Courses put the business in great ideas

By DITA DE BONI

Almost everybody can be taught to unlock their creativity and develop an innovative bent, some educators believe.

And with the right course they can find and foster streams of venture capital and take their ideas to market.

Tertiary courses to teach Kiwis to think and behave more laterally are springing up. Some lean heavily towards hands-on experience of business with the use of mentoring and other support - the Great New Zealand Business Venture competition exemplifies this - while others concentrate on the academic.

Psychology and organisational and gender behaviour are often part of them while Richard Pech at Massey University says the study of anarchy and ethics in history can teach students a lot about the forces of change.

Today's go-getters need to know about the reforms and revolutions of the past.

Entrepreneurs are usually known for their success and daring, not their academic achievements, but that does not rule out study as a route to inventiveness in business. And many people shy away from the idea of commercial buccaneers, remembering that Alan Bond spent his life before jail being celebrated as an entrepreneur.

Does it need a touch of magic to turn an idea into a business success? Leith Oliver, who will head a paper on innovation and entrepreneurship within the University of Auckland Business School's MBA programme later this year, thinks fundamental business principles are more important.

"We are all capable of being [entrepreneurial] like that, but what is missing for many people is the framework within which to do it."

The Business School's upcoming paper is mainly concerned with allowing managers to foster innovation within companies, freeing workers to suggest and work on ideas without being sidelined by the needs of the organisation.

Forget sanity and order, this process is known as "skunk work" - dirty offices, pizza and surf shorts, no sleep or showers until the idea is hammered out.

But no matter how you achieve it, escaping the "management mindset" is the important ingredient, says Mr Oliver.

"In a large corporate entity there is all the know-how but people are stuck in bureaucracy which stifles them.

"Rules and regulations take precedence over creativity. We have to teach managers how to capture the creativity and know-how that abounds in an organisation and turn it into something feasible."

Understanding how to unlock creativity and innovation is to learn how the brain works, he says.

"Jazz musicians, for example, seem to be very creative and clever when they start improvising during performances but really it is not that clever.

"What they are doing is taking the structures of music they have already learned and mixing and matching patterns as they go, to create something new."

The course will teach students to mix and match information they already have to create new concepts, while encouraging them to see things from the point of view of accountants, engineers and marketers as well.

More quirky elements such as musical improvisation and theatre sports are covered, with a look at the psychology of the entrepreneur.

Over at Unitec, where the school's Master of Business Innovation and Entrepreneurship is set to take off next month, students can attack post-graduate study of "wealth creation" over three years. Fees: up to $17,000.

Phil Bretherton, head of Unitec's school of applied management, thinks this is a steal and hopes to attract students from overseas as well as Kiwis.

The Unitec masters, he says, will have less of a corporate focus and look more at the subject from an entrepreneur's perspective. Ideally, students will arrive brandishing ideas which will "germinate" with practical advice from entrepreneurs.

But the New Zealand environment is less than fertile, he says. People have a conservative attitude to money and a lingering attitude that the Government should be relied on to bankroll economic enterprise. On top of that is a wariness of entrepreneurs after the disasters of the Bond and Holmes a Court era.

Education up to tertiary level is another problem. Natural curiosity and inventiveness are hardly encouraged and he is reminded of Sigmund Freud's observation: "What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of a child and the feeble mentality of the average adult."

The Ministry of Economic Development backs the idea of teaching creative thinking with a business bent, realising that e-commerce is underdeveloped. In a report to the E-Commerce forum last year, the ministry concluded that "any long-term innovation strategy should include teaching creative thinking through the compulsory eduction system."

Quite right, says Associate Professor Delwyn Clark from the University of Waikato Management School, the ideas behind innovation and entrepreneurship could be taught much earlier.

"There's no reason why you can't study the most successful companies at any level, even without the more technical details. The story of Post-it Notes from 3M, for example, can be summarised and presented to a 5-year-old, 15-year-old or 55-year-old."

Professor Clark focuses on case studies and business success stories in her courses and says entrepreneurship has been part of the Waikato curriculum since the 1980s.

New Zealanders are quick on the uptake, she says, and innovations are grasped more readily here than in some countries. She has little sympathy for the idea of a conservative national psyche.

"I guess part of the idea behind actually getting educated in [innovation and entrepreneurship] is that anyone can have a great new idea, so the invention process of creating new ideas is quite widespread.

"But if you define innovation as putting new ideas into something that will work - for instance making some money - education is important in that."

A course can help convert a great idea into an actual, functioning business.