如何在企业内部形成创造性思维？

无论是要形成创造性思维，还是创新精神，都没有灵验的咒语或捷径可走。创新者之所以热衷行动，是因为创新是最能将想法变成现实的途径。我发现，遵循以下要点可以有效打造既有活力又富于创新精神的企业。

1、营造包容的文化氛围

通过设定目标，以及为团队指明实现目标的最佳路径，高层领导者可以最大限度地发掘团队成员的潜力。

创新的精神、旺盛的斗志以及协作坚持的毅力都是实施“目标导向”战略之后的自然结果，长此以往，团队会得到激励和信任，有助于寻找达到企业目标的创新方法。比如，美国二手家具交易网站Chairish的开发流程鼓励工程师提出改造产品的建议，并将与企业整体目标一致的提议付诸实施。开发流程之所以能管控潜在的混乱，因为流程中每处变动都经过整个团队的反复推敲。Chairish在应用中嵌入苹果手机支付系统Apple Pay前就经历了去中心化的审查过程，公司的iOS系统负责人身先士卒，独立开发出了设计方案。最终Chairish成为苹果电子商店App Store首批支持Apple Pay的应用，推出后得到了大力推广。

2、灵活应变

机遇总是在意想不到的地方冒出来，一旦机遇出现，有创新精神的团队会灵活应变随时准备调整。Chairish大量使用A/B计划测试新想法，选出其中有效的应用在实践中。公司首次推出“买家出价”特色功能时，只适用于在网站发布七天后的产品。Chairish希望让卖家有机会拿下尽可能高的成交价。我们也希望借这个机会测试买家出价的概念，所以冒着风险立即推出了功能。事实证明，新功能引起了极大反响。Chairish全价购买交易量并没有减少，还通过“买家出价”大幅提高了成交量。

3、接受失败

虽说是老生常谈，但失败的确是创新的一部分。事实上，失败的想法有可能指出令人兴奋的新方向。Chairish成立之初为了增加上架商品数目，公司推出了一项类似门房的服务，会派人前往卖家的家中挑选待售商品，然后存放在当地的仓库里。通过这个办法，Chairish上确实有了待出售的物品，可运输、存储和上架过程成本过高，与收入很难成比例，所以该服务推出没多久就被叫停。这次经历给予Chairish的启示是，在尽可能帮卖家创造价值的同时，要精简上架流程和管理标准。

4、保持小规模

在企业规模增长的同时，如何保持创新的文化氛围是让所有企业家伤脑筋的问题，我也不例外。如果不注意控制扩张节奏，一旦规模臃肿，官僚主义滋生，就会挫伤员工创新的积极性，企业执行创新的脚步也会迟缓。我发现，去中心化是缓解企业成功压力的有效方式，也能让各团队保持小规模，从而努力坚持让企业走向成功的宝贵创新精神。（财富中文网）

本文作者埃里克•克罗瑟（Eric Grosse）是美国二手家具交易网站Chairish的创始人兼首席执行官。

译者：Pessy

审稿：夏林

When it comes to creative thinking and innovation, there are no magic wands or silver bullets. Innovators thrive on action, as there is no more powerful motivator than the prospect of turning a new idea into reality. I’ve found the following themes are a great way to foster an energized and innovative organization.

Create an inclusive culture

Senior leaders get the most out of their teams by setting goals and giving their teams latitude on how best to achieve them.

Creativity, scrappiness, and collaborative persistence are the natural byproducts of this kind of a goal-oriented approach, where teams are encouraged and trusted to find innovative ways to accomplish business objectives. For example, Chairish’s development process encourages any engineer to propose and implement product changes that align with overall business goals. The potential for chaos is managed by a development process that culminates in a full-team peer review for every change. Chairish’s implementation of Apple Pay came about through this decentralized process, as our iOS lead championed and developed the design on his own. The result was one of the first working implementations of Apple Pay in the App Store that led to significant promotion of our app at launch.

Be flexible and responsive

Opportunities pop up unexpectedly and when they do, innovative teams are nimble and ready to adjust. At Chairish, we make heavy use of A/B testing to try out new concepts and roll out ones that work. When we first launched our “Make An Offer” feature, it was only available after a product was live on our site forseven days. We wanted to give the sellers the opportunity to capture the highest possible price for the item. We wanted to test this theory, so we took a risk and tried making that feature available immediately. The impact was significant. Not only did we maintain the same number of full-price purchases, but we vastly increased the number of transactions via Make An Offer.

Embrace failure

It’s been said before, but failure truly is part of the creative process. Ideas that don’t work out can lead to exciting new directions. When Chairish first started, we needed listings so we offered a concierge-style service where we went to people’s homes, picked up their items, and housed them in a local warehouse. We achieved our goal of having product to sell, but the shipping, storage and onboarding process proved difficult to scale, so we moved away from that model early on. This experience inspired us to streamline our listings process and curatorial standards while still offering significant value to sellers.

Keep things small

Maintaining a creative culture and environment as a company grows is a vexing issue for any entrepreneur, including me. Left unchecked, size and bureaucracy can act as a wet blanket for innovation and slow a company’s ability to execute against its creative reservoir. I’ve found decentralization to be an effective counterforce to the organizational weight of success, enabling teams to stay small and focused on maintaining the innovative spirit that brought success in the first place.