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This week is about the dynamic balance found between structure and innovation. Some of the questions that we explore are does having structure support or inhibit our creativity and how do we harness our creativity in an environment that requires a certain level of structure? This topic comes to us from a book I recently read titled Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey. In this book, Mason explores the working history of many great creatives to understand how each of them created their works of art. The interesting part of this book was of course that each artist was different in approach however, they all posed some manner of how they went about their day, thus they all seemed to have some sort of structure. So, what does structure mean to our innovation? Well, that’s what we explore this week.

One of the ways we can think about structure is that it can support our flow and the ability to allow our innovations to come to fruition. One of the things that is often discussed about organizations is the belief (and likely experience) that hierarchies kill innovation and this can be true to some extent however, it isn’t necessarily the structure that kills creativity but rather, the way that people interact in the face of new ideas and innovative approaches.

But, what you do you think? Let us know if you find structure supportive or inhibitive to your creativity.