Measure Creativity & Risk-Taking for Individuals, Teams and Organizations
Creatrix® has been extensively used for leadership development, executive coaching, team development and large-scale innovation efforts across organizations. Given the formula for innovation that we use at ALCEMIS, we encourage clients to utilize the Creatrix Inventory.
Creativity x Risk-Taking x Value = Innovation
The Creatrix helps you understand personal and team capacity for creativity and risk-taking, both of which are crucial for innovation. The Creatrix is designed to assess the capacity to generate creative, or original ideas, as well as the propensity for taking the risks needed to drive those ideas forward in the face of adversity. Over a lifetime, we develop a preferred way of operating in the world with the kinds of ideas that we develop and the kinds of risks we take to drive ideas forward.
The Creatrix profile report plots results on a graph outlining eight innovative orientations. In addition, the report identifies where an individual lands on a continuum of four behavioral drivers for creativity and three behavioral drivers for risk-taking. Group reports are generated by grouping individuals together. The group report will show where individuals in the group land in the overall profile as well as provide a group average.
CREATIVE THINKERS
• Embrace ambiguity and ideas
• Make connections between ideas
• Rely on their own capacity for idea generation while appreciating and even building upon the ideas and resources of others
RISK-TAKERS
• Take action in the face of adversity
• Accept responsibility for their choices
• Are resilient
Reports are typically used in workshop sessions to help individuals and teams understand their personal and group orientations and behavioral drivers as well as develop action plans for change. A best practice is to profile employees, conduct the workshop(s) and then profile them again to assess movement. This re-assessment can be done at 6, 9 or 12 months.
There is no right or wrong orientation on the Creatrix. The objective is not for an organization to build a legion of only creative and possibility thinkers. It is to build and support a culture that encourages diversity in thinking and acting, a culture that builds on people’s varying strengths and welcomes both wild ideas as well as realistic and specific plans about how the organization will actually get things done. Highly creative thinkers, planners and implementers need to collaborate in order to truly innovate, for innovation is creativity in action that delivers value.
Application
As part of a strategic planning session, a marketing team utilizes the Creatrix to help them understand their personal and team propensity for creativity and risk-taking. Their organization has been asking for innovation but has not yet been delivering on it consistently.
During the workshop, team members realize that they tend to focus on the practical, ignoring options that could really lead to value driven and innovative solutions for their customers. The team uses this knowledge as they work through the rest of the strategy session, leading to more creative ideas, a willingness to act on various ideas and actions for how to remain more open to different ideas and solutions.