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Where big ideas come from the imagination quadrant, improvement is a type of
creativity that involves making an existing idea better. Two great examples of this are
McDonald’s and Toyota. Ray Kroc, McDonald’s founder, had the idea of creating
quality and cooking standards for preparing tasty burgers and fries. While there were
many other burger joints around at the time (the 1950s), Kroc’s unique process-
oriented approach gave McDonald’s a big advantage. Similarly, Toyota has used the
refinement of its automaking and auto-assembly processes (called the Toyota
Business System) to be one of the largest and most successful, high-quality car
makers in the world.
Finally, the fourth area of creativity is incubation. Incubation is a very
deliberate approach that concerns a vision of sustainability—that is, leaving a legacy.
This type of creativity is more complex because it involves teamwork, empowerment,
and collective action. In their chapter on problem solving, David Whetten and Kim
Cameron provide Gandhi as an example of incubation creativity:
“Mahatma Gandhi was probably the only person in modern history who has
single-handedly stopped a war. Lone individuals have started wars, but Gandhi was
creative enough to stop one. He did so by mobilizing networks of people to pursue a
clear vision and set of values. Gandhi would probably have been completely
noncreative and ineffective had he not been adept at capitalizing on incubation
dynamics. By mobilizing people to march to the sea to make salt, or to burn passes
that demarcated ethnic group status, Gandhi was able to engender creative outcomes
that had not been considered possible. He was a master at incubation by connecting,
[3]
involving, and coordinating people.”
While no one of these four types of creativity is best, they have some
contradictory or conflicting characteristics. For example, imagination and
improvement emphasize different approaches to creativity. The size of the new idea,
for instance, is typically much bigger with imagination (i.e., revolutionary solutions)
than with improvement (i.e., incremental solutions). Investment and incubation also

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