Does great marketing spring from adapting or innovaing? You need both but Roger Jackson prefers the latter What kind of category management projects have you been involved in recently? Have they been exciting and dynamic, all about new ideas and challenging the way things are done? Or were they a cool assessment of available data and a rational assessment of what needs to be done, followed by a comprehensive but dry plan? Chances are, the underlying culture of the organisations and the kind of people taking part dictated the style of the project. Styles of creativity differ, and understanding this factor can help us choose the right approach for any project. There's a crucial difference between a project that sets out to be genuinely innovative and one more analytical in nature. Trouble is, large organisations tend to to build in a bias against innovation. We are all creative beings. We are all exceptionally capable of thinking of ways to change and improve our businesses. However, different approaches of problem-solving suit different people regardless of the size of organisation they belong to or the particular business challenges they face. Let's take a look at well proven and now accepted ideas put forward by psychologist MJ Kirton in 1976. Essentially, Kirton believed people have one of two preferred styles of creative problem solving. The adaptor is someone who is reliable and practical, uses standard approaches, and likes to improve things by acting in a cautious way. Adaptors sees themselves as supportive, stable, methodical, cooperative and sound. Innovators, on the other hand, are seen as undisciplined and idealistic. They challenge assumptions and change the definition of problems. They are abrasive and take risk. They see themselves as, challenging, change oriented, intuitive, unconstrained by the past, and daring. They think they are full of ideas. Adaptors and innovators adopt different problem-solving styles. The adaptor will probably search thoroughly in a limited area, whereas the innovator has more permeable search boundaries, scattering effort but gathering ideas from every direction. The adaptor's approach is likely to offer a fuller and deeper search of a few ideas, whereas the innovator will present many less formulated possibilities. Innovators may be quicker to perceive opportunities, but adaptors will bel quicker to evaluate them. Adaptive ideas are accepted more quickly than innovative ones. At heart, innovators are the risk takers willing to challenge the system, whereas adaptors prefer to work within it. Adaptors can often have a poor view of innovators, seeing them as abrasive, insensitive, and insufficiently thorough in their thinking, while innovators can often be frustrated by adaptors because they see them as stuffy, unenterprising and wedded to restricting orthodoxies. People have these preferred styles. Yes, they will adjust to fit group needs, but under pressure they revert back to type. Companies tend to select staff that fit their prevailing mode of working. It is not unreasonable to assume that many, particularly large organisations, naturally become biased toward adaptive thinking. This impacts on the way projects are run. A template-driven project, relying on considerable data analysis, will appeal to adaptors, and may be seen as "the right way" by adaptive organisations, but will alienate or demotivate innovators. This approach could lead to a sound and thorough solution, but one that does not challenge many prevailing assumptions or paradigms. On the other hand, a more creative, entrepreneurial approach will appeal to innovators and may come up with groundbreaking ideas, but it might be short on detail or practicality and may find difficulty in being accepted. If a category has recently been through a very adaptive process, then a more disruptive, innovative approach may now pay dividends. If recent work has been very creative and idea driven, or indeed no work has been done, then some clear analysis and practical thinking may be needed. These alternatives offer an opportunity for suppliers who are not the leading supplier to offer a positive contribution, or for the category captain to build on past work in a new way. By bringing different kinds of people together, with different approaches to problem solving, a tangible project can be made to a marketing project and its chances of success. I am not arguing that there are better or worse approaches. Only that careful thought needs to be given to fit the process to the problem at hand. I would, however, suggest the temptation is to accept adaptive thinking ­ it makes for an easier ride. But perhaps the real opportunities lie in being truly innovative? Roger Jackson is a director of Real World Marketing {{MANAGEMENT FEATURE }}