Ready or not, the pandemic has pressed society to get creative—to find solutions, flatten the curve, figure out remote work while inventing learning pods for our kids and communities, search for a vaccine, manage our teams into new territory; the list doesn't end. Talent development professionals are uniquely positioned to help organizations in this time. Tasked with rolling out change, we are being called upon to find and convey the new normal, whatever that looks like in these unpredictable times.

How leading companies thrive after a recession

Laying the groundwork for creativity and innovation will be instrumental. A study published in the March 2010 issue of Harvard Business Review examined companies that went through a recession and found that 17 percent of companies in the study folded. About three-fourths survived the recession, and 9 percent thrived. What made that 9 percent different? How did they not only weather the storm but come out stronger and better? The study reveals that the 9 percent didn't focus on licking their wounds. Instead, they adopted an entrepreneurial mindset and used the recession to spark innovation.

So, while this pandemic is scary, devastating, and tragic, it is also an opportunity for us to step into innovation. I encourage all TD professionals to see the opportunities in the tragedy and realize we are in the role of supporting our organizations in being pandemic survivors and thrivers. We're going to need to help employees understand how to use creativity and innovation.

Creativity vs. innovation

To do that, let's start by looking at the difference between creativity and innovation. Both are needed to survive a recession and thrive. Creativity unleashes the mind's potential to conceive new ideas. It produces concepts that have never been thought of before. On the other hand, innovation is the work required to make an idea viable. It's also about introducing change into relatively stable systems. Innovation takes something that already exists and figures out: What do we do with this to move it forward?

Here are some other ways to describe creativity: It produces that aha moment, that flash of insight. Creativity comes up with an idea. You can also think of creativity as spending money to generate ideas.

On the innovation side, it's more a process that you move through, like design thinking. Innovation takes an idea and capitalizes on it, figuring out how to take it to market. The thought here is that a company is spending ideas to generate money. A business may have a lot of ideas, but the ones it takes to market will generally be fewer.

While an organization needs both creativity and innovation to survive hard times, by its nature, creativity comes first. It acts as a funnel to innovation and is a required first step. To further explore that notion, let's consider the brain science of creativity.

The science of an aha moment

When people are engaged in finding a creative solution, they are activating brain regions that fire off focus, imagination, and awareness of their environment. But what happens in the brain when all the effort suddenly gives way and the answer suddenly appears? That is called a moment of insight, or the aha moment. It often requires a change in perspective to achieve. And when that moment strikes, a person can literally feel the connection of the synapses happening, with a little burst of good feeling.

Drexel University neuroscientists John Kounious and Mark Beeman have captured images of the aha moment in action. Neural imaging shows that one-third of a second before that moment, there is a burst of gamma waves above the right ear—in the anterior temporal gyrus—as well as a rush of blood into that part of the brain. Gamma waves are the highest frequency brain waves and are affiliated with insight, peak focus, and expanded consciousness. A full second before that, there is a burst of alpha waves in the right occipital cortex, the part of the brain that is associated with relaxation, visualization, and creativity. It is also the part that controls vision.

Essentially, the brain suppresses a person's vision right before the aha moment occurs; scientists call it "brain blink." And what's great for us in talent development and learning is that we can facilitate the brain blink.

Insight is unforgettable. Once someone has a moment of insight, it's permanent in the brain. That makes insight incredibly powerful, and those of us in learning design need to be pushing toward setting up learners to have their own aha moments. If we just tell people information and give them the answers, we are denying them that powerful moment.

Science-based methods to boost creativity

Here are five ways to use brain science to boost creativity in your organization.

Leverage intelligences. People have different ways to be creative. According to Howard Gardner's work, there are nine different intelligences, each with its own unique neural signature: spatial, intrapersonal, linguistic, bodily kinesthetic, interpersonal, existential, logical-mathematical, musical, and naturalist. Are you tapping into workers' range of intelligences? How is your company supporting each employee to do their best work?

Match roles and tasks. Maximize performance by matching roles with tasks people are good at. Although that may seem to be an obvious action, schools and workplaces often force folks into an area that is not their natural expression. Some people are naturally analytical, while others are more intuitive. It's important for people to learn and develop in other areas, but when you can align roles and tasks with natural strengths, morale and performance improve and projects go better and faster.

Facilitate aha moments. Scott Kaufmann, a researcher at Columbia University and co-author of Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind, found that to boost creativity, individuals must prepare, incubate, illuminate, and verify. First, they prepare their brain by taking in information. A lot of it. They must study, think, and research a wide range of sources and push themselves out of their comfort zones. With this step, individuals load their library with possibilities from different subject areas, which sets up the brain to connect the dots and have those aha moments.

The next step is taking a break, whether that's going for a walk, daydreaming, going surfing, listening to water, or any other activity. Those activities are examples of the resting neocortex and are part of how someone induces insight. A mistake people often make is working so hard that they don't feel they have permission to take a break. Yet, that break is oftentimes when their best ideas happen.

Third, people must revisit the problem while engaging in what scientists call sensory gating: reduce the sensory stimuli in the environment. The final step of the creativity process is verification, which is when people test that great new idea, tweaking as needed to make it the strongest it can be.

Leverage water for its calming effect. In The Blue Mind, Wallace Nichols's research reveals that individuals being in, on, under, or simply near water is powerful for them to reach a calm state. Water in nature activates the resting neocortex. Water in the shower engages sensory gating, which is why the shower so often generates great ideas.

People should get around water when they can, and companies should consider adding water features to the workplace. That may be difficult for many employers, so an alternative is suggesting individuals listen to white noise, watch videos of water (such as mountain streams), take a shower, buy a garden or tabletop fountain, or use virtual reality goggles to go to the ocean.

Use brain games. When individuals exercise their brain with play, performance improves. Neuroscientists have measured creative performance before and after individuals play word games and have seen a significant boost.

According to the whitepaper In Search of SuperMind, researchers found that, as a result of playing brain games, 80 percent of people in the study improved their performance in creative thinking, 63 percent generated more viable solutions to problems, 33 percent improved their brain's cognitive function, 26 percent increased their accuracy in problem solving, and 25 percent reduced their failed attempts to problem solving.

Support creativity through play, and use brain games with learners to get the ideas primed.

Innovation takes two paths

Now that you've learned how to generate ideas with creativity, it's time to work out which of the resulting ideas to test, apply, and take to market. Innovation has two paths: incremental and breakthrough. Companies need to engage in both.

Breakthrough is usually research and development. The company is asking employees to take risks and make mistakes, which frees them to think differently and try new things knowing they have permission to break some glass or do something outrageous.

Incremental involves improving or enhancing something the organization is already doing. It's asking: How can we make it 10 percent faster or 10 percent better? It's a slow process.

According to CB Insights' 2018 State of Innovation report, corporate strategists said they are interested in innovation and more often follow the incremental path. In fact, 78 percent of investment is allocated to continuous improvement rather than disruptive risks. Meanwhile, 35 percent of high-performing companies are first movers (they make bold moves and jump on opportunities to be first into a new market or space), and 60 percent of respondents said it takes a year or longer to create new products.

Further, McKinsey's 2010 Global Survey found that "Eighty-four percent of executives consider their future success very or extremely dependent on innovation." And IBM's 2010 Global CEO Study found that "A staggering number of CEOs described their organizations as data rich but insight poor. Many voiced frustration at not being able to transform available data into feasible action plans, let alone to detect emerging opportunities." It's clear that companies are overinvesting in the slow path.

Your organization needs both paths to innovation to thrive. Here are five ways to drive innovation across all your functions.

Invest in both risk-taking and incremental progress. Choosing to source solely within the company, rather than partnering to create new products and services, slows innovation. Shift some of those resources and processes to the breakthrough innovation path.

Have a clear process. Businesses need to strategically drive inspiration, ideation, and implementation. How are you giving employees in every function tools to innovate, get faster, get better? One useful tool to implement an innovation process is Jake Knapp's Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days and its corollary TheSprintBook.com.

Expand sources. If your company is like most, you're probably over-relying on customers and employees as sources for innovation. Explore where your employer can partner with other sources, including nearby universities and academic departments doing scientific research. Local nonprofits are doing great work, and industry analysts are another source to tap into. Also look at local banks and venture capitalists. Think about assigning someone to oversee this initiative, crafting and shepherding the innovation process in your organization.

Focus on execution. The other side of innovation is solving the execution challenge. What is the difference between organizations that thrive and fail? Did Xerox stumble because no one there noticed Canon had introduced personal copiers? Did Kodak fall behind because it was oblivious to digital photography's rise? In each case, the ideas were there, but the follow-through lacked. The companies lost to their competitor because they failed to execute.

The Four Disciplines of Execution is a good resource. It's also a FranklinCovey learning solution, so you could get certified and roll it out in your organization or learn some of the principles and weave them into an initiative in progress. You can't go without an execution strategy and expect to thrive through big change.

Build the culture and climate. The State of Innovation report found that high-performing organizations are five times more likely to build a culture of innovation across all their business functions. To achieve the culture your organization wants, create a climate for it.

Climate refers to the actions, channels, and tools to support new idea development within an organization. Does your company have a climate that fosters innovation? It must have strategies in place, such as a design thinking process or an execution model.

When those resources and resulting actions become a daily part of the organization, a culture of innovation is in place. Then the culture starts to accelerate, and it exponentially grows, empowers, and reinforces itself. Shine a light to your organization

It's TD's time to shine. Your organization needs you, especially now.

At this crucial time, consider how you will support the TD team's or department's creativity and innovation to drive maximum impact in your organization. Design and deliver programs that boost both creativity and innovation. And importantly, influence your organization's investment in creativity and innovation by educating other leaders across the functions.

The Brain's Response to Creative Efforts

Scott Kaufmann, a researcher at Columbia University and co-author of Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind, found that three networks in the brain become very active when people are engaged in creative endeavors:

• The executive center—or prefrontal cortex and positive parietal—activates when someone puts focused attention on something such as trying to solve a problem or figure something out.

• Imagination—or medial temporal and post cingulate—activates when someone is dreaming of possibilities. They are musing and what-iffing, asking: What could this look like?

• Salience—or anterior insula and anterior cingulate—activates when a person's attention toggles back and forth between concentrating closely on something and being aware of their environment. Individuals can't purely focus all the time; this is a part of the brain that toggles that focus.