
Colour Significance Plan for employing
White Neutral thinking to get information, facts,
figures and analyse
Black Caution, legality and judgment looks for negative point
Yellow Positive and optimism, seeks for positive points
Green Growth and creative generates new ideas
Red Feelings, emotion Express intuitions and
emotions and assess feelings
Blue cool and controlled decide what thinking to do
next