One of the most creative people I knew in the advertising agencies I ran was a man who only produced excellent work when he was wearing corduroy trousers. I have no idea why this strange habit released the muse in him but it did. Another, perhaps more predictably, wrote his best copy after a generous helping of vodka. Alcohol has always been a stimulant to creativity, unwinding the inhibitions from which all of us suffer to some extent.

It is not necessary to drink to be creative but it is essential to provide an environment in which the inhibitions are relaxed and the mind can wander. Koestler said “creativity is the ability to perceive relationships”. I believe this is the best definition I have seen. Can we train people to do so? Certainly. It will still leave some people more innovative than others but the quality of everyone’s creative thinking can be improved.

As a boy I was frightened of pain and this made me timid and nervous. Not a good disposition for playing rugby. I turned my fear into fleet of foot and became a passable winger. The fact that I was running to escape the mob behind me didn’t detract from the value of the tries I helped to put on the scoreboard.

So it is with creativity. When a problem becomes too difficult you have three options – give up, ask for help or think your way out of it. The last of these involves you in taking the problem outside the framework in which it has been presented and seeing if a changed context provides the solution. An imaginative “running away” from a problem often presents novel and thoroughly practical solutions.

Creativity isn’t only about solving existing problems. Innovation involves creating new resources. They often turn out to seem like solutions to problems but in fact the problems they appear to solve didn’t exist until the resource was developed. It is significant that the Pentagon uses Hollywood as the source of much of its forecasting. The fiction writers may be ahead of the real world, but they are often right. Today’s nightmare is tomorrow’s reality.

Some of the current attempts to introduce or upgrade innovation are doomed to failure because they are subjected to procedures suitable for systematizing administrative work but counter-productive when it comes to encouraging imaginative thinking. Here’s an example that I have seen recently.

A company needed a strategy for the future. The expectation was that a consultant would examine the company (though not probe deeply into the finances), ponder and then produce a report with a tailor-made plan. This approach would be wholly acceptable if applied to the retrofitting of the plumbing. It could not possibly produce a worthwhile strategy.

The keys to the future of any organisation are

1. what the owners wish to accomplish for themselves
2. what the managers are capable of doing and willing to do
3. what the finances of the company – importantly, including its profit margin trends – permit it to do
4. what a sensible and rational forecast indicates the market will allow or demand.

Someone from outside a business can ask the right questions, focus on the points that matter and help to forecast the market, but the key word is ‘help’. Any consultant who presents a ‘solution’ is doing his client a disservice. He who helps his client to a strategy that is largely the client’s own development, is doing what he is paid to do.

Innovation can never be a solitary journey; it is a mental battlefield where only the best thoughts are allowed to win.