Personality Traits and Characteristics for Facilitating Creativity

Traits proposed by Torrance

Fluency, flexibility, originality, and ability to sense deficiencies, elaborate, and redefine

Reference: Scientific Views of Creativity and Factors Affecting Its Growth
Author(s): E. Paul Torrance
Daedalus, Vol. 94, No. 3, Creativity and Learning (Summer, 1965), pp. 663-681

Ellis Paul Torrance (1915-2003) developed  the TTCT (Torrance Test of Creative Thinking) uses simple exercises that test divergent thinking and problem-solving skills.

A full TTCT measures five attributes:

Fluency—the number the ideas a person can think of in a given period of time

Flexibility—the range of categories for the ideas participants came up with

Elaboration—the amount of detail in responses

Originality—the rarity of the idea

Openness—resistance to premature closure


INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERISTICS OF INNOVATORS
1. Innovators normally have a clear vision about what they want to accomplish.
2. Innovators can clearly define the specific objectives and benefits of the emerging project or product.
3. Innovators can present their views effectively to persuade their peers or colleagues.
4. Innovators are capable of getting support not only from their superiors but also from their team members or colleagues.
5. Innovators are bold enough to take calculated risks and to face the unforeseeable impediments, difficulties or setbacks.
6. Innovators are capable of motivating and inspiring people into action, so that every team member
contributes significantly to the project and their cooperation or participation is total.
7. Innovators can influence or mobilize support and required resources to achieve the desired result.
8. Innovators can cope up with interferences such as criticism, tardiness, lack of corporate enthusiasm, disputes over allocation of time and other such resources for projects.
9. Innovators have the willpower to maintain momentum in spite of the decline in early enthusiasm and hard work of their team members.
10. Innovators are capable of ensuring the principle that credits or rewards of success are appropriately shared by the team members.

Ref: Prof. A. Senguttuvan, CREATIVITY AS A NECESSARY COMPONENT OF ENGINEERING RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT


A chapter having very good content on the topic of personality and creativity
https://books.google.co.in/books?id=XwjUAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA266#v=onepage&q&f=false

https://www.juiceinc.com/blog/show/are-you-creative-take-the-torrance-test

https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/199607/the-creative-personality

http://thesecondprinciple.com/creativity/creativetraits/   Number of lists of traits are given in this article.

http://people.bethel.edu/~shenkel/PhysicalActivities/CreativeMovement/CreativeThinking/Torrance.html

The Art and Science of Success - Edward de Bono - Information and Summary

Tactics - The Art and Science of Success - Edward de Bono

Table of Contents

Part I Success

1. Styles and Characteristics of Success

Styles: Creative Style; Management Style; Entrepreneurial Style

Characteristics of Typically Successful Styles:  Energy, Drive and Direction; Ego; 'Can-do'; Confidence; Stamina and Hardwork; Efficiency: Ruthlessness; Ability to Cope with Failure.

Success principles; - Positive attitude; - knowing what you want to do; - make the most of your own talent; - energy, persistence, determination & single mindedness seem important in all cases; - Action i.e take a step & then the next step; - a sense of integrity toward oneself & others; - an expectation of success & the ability to think big; - ability to set goals & targets, & also to have dreams; - creativity & the ability to see things differently & to think new thoughts; - Seizing of opportunities & creation of opportunities; - eagerness & enthusiasm & the willingness to make things happen; One should make the most of one's talent in the pursuit of success by honing it. Do not be trapped into one field by some talent for that field - You can find a use for your talent in growing fields.

2. What stimulates success?

Negative Stimulants: Anxieties

Positive Stimulants: Power and Money; Image Improvement; Status; Making Things Happen; Doing Something Worthwhile

3. How far is success within our control?

Early Environment; Born to Succeed; Key Factors: Expectation.

Can You Copy a Style and Become a Success?: Learning by Copying

What Can We Learn from Images?; Role-playing to Success; Role-living and Success; Spot the Phony; When is Artificial Phony?

Does Luck Leave Success Outside our Control?  Is There Such a Thing as Luck?: Good Luck or Good Judgment?; Looking for Opportunity in Time and Place.

Part II Prepare for Success

4. Focus I

Self-Knowledge: Strengths/Weaknesses; Self-awareness and Self-correction

5. Focus II

Choice of Field: How They Chose What to Do?; Does the Perfect Job Exist?; Be Ready to Change Targets.

Part III Make it A Success

6. Thinking & Doing

How to Generate Ideas?: Create New Ideas; The Creativity of Innocence; The Creativity of Escape

7. Strategy

Design a Strategy: General Strategy; Detailed Strategy; How Rigid Should a Strategy Be?

Why Strategy is More Than a Plan?: How Strategy can Create the Culture of an Organization

8. Decision-Making

How to Make a Decision?: Category Thinkers; Intuition - Magic of the Muse?

9.  Opportunity 

No Standing Still - Types of Opportunity: Opportunity Building,  Opportunity Seeking.

Assessing Opportunity: Is Technical Advancement Always an Opportunity?; New Technology as Opportunity, A High-risk Area?

Opportunism: The 'Me-too' Philosophy.

Niche Strategy: Play Your Own Game

10. Risk

Are Successful People Risk-takers?: Gambler's Risk; The Risk of Innovation.

Courage to Be at Risk - The Difference between Risk and Adventure

Risk Reduction: Work to Make a Decision Work; Learn to Wriggle.

11. Strategy for People as Resources

How to Choose the Best People?; How to Construct a Balanced Team.

Team Motivation: Use People Wisely; Create a Sense of Involvement; display a Sense of Involvement; You Don't Have to be Like; Communicate Goals, How to Communicate.

Getting Rid of People.

12. Tactical Play

Tactics, Communication and Negotiation: How Far Should You Go?; The Game's the Thinking; Image.

Illusion and Bluff in Negotiation: Thinking on Your Feet; The Merit of Surprise.

Gamesmanship: Psyching Your Opponent.

The Proper Place of Tactics

Epilogue

The Lessons; New Horizons.

The Art and Science of Success - Edward de Bono - Summary and Interesting Points

6. Thinking & Doing

How to Generate Ideas?: Create New Ideas; The Creativity of Innocence; The Creativity of Escape

Doers succeed only by thinking and doing. There may be some persons who only think and describe possible products and ways of producing those products. That does not mean that thinking and doing are totally independent activities and does don't think systematically.

Does do think systematically in problems with known ways of solving problems. They also think systematically in problems with no known way of solving it. The second category of problems require intense creative thinking. In the first type of problems also, a bit of creative thinking is employed. But the areas of creative thinking will not be on the solution method itself. In problems where creativity is main component, the solution method itself has to be evolved through creative thinking.

Edward de Bono, author of this book is also author of "Lateral Thinking." He brings into this book two new terms "Creativity of innocence" and "Creativity of Escape."  

Creativity of Innocence

Creativity of innocence is displayed and practiced by people who are entering new areas when they learn only basics of the area and allow themselves a creative entry into the new area, let us say, a business with new products and processes. They come out with new products and processes as they evolved them without being aware of the earlier solutions and solutions methods being used by the existing producers.

Creativity of Escape

Creativity of Escape is brought into picture when the person is fully aware of the present ways of solving a problem but intentionally breaks the existing structures and goes for a new structure. This is what is developed and explained in lateral thinking. The new fact, result or data from the business is not fitting with the existing structure of products or processes to give required returns of growth. So the businessman or the strategic thinker has to break the existing structure into more minute parts and look for ways to create a new structure that provides the needed low cost product, product with more benefits, products with more quality, products with more involvement of customers, etc. etc.

7. Strategy

Design a Strategy: General Strategy; Detailed Strategy; How Rigid Should a Strategy Be?
Why Strategy is More Than a Plan?: How Strategy can Create the Culture of an Organization.

A strategy provides you with a long-term view and hence the ability to take risks or do things which do not make sense in the short term.

Strategy is not only the manipulation of resources but also the development of those resources.

8. Decision-Making

How to Make a Decision?: Category Thinkers; Intuition - Magic of the Muse?

Category thinking relies upon past experience as its input.

10. Risk

Are Successful People Risk-takers?: Gambler's Risk; The Risk of Innovation.
Courage to Be at Risk - The Difference between Risk and Adventure.
Risk Reduction: Work to Make a Decision Work; Learn to Wriggle.

Anyone who takes an initiative or pursues an opportunity is taking some sort of risk.
Risk-taking accompanies innovation.

The capacity for courage is generally thought of as the ability to face up enormous disadvantage ( may be with even very low odds) such as possibility of death in a war.

Any successful person has chosen action as against inaction. In any initiative or opportunity pursuit there is an element of risk.



Updated 9 March 2017

March 2nd Week - MBA Management Knowledge Revision

March 2nd week ( 8 to 12 of 2016)



Marketing Communication: Channels and Promotion Tools
Advertising



Sales Promotion 
Marketing Public Relations


Sales Process and Sales Training
Direct Marketing




Online Marketing
Marketing and New Product Development



International and Global Marketing
Sales Force Management


Updated 6 March 2017, 6 March 2016

Prof. John Adair on Leadership

Professor John Eric Adair (born 18 May 1934) is a British academician. He  is a leadership theorist and author of more than forty books on business, military and other leadership.

Adair was born in Luton and educated at St Paul's School.   He studied at Hull Nautical College and Trinity Hall, Cambridge and obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1959. He  obtained a doctorate from King's College London in 1966. He became a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1966. He worked as a Senior Lecturer at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst from 1961 to 1967 and later worked for the Industrial Society. He became  Professor of Leadership Studies at the University of Surrey in 1979, a post he held until 1984. Subsequently he worked in various academic institutions in various senior academic positions. He is President of Adair International offering services in the areas of leadership and management.

Book Review by Prof.M.S.Rao – “Develop Your Leadership Skills” by John Adair (Publisher Kogan Page)
http://profmsr.blogspot.in/2010/03/book-review-by-profmsrao-develop-your.html

Action Centered Leadership - John Adair - Note
http://www.stellarleadership.com/docs/Leadership/articles/Action%20Centred%20Leadership.pdf

Not Bosses But Leaders: How to Lead the Way to Success
Front Cover
John Eric Adair, Peter J. Reed
Kogan Page Publishers, 2006 - Business & Economics - 186 pages
https://books.google.co.in/books?id=Ky2hbStnO5oC

How to Grow Leaders: The Seven Key Principles of Effective Leadership Development

John Adair
Kogan Page Publishers, 01-Oct-2006 - Business & Economics - 184 pages

https://books.google.co.in/books?id=4rDYY3DlF7gC

Develop Your Leadership Skills

John Eric Adair
Kogan Page Publishers, 2007 - Business & Economics - 89 pages
https://books.google.co.in/books?id=9rMYODXVc3IC




The Three Circles Model
Professor John Adair
Part of Leadership: Proceedings of a
Symposium Held at the Royal
Military Academy Sandhurst, April
2014
https://www.army.mod.uk/documents/general/RMAS_Leadership_Proceedings_Symposium.pdf

John Adair's  Quotes
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/25934.John_Adair

Harvard Businness Review - 10 Must Reads 2015 - Information and Interesting Points

This collection includes:

"Beware the Next Big Thing," by Julian Birkinshaw;

"The Capitalist's Dilemma," by Clayton M. Christensen and Derek Van Bever;

"The Focused Leader," by Daniel Goleman;

"The Big Lie of Strategic Planning," by Roger L. Martin;

"Contextual Intelligence," by Tarun Khanna;

"How Netflix Reinvented HR," by Patty McCord;

"Blue Ocean Leadership," by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne;

"The Ultimate Marketing Machine," by Marc de Swaan Arons, Frank van den Driest, and Keith Weed;

"Your Scarcest Resource," by Michael Mankins, Chris Brahm, and Gregory Caimi;

"How Google Sold Its Engineers on Management," by David A. Garvin;

"21st-Century Talent Spotting," by Claudio Fernandez-Araoz.


https://hbr.org/product/hbr-s-10-must-reads-2015-the-definitive-management-ideas-of-the-year-from-harvard-business-review-with-bonus-article-the-focused-leader-the-mckinsey-award-winner-by-daniel-goleman-hbr-s-10-must-reads/15037-PBK-ENG

Marketing Research, Market Research and Market Intelligence

Marketing Intelligence - Introduction

If an individual or firm has an interesting product or service idea for offering to market, how will they know whether people like it and want to buy it? If they are willing to buy it, what price are they willing to pay? What quantity they will buy? Marketing research, an activity of marketing, will provide answers to these questions. Marketing research is the process of collecting, analyzing, and reporting marketing information that can be used to answer questions or solve problems so as to improve a company’s top line, sales revenue.  Marketing research includes a wide range of activities of enquiry related to marketing questions. Market research is a narrower activity. Market research is the process of researching a specific market to determine its size and trends.



The many marketing questions that marketing research can help to answers include the issues related to:

Developing product ideas and designs
Determining if there is demand for a product to decide whether or not to produce it
Identifying market segments for a  product
Making pricing decisions
Evaluating packaging types
Evaluating in-store promotions
Measuring the satisfaction of customers
Measuring the satisfaction of channel partners
Evaluating the effectiveness of the Web site
Testing the effectiveness of ads and their placement
Making marketing channel decisions

Market Intelligence

Market intelligence is also an important marketing research activity and is often referred to as competitive intelligence. Marketing research is generally commissioned to solve a specific marketing problem at a specific point in time as a project. Market intelligence involves gathering information on a regular, ongoing basis to stay in touch with what’s happening in the marketplace related to company's offering.


Marketing Research and Market Demand Forecasting

http://catalog.flatworldknowledge.com/bookhub/reader/2030?e=fwk-133234-ch10

Summary - Principles - Organizing

Principles in Relation to Purpose

Principle of unity of objectives

An organization structure is effective if it as a whole, and every part of it, make possible accomplishment of individuals in contributing toward the attainment of enterprise objectives.

Modified to bring in things into the principle

An organization structure is effective if it as a whole, and every part of it, make possible accomplishment of individuals (in combination with things given to him for operating and utilizing) in contributing toward the attainment of enterprise objectives.

Principle of efficiency

An organization or organization structure is efficient if it is structured to make possible accomplishment of enterprise objectives by people with minimum unsought consequences or costs.

Modified to bring in things into the principle

An organization or organization structure is efficient if it is structured to make possible accomplishment of enterprise objectives by people (and things given to them to utilize) with minimum unsought consequences or costs.

Principles Related to the Cause of Organizing

Span of management Principle

There is a limit at each managerial position on the number of persons an individual can effectively manage. But this number is not a fixed number and it will vary in accordance with underlying variables of the situation.

Modified to bring in things into the principle

There is a limit at each operating position on the number of machines or equipments an individual can effectively operate. But this number is not a fixed number and it will vary in accordance with underlying variables of the situation (Japanese managers increased the number of machines to even 100 and ultimately into fully automated production systems requiring zero operating personnel).

Principles in Developing the Structure of Organization

The scalar Principle

The more clear the line of authority from the ultimate authority for management in an enterprise (CEO) to every subordinate position, the more effective will be decision making and organization communication at various levels in the organization.

Principle of delegation

Authority is a tool for managing to contribute to enterprise objectives. Hence authority delegated to an individual manager should be adequate to assure his ability to accomplish results expected of him.

Principle of responsibility

The responsibility of the subordinate to his superior for authority received by delegation is absolute, and no superior can escape responsibility for the activities of his subordinate to whom he in turn has delegated authority.

Principle of parity of authority and responsibility

The responsibility exacted for actions taken under authority delegated cannot be greater than that implied by the authority delegated, nor should it be less.

Principle of unity of command

The more completely an individual has a reporting relationship to a single superior, the less the problem of conflict in instructions and the greater the feeling of personal responsibility.

The authority level Principle

Maintenance of authority delegation requires that decisions within the authority competence of an individual manager be made by him and not be referred upward in the organization.



Principles in Departmentizing Activities

Principle of division of work

The better an organization structure reflects a classification of the tasks and activities required for achievement of objectives and assists their coordination through creating a system of interrelated roles; and the more these roles are designed to fit the capabilities and motivations of people available to fill them, the more effective and efficient an organization structure will be.

Principle of functional definition

The more a position or a department has clear definition of results expected, activities to be undertaken, organization authority delegated, and authority and informational relationships with other positions, the more adequately individual responsible can contribute toward accomplishing enterprise objectives.

Principle of separation

If an activity is designed to be a check on the activities of another department, the individual charged with such activity cannot adequately discharge his responsibility if he reports to the department whose activity he is expected to evaluate.

Principles in the Process of organizing

Principle of balance

The application of principles or techniques must be balanced in the light of the over-all effectiveness of the structure in meeting enterprise objectives.

Principle of flexibility

The task of managers is to provide for attaining objectives in the face of changing environments. The more provisions are made for building organization flexibility, the more adequately organization structure can fulfill its purpose.

Principle of leadership facilitation

The more an organization structure an authority delegations within it make possible for various managers to design and maintain an environment for performance, the more it will facilitate leadership abilities of managers.



Note: Principle of efficiency is there in Principles of Planning also.


Review Articles on Steps in Organizing

The Nature of Organizing - Review Notes
Departmentation in Organizations - Review Notes
Line-Staff Authority and Decentralization - Review Notes
Effective Organizing and Organizational Culture - Review Notes

References


Harold Koontz and Cyril O’Donnell, Principles of Management: An Analysis of Managerial Functions, 4th Ed., McGraw-Hill, New York, 1968

Harold Koontz and Cyril O’Donnell, Principles of Management: An Analysis of Managerial Functions, 2nd Ed., McGraw-Hill, New York, 1959

Updated  4 February 2017,  5 Jan 2015,  7.12.2012


Revision of Principles of Management in January Revision Plan.


MBA Core Management Knowledge - One Year Revision Schedule