I was on vacation watching my daughter color a picture to submit for a contest and it occurred to me that there were several levels of creativity one could use to complete this project, but the more I got to imagining the levels of artistic creativity, the further abstract I got in my interpretration of the strategy of creating art and how these same levels that further and further deviated from simpling coloring a picture could be applied to business strategy. Here is the list of levels of artistic creativity that could be applied to the contest:
1. Color the picture as an exact replication of what you have seen (color a dog brown with a black nose)
2. Color the picture using different colors or patterns (pink dog with purple spots)
3. Add additional artistic elements not in the black and white pattern to be colored (i.e. add grass under the dog and a sun and blue sky)
4. Use the lines in unintended ways (The eye on the dog could be the eye of a fish and the paws could be part of a boat and this could be an ocean picture)
5. Ignore the outline of a dog all together and draw what you want and color that.
6. Cut up the paper and reassemble into a new artistic creation or make a puzzle.
7. Go beyond art as appealing to your sense of sight and add elements that create texture, smell, taste or hearing (stick a lollipop to your art so it smells, taste and has a sticky texture)
8. Use heavy markers on the paper and get it wet so you can make your art a tattoo on your skin thereby transferring your art away from the original medium of paper all together
9. Utilize your art as inspiration for something physical such as a dance (how would that dog act?)
10. Take the opportunity of the creation of art back all the way to your goal (was it to enjoy something created by your own hands or to appreciate something beautiful, to develop a new skill or to win something)- engage the activity as the highest level of Maslow's hierarchy of human needs by engaging in it towards your own self actualization (making you more truly who you are).
As promised this list go pretty abstract by the end, but when you are creating your business strategy how deep do you need to go to get a strategic advantage over your competitors. On itunes university I downloaded Yale University's Game Theory class in by the second class there was a game which asked students to pick a number between 1-100 and the winner would be the one who got an answer closest to 2/3 of the class average. As you can imagine, almost all students figured out that if everyone chose 100 then they should choose 67 but if they chose 67 then the average would be lower than 100. If you keep assuming 2/3 of 67 and then 2/3 of 45 you have to eventually settle in on the number of times you do that math before reaching the infinite answer of 1. In this class the average iterations were 5 getting to an average about 14 with the "winning number" being 9.
Are you competitors as smart as the average Yale undergraduate student? I confess my own guess at this game was 14, not 9 but my interpretation is that 5 levels deep of creativity (in this case, I know 67 is too high of a class average and I know my classmate knows that so I know that 45 is too high and I know my classmate knows that so I know that 29 is too high....). So how can I apply my levels of creativity to my business strategy 5 levels deep? I will start by saying that without know the specifics of an industry, that 5 levels may be too many or not enough, but the value of the academic exercise to create the levels will give you strategic options whether there are very few business model options such as the case of construction for governmental infrastructure, or a myriad such as the case of new businesses in technology that Google or Apple face everyday.
While I can't provide answers to every business scenario, let me imagine a few levels for my own industry which is creating flavors for food manufacturers...
1. Sell more my existing product line to my existing customer base by varying price/terms
2. Investigate new customers that would buy my existing products
3. Create variations of my existing products to sell to my existing or new customers
4. Look not only at my customers but the their customers (end user) to predict their needs and develop flavors proactively (classic marketing)
5. Sell not only your product but your non-product related capabilities (quick development, service, international nimbleness etc.)
6. Co-develop your customers products jointly
7. Ask your customers to partially outsource their product development into your business (blending innovation and employee resources so you can't tell where one begins and the other ends)
8. Combine taste with other senses (cooling taste of menthol, or a textured taste that stimulates multiple senses)
9. Go beyond the use of flavor for how food taste but what it makes you experience (i.e. does the taste of wine at a church impact your feeling of spirituality- could it?)
10. Ask yourself where the senses overlap our being and self-actualization (Maslow) and orient solutions that are customizable at the individual experience level.
The goal is to think more deeply, I invite your feedback if you found this a helpful tool because often when creating business strategies, we can get in a rut of simple variations on our common theme.
