Consulting project
“Creation of creativity and problem solving”
Making the company versatile and innovative, teaching people to think differently and creatively

The summary of the intervention
The intervention is aimed at human resources, with the goal of creating an up to date mentality and the modern concepts of business competitiveness.
The economic and market system is always faster, uncertain, stormy.
The competitive advantage of a company lies in its ability to adapt quickly to the continuous changes that surround it: to do this it needs versatile and innovative human resources, motivated to look for new and different paths, in the interest of the company.
The intervention moves according to the guidelines of the innovation training that is based on some fundamental issues:
– Innovation does not mean just making a new, different, creative product, but it belongs to all the business sectors, in their ability to find a different way to do anything, break the mold, mental forms, prejudices, finding solutions to which normally a person do not think
– The ability to innovate is not a gift that is acquired from birth, but a skill that is learned, just like all other skills.
– To make innovation it is necessary to create processes of innovation that must be known and assimilated.
– Innovation brings to the company a change of mentality and how every change generates resistance. Knowing, managing and winning these resistance is fundamental for the success of the innovation itself.
The intervention inserts the concepts of creativity, innovation, problem solving in the company, explains the ways in which the related processes are created and, if required, supports the company in their implementation.

The symptoms of his need
The management of the company has the perception of a certain static in the way of doing things, of thinking, of facing problems. The phrase “we have always done in this way” is often used to block new ideas and many people, even of value, do their work repetitively and without apparent stimuli. Meanwhile, the company achieves results lower than expected and even if it manages to maintain its positions, it witnesses the rise of competitors who, no one knows how, grow and, apparently, thrive.
Meanwhile the world around changes rapidly and sometimes even the company changes, but one has the feeling that it does it with effort, slowly. The change, when it happens, represents a response to an external stimulus, and not an anticipation or anyway an action that is the result of the very nature of the company.

The course of the intervention
The intervention consists of two fundamental phases, which do not necessarily have to be carried out in sequence, but which can also alternate with each other.
In the first phase we teach the basics of innovation, creativity and problem solving.
This part consists not only in explaining the concepts of innovation and creativity, but above all in making them assimilate to the people involved. Assimilating innovation and creativity means changing the current way of thinking and acting to take on another: understandably this means winning the current prejudices, expressed or unconscious, getting out of the comfort zone represented by the usual way of doing things, getting into game. People are pushed out of their mental defense area through explanations, simulations, exercises and other training tools.
All this serves to accustom people to think differently, to give them the awareness of being creative, to let them touch with their hands how wide and stimulating the world is outside the usual spaces of thought.
In the second part, all of this is applied to the case studies of the company, making analyzes and innovations on certain aspects of corporate life. In this case the focus is on the search for innovative solutions in the issues that are used as a test. The purpose of this part is to show how the techniques and the mentality assimilated in the first part lead to practical, innovative and extremely effective results. Very important at this stage is to teach people to work in a group, to use the ideas of others to progress in the solution and to seek new ways of reasoning together.

The human resources involved
Creativity and innovation are characteristics that must belong to all the human resources of the company, from the top to the basic levels. This is why the human resources involved can be composed in the most different ways. A homogeneous group can be selected by hierarchical level, for example the intermediate leaders, with the task of transmitting innovative mentality to their collaborators. Alternatively, a department or area of the company can be selected in order to grow the whole sector together. The same management, intended as a group of directors, the core of the company’s property, the family that owns the property, can be one of the target groups of the training.

Timing
The intervention can last from ten to fifteen days of work of a consultant, depending on the size and complexity of the company. In any case, the duration of the intervention is agreed on the basis of a specific quote. The days are scheduled according to the operational needs of the company.

The advantages achieved
The company acquires flexibility and versatility thanks to a new mentality of its human resources.
The habit of observing, asking questions, putting them in the company, open discussion and not bound to mental prejudices, spreads innovation and creativity, enormously increasing competitiveness.
In the changing world, the company moves absolutely at ease, adapting itself in real time to the changes that take place.
This new way of dealing with changes and opportunities generates motivation and a positive spirit in people, triggering a virtuous circle of great effectiveness and satisfaction for everyone.

Future developments
The following developments of an intervention on innovation and creativity are countless.
The first mode of development may be to broaden the scope of the people involved, extending the intervention to new areas of the company, or to other hierarchical levels.
Further development consists in the participation of the consultant in the increasingly in-depth application of the methods taught to specific company situations.
Often a subsequent development is represented by changes and integrations of the organizational structure, to incorporate and increase the processes of innovation.