By Nurman Lazim
GOMBAK 17 July 2014: A well-known organisational scholar from the University of Western Ontario, Gary N. McLean, delivered a professional talk on “Factors Affecting Creativity and Innovation in Organisations” at the Graduate School of Management, IIUM today.
Gary, a Canadian, received his bachelor’s degree in Business and Office Administration from Graceland College in Lamoni, Iowa. He received his master’s degree in Divinity from United Theological Seminary in Minnesota. Mr. McLean has been involved in higher education for 40 years, 36 of which was with the University of Minnesota. He has also worked as an organisational consultant for so many years.
The presentation focused on the needs of creativity and how it affects innovation in an organisation. In his presentation, he highlighted that a company could never acquire innovations without experiencing failures. Out of 4000 ideas generated, normally only two to three ideas will be used after undergoing “refining” process.
During his presentation, he did a small slot where the audiences were asked to list out the usage of a brick. From this slot, he was able to test the creativity level of the audiences.
He stated that creativity can be measured through 4 means: fluency, how many ideas can be generated; flexibility, how many types of ideas were generated; in terms of originality, rarity of the ideas; and elaboration, how creative the idea is elaborated.
These were the most important elements in order to articulate ideas in management, he added.
