Creativity and the Design of Business

Another model is proposed by Roger Martin in the Design of Business. He points out that the most successful businesses will balance what he terms reliability and validity. Reliability is the consistency and effectiveness of business processes.   McDonald’s will reliably provide the same dinning experience, following the same processes in all of its restaurants.  Validity is the creative development of new ideas, products and services which can not necessarily be done in a reliable way.  Breakthroughs, innovation and creativity require different thought processes involving “abductive” logic. This is reasoning based on wondering about observations that don’t fit existing patterns and coming up with new designs and creative solutions.  He argues that businesses focus on analytical thinking including deductive and inductive logic because the focus is typically on process improvement rather than on creativity.  Design thinkers can balance analytical thinking and creative thinking. There are some similarities between this approach and Lang’s concept of the Power of Why.  Abductive logic might also be seen as risk taking simply because to invest resources into a concept that does not have a track record in most businesses is seen as risky.  They prefer to focus on what has worked and improve it.  This would be similar to being stuck in the status quo.  The concept of risk in this context is essentially reluctance to innovate and is consistent with Deloitte’s suggestion that Canadian businesses are risk adverse.

The key research question here is the extent to which Canadian businesses do balance reliability and validity and is this a predictor of success.