What people call “creating” or “innovation” I am now tending to explain it as “Converting Our Concepts”. That is, using conversation to convert our own concepts. In Alan Rowe’s book Creative Intelligence he talks about; “A quantum leap is needed to deal with changing external forces”, and goes on to say that “Leaders who are concerned with significant change need to convince their organisations to accept new ideas”. Now some or most of you will probably agree with this but I don’t. What I am about to propose, I think, is potentially a quantum leap that can assist with this creativity that he mentions.

I don’t think that we need to convince organisations or convert anyone in them. I think we need to convert our own concepts only, through the feedback from the people in these organisations. This is not the same thing. I think this is a paradigm shift in how we converse with each other. Understanding that the conversation is made up of converse ideas where we are conversely speaking. We are not in agreement. We are using the conversation to form agreements. But by converting our own concepts, during conversation, and not others, we can approach the conversation with a completely different attitude. If we are trying to convince others, we spend more time trying to convert their ideas and not our own. It is a very static, dogmatic and egoist approach that is similar to the title of Edward de Bono’s book, I Am Right You Are Wrong. Only de Bono had his tongue firmly placed in his cheek when choosing this title.

Rowe goes on to say, “Using the right words is especially important when trying to convince employees to accept personal risk. This is more easily said than done” I agree with you Alan and I think changing the concept of convincing or converting employees is the shift that is needed.

This is my concept only and I certainly could be wrong and am open to any feedback. I only have one agreement on this concept so far and it is yet to be tested. So I am not trying to convince anyone here. What I am saying is if anyone can help me convert this concept further I would be truly grateful to receive your feedback.