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Tutkimus-, kehitys- ja innovaatiotoiminnan sydämessä

Avainsana: mindset

Fostering Creativity at Work to Develop Your Entrepreneurial Mindset
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15.4.2024
Pamela Spokes

The Entrepreneurial Mindset is important to foster for all kinds of reasons. Whether you are planning to become and entrepreneur or not. That is because an Entrepreneurial Mindset is a set of definable, specific skills. In 2017, Finland’s Ministry of Education and Culture defined entrepreneurial education as “... a set of skills that enable people to identify and make the most of opportunities, overcome and learn from setbacks, and succeed in a variety of settings.” (1) This sets the foundation for defining the entrepreneurial mindset that they want to build from basic education to higher education. Through further research, we have broken this down into 9 learnable skills at Metropolia. Entrepreneurial Mindset at Metropolia University of Applied Sciences At Metropolia, we have defined these 9 skills as: Ability to innovate Creativity Proactiveness Teamwork Tolerance to risk-taking Tolerance of failure Plan & reach objectives Problem-centred Networking Each of these skills is important in their own right to build a well-rounded mindset for moving forward in the 21st century. This is part of lifelong learning and continual improvement. In this post, we are looking more deeply into is CREATIVITY. Creativity as a Practicable Skill Creativity is something that has propelled the human race forward for hundreds of thousands of years and it is essential to fostering an entrepreneurial mindset. When you search Google, you get the dictionary definition creativity is “...the use of imagination or original ideas to create something; inventiveness...” What can be surprising to many people is that there is nothing about art or drawing or even physical abilities of any kind. It only refers to your brain. It is about how you think about things, how you apply knowledge and insights, and how you make connections. As a concept, creativity is really made up of multiple skills in itself. Problem-solving Artistic expression Innovation Critical Thinking Imagination and Exploration Collaboration Adaptability Looking at this list, you can see that artistic expression is listed as one of the seven skills of creativity. It is there as one way to be creative but it is just one way. It is a very visual and sometimes visceral way of showing creativity and that is why it gets so much attention. It is easy to point out and to share but that does not mean that it is the only way; it is just the most obvious. When looking at how to use creativity and to practice creativity in the world of work, it requires something from the individual and something from the organisation where that person works. Open Minds and Being Wrong From the individual, exercising creativity require you at the very least to have an open mind (willing have and receive ideas from others) and a willingness to be wrong. Fundamentally understanding that you can and will sometimes be wrong can be difficult for many people. Being open and happy to be wrong is even a step further. This requires and acceptance of ambiguity or uncertainty. This is difficult for humans as a whole. Research shows that people would rather guarantee a bad experience than an uncertain one. Another way of saying that is that people would rather guarantee badness (2) than to have the uncertainty that the outcome may be good. Acceptance of Failure as Learning From an Organisation, being able to exercise creativity in their work, people must fee free to fail. Organisations need to cultivate a culture that accepts that failure as learning but also funds failure as a valid outcome. Daring greatly and creating a safe space for experimentation is not cheap either emotionally or financially for an organisation. But the rewards of success can be great. Having an engaged and interested workforce is not very common according to multiple Gallup polls over the past several years. But one great side effect of being able to use creativity on work is that it fosters engagement and a sense of worth. Creativity Can Be Practiced Many people say that if you are trying something new, then you are practicing creativity. That can be anything: playing an instrument, reading a book that is out of your normal genre, learning about a new topic, visiting places you have never been before, etc. But the first step is to really believe that creativity may look different than what you have allowed yourself to believe. So, change your mindset. It is also important to understand that creativity is a tool for mental well-being as much as innovation. According to research conducted in 2016, practicing creativity can improve your mood for up to 24 hours. When you orient yourself to focus on enjoyment not success, that is when you get the most benefits from using creativity. Which means it doesn’t matter how well your activity turns out, it is doing it and enjoying the process and not determining success from the outcome. It is time to start asking yourself how you can begin to practice creativity in your life to begin to reap the benefits. Also asking yourself what creative things have you been putting off until you could be more successful at them? Success in these endeavours is not the goal, enjoying the process is. Rest as a Necessity for Creativity One of the most important things that you can ever do for your creative muscles is to rest. Now this doesn’t mean sleep, although it could definitely include sleep. It means being in a state of non-distraction. No phones, tablets, TV, etc. Rest should also incorporate walking outside…or at least being outside. No podcast, no audiobook, just outside. Spending time with friends is also considered rest. So, your friend could join you for a walk or you could chat over tea. This offline connection is so important to humans that it is actually restorative. This rested state is a much better place in which to be creative. This blog post has been adapted from a presentation given during the Turbiini Lunch and Learn Series where they explored Creativity which is one of the 9 skills of the Entrepreneurial Mindset. Author Pamela Spokes works as a Service Designer in Metropolia’s RDI team. Originally from Canada, Pamela has years of experience in university admin focusing on international recruitment, marketing, and the international student/staff experience. She is interested in purposefully designed experiences that are centred around the user. References Potinkara H. (2018) Dare to be enthusiastic! Teacher´s guide to entrepreneurial skills. Published by the Finnish Federation of Finnish Enterprises. (PDF) Small, A., & Schmutte, K. (2022). Navigating ambiguity: creating opportunity in a world of unknowns. Ten Speed Press. Resources Guidelines for entrepreneurship education 2009 (valtioneuvosto.fi) Entrepreneurship for Education Guidelines 2017 (PDF) How To Encourage And Reward Creativity In The Workplace (personatalent.com) The Connection Between Creativity and Mental Well Being (swifttech.com) Creativity in the Workplace: How to bolster engagement and productivity at work (thedesicionlab.com) Conner, T. Everyday creative activity as a path to flourishing (The Journal of Positive Psychology) Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace: 2022 Report (gallup.com)  

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The Harmful Nature of Informed Assumptions
http://Black%20and%20white%20photo%20of%20audience%20from%20the%20back,%20one%20hand%20raised,%20speaker%20on%20stage%20facing%20the%20camera
27.1.2023
Pamela Spokes

Bad services are always created on a foundation of bad design, whether these are services in a private company, a public service, or an educational institution. Often times this bad design is based on individuals or groups using their own anecdotal experience or knowledge as the basis of creating their services. It is not a malicious desire to create services that don’t fulfill the end users needs. But it can happen often when services are created in a vacuum or only with the people who provide them. Service designers, on the other hand, are constantly talking about and using co-creation and looking at the world from the viewpoint of the end-user for whatever service that is being created or improved. The best way to embody this user viewpoint is to gather data, both qualitative and quantitative, from the (future) users themselves using all the means at your disposal. This is how you can build better outcomes that meet the user’s needs. This doesn’t mean that there is no place for assumptions in this kind of research. Two things need to happen to be able to use them though. You need to openly acknowledge that they are assumptions and everyone on the team needs to acknowledge that they are assumptions. The team needs to be willing and able to test these assumptions and be open to be proven wrong. This can be a big ask for experienced professionals. While being tested, these assumptions can be employed alongside other research that you have done to plug gaps in knowledge so that you can move your work forward through prototyping and testing and back to research and iteration again. Along the way discarding what is proven to be a false flag and keeping what you are able to verify. The wrong path It is human nature to think that, through your long experience, you “know” what is wrong. These are what can be called informed assumptions. There are two differences between the assumptions that we mentioned in the previous paragraph (useful or usable) and informed assumptions: The level of willingness to accept these as assumptions rather than verified data The openness to be proven wrong. These unexamined informed assumptions (basically guessing) hinder the process and will lead you down the wrong path if not properly acknowledged and tested. Unfortunately, many professional experts succumb to informed assumptions. There are a few standard reasons that especially middle and senior managers use to justify why they made crucial decisions purely on what they know or think they know about user needs. These are almost always a form of informed assumptions and include recognizable examples such as: We know who our users are We know what ‘they’ want from our service or product I know I’m right I know my users My part of this process is not broken, it’s others in the process that need to change and the ultimate shutdown — “This is how we do things around here” Moving from instinct to information How to help professionals to shift from "I know what the problem is and how we can solve it" to "I have a general idea what or where the problem might be but let’s test it and discover the real problem". These are two very different mindsets. In addition to mindset, this shift can be hindered for other reasons: The professional may well believe that they truly have the answer. They could be working to specific targets, which can often force to focus on something that will be measured, rather than the what will provide quality and value to the user. They may be nervous to show vulnerability — ‘I don’t know’ is a difficult sentence in an organisation that encourages a competitive leadership environment. It’s also not easy to be agile and responsive if your next pay rise is dependent on you reaching departmental or personal targets that are set outside of knowing what you will need to be agile and responsive to. Often, these are agreed with your boss at your annual personal development review in the previous year. Employing the entrepreneurial mindset is key So how can we tackle the affliction of informed assumptions in experts? One important way to tackle this insidious affliction is to encourage and use an entrepreneurial mindset or entrepreneurial approach. This is vital to creating a team and work environment that is productive, responsive, and most importantly, focused on creating value. It is through developing and utilising the tools of the Entrepreneurial Mindset or the Entrepreneurial Approach, important lifewide skills, that experts can truly begin to allow the real answers to unfold according to the research. These skills include: creativity tolerance of uncertainty openness to learning seeing value in failure pro-activeness networking intrinsic motivation and confidence that what we do matters. Luckily for the next generations, education in the 21st-century has a foundation that includes the recognition of these above skills and the entrepreneurial mindset in general. Now we need to help the organisational leadership in higher education to support the value of being open to being wrong, valuing the discovery process, and that "failure" (in reality learning) is really part of the process of creating valuable services. Author Pamela Spokes works as a Service Designer in Metropolia’s RDI team. Originally from Canada, Pamela has years of experience in university admin focusing on international recruitment, marketing, and the international student/staff experience. With a Bachelor’s from Canada, a Master’s degree from Sweden, an MBA in Service Innovation & Design from Laurea, and her AmO from Haaga-Helia, she is interested in purposefully designed experiences that are centred around the user. Don’t be surprised if she knocks on your door to talk about learning co-creation methods through intensive learning experiences.

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The Importance of Service Design in Organisations
http://A%20streetview%20of%20new,%20modern%20building%20right%20next%20to%20old,%20decaded%20building.
10.1.2023
Pamela Spokes

In short, service design is a method of purposefully designing services through a set process that emphasises co-creation with users and other stakeholders through customer research, prototyping, testing, and iteration. It is this iterative process, while putting the user(s) at the centre at each stage, that allows the service to evolve to the needs of the customer. This is a shift in not only mindset but procedure of how an organisation works. So how does an organisation begin to shift how it designs services and solves problems? It is not the process in and of itself that makes it important, but it is the outcomes of the process that does. There are four major outcomes that will help to make a shift to service design for your organisation impactful: inclusion a solid solution efficiencies business viability. It prioritises inclusion Determining who the stakeholders are in a service is important. Making sure that representatives of those stakeholders participate in the process is also important. If users and other stakeholders are not a part of the process, then the outcome will not be valid. One of the main issues with other kinds of service development processes is that they prioritise ‘knowing’ over ‘following the research to find out’. This can be seen when solutions are the first thing that groups or individuals begin to explore. Often this means the loudest voice gets heard or the highest rank gets to decide. This does not give any voice to the user or to those who are less extroverted. When you start with the solution, you usually only have the perspective of those who are delivering the service. Excluding real users, their lived experiences, and any kind of diversity from the development of concepts. It focuses on the problem and not the solution The mantra of almost every designer is Love the Problem, Not the Solution. As GM’s former Head of research Charles Kettering is attributed as saying: “A problem well stated is a problem half solved”. A lot of time in the service design process is used for learning about the users, their lives, and what the real problem is. It is only once the real problem is correctly identified that any solution ideation should be started. A great deal of effort by service designers is spent on holding participants back from trying to create solutions too early in the process. By delaying the ideation and solution part of the service design process, the problem gets thoroughly explored and identified. This will either confirm previous predictions or refute them. Both are acceptable outcomes of this beginning part of the process. Many times, service deliverers will know where the problem is, but are not at all sure as to the why. Without proper research, the why is only ever a guess. It is the why that is mainly explored during the research phase using qualitative research. Spending a lot of time on the solution without understanding the problem doesn’t really help anyone. It leads to efficiencies When a service design process is properly engaged, it will inevitably lead to efficiencies. This is because it should not include elements that are not necessary. Those should naturally be eliminated with proper research, prototyping, and testing. It will also not be solving the wrong problem – and therefore not solving the real problem. When you solve the wrong problem, you create a great amount of waste. Even with the most efficient or paired back bad service, will always have waste because it does not solve the underlying problem. As Professor John Seddon says 1 ":doing the wrong thing righter”. The goal is to have a service that helps the user to get the job done, not to make a less useful service more efficient. It is firmly about organisational balance Service design "aims at designing services that are useful, usable and desirable from the user perspective, and efficient, effective and different from the provider perspective”. - Birgit Mager, Professor of Service Design and Co-Founder of the international Service Design Network. This means that when done right, it insists that the end user and the business perspective is in balance. This means, whatever kind of organisation you have, it is vital to secure its future viability as well as desirability. Without a balance between what customers need and what an organisation can do profitably or within budget, there is no organisational viability. It is through service design that these two sides of the same coin can be optimised. It is a mindset shift At its very heart, service design is a mindset. This mindset, the way in which we approach problems from the moment they are seen, is so important in the success rate of solutions. This mindset shift, moving the focus from solutions to problem from organisation to user from failure to learning and from efficiency to impact, is so fundamental that it needs to be organisation-wide. If only a few people are shifting their mindset in the long run, this new way of working cannot solidly take hold. Resulting in developments within the organisation being uneven and disjointed. Service design needs to work holistically; using the mindset, the process, and the toolkit. This is important for organisations to design a future where they are being inclusive, their business objectives are being met, and the right problems are being solved. Everyone in the organisation has a part to play in it. Author Pamela Spokes works as a Service Designer in Metropolia’s RDI team. Originally from Canada, Pamela has years of experience in university admin focusing on international recruitment, marketing, and the international student/staff experience. With a Bachelor’s from Canada, a Master’s degree from Sweden, an MBA in Service Innovation & Design from Laurea, and her AmO from Haaga-Helia, she is interested in purposefully designed experiences that are centred around the user. Don’t be surprised if she knocks on your door to talk about learning co-creation methods through intensive learning experiences. References Seddon, John: Keynote speech. 12th Annual Health Conference. 2016, Dublin, Ireland (beyondcommandandcontrol.com)

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