UNIVERSITA’ DEGLI STUDI DI URBINO “CARLO BO” Facoltà

universita’ degli studi di urbino “carlo bo” ============================================ facoltà di lingue e letterature straniere cors

UNIVERSITA’ DEGLI STUDI DI URBINO “CARLO BO”
============================================
Facoltà di Lingue e Letterature Straniere
Corso di Laurea in Lingue e Cultura per l’Impresa
1st Year English
Reading Comprehension/Writing section 10/01/07
Read the following passage and answer the questions.
In his book on creative problem-solving, Breaking Through, Tom Logsdon
tells the story of a clever young executive hired to manage a San
Francisco hotel. One of the first problems the young executive has to
face is a flood of complaints about the hotel lifts, which are
terribly slow. Guests are actually starting to demand rooms on lower
floors. But an upgrade of the lift system is out of the question: the
lowest estimate for reconstruction comes to more than $400,000.
Clearly something has to be done, and quickly, before people start
checking out.
(1)________ , a creative solution occurs to the young executive. The
real problem, he decides, is boredom. With only the lift doors and a
blank wall to look at, guests are understandably getting bored, and
when people are bored, they tend to complain. So, instead of speeding
up the lifts, full-length mirrors are installed both inside and
directly outside the lifts on each floor, at a cost of just $18,000.
Now, with their reflections to admire when they use the lift, people
stop complaining, thereby saving the hotel $382,000.
This is what Edward de Bono calls “lateral thinking”, and it is the
result of looking at a problem in a different and unusual way.
(2)________ , redefining a problem is just one of the ways in which
you can foster a climate for creativity in business. And nowadays,
successful companies see such creative strategies as vital to their
survival.
At 3M, for example, employees spend as much as 15% of their time on
new ideas, and 25% of every manager’s product portfolio consists of
products that are less than three years old. At Hewlett-Packard more
than half their orders in 2004 were for products introduced in the
previous two years. It is a similar story at GlaxoSmithKline.
(3)________ like IT and pharmaceuticals, a creative edge is essential
in order to gain and maintain market leadership. Management guru, Tom
Peters, has been talking for quite some time about the importance of a
company’s whole culture being creative. But creativity would be
useless without innovation, and the two terms should not be confused.
According to the team running creativity courses at the Cranfield
School of Management, creativity is essentially about generating, not
judging, ideas. Innovation, on the other hand, is the implementation
of those ideas on a commercial basis. (4)________ , you don’t
criticize ideas before they are fully formed. That would be
counter-productive. Evaluation comes in at the innovation stage, where
you are turning good ideas into a commercial proposition. It follows
that you cannot be both creative and innovative at the same time.
In fact, making a discovery is one thing; exploiting it is quite
another. Take the famous case of Xerox Research Centre, whose system
for making personal computers easier to use was copied by Apple
Macintosh. Apple subsequently led the market for almost ten years with
the enormously successful desktop system it “borrowed” from Xerox.
(Apple had the foresight to copyright the system. Xerox did not.)
(5)________ , it is an expensive waste of time coming up with ideas
you cannot exploit. And it is even more expensive if your competitors
can exploit them. Unfortunately, the best creative idea in the world
is worth nothing if another company is going to end up doing the
development, and making the profit.
Write all answers on the blank answer-sheet provided, and not on this
question-sheet. In order to earn maximum points, you should give
answers which are both complete and to the point; and you should use
your own words wherever possible.
1.
The following words and expressions have been removed from the
text. On your answer sheet, indicate where you think they should
go by linking the letters to the numbers.
a) In research-driven industries
b) In a brainstorming session
c) Indeed
d) Finally
d) From a business perspective
2. Briefly summarize, in your own words, the story about the young
executive hired to
manage a San Francisco hotel.
3. In what way is the young executive’s solution an example of
“lateral thinking”?
4. How important is creativity in business, according to the article?
What examples are given
to illustrate its importance?
5. What distinction does the author make between creativity and
innovation?
6. What point is the author making when he cites the case of Xerox and
Apple Macintosh?
Writing
Write about the solution to some problem (in business or in any other
area), or about an idea or invention, which you consider to have been
particularly creative. Your answer should be 80-100 words in length.
Sample Answers
1.
1-d, 2-c, 3-a, 4-b, 5-e.
2.
A young executive who has been hired to manage a San Francisco
hotel has an urgent problem to deal with: the lifts are extremely
slow, and guests are complaining. Renovating the lift system would
cost over $400,000, which the hotel cannot afford. However, the
executive has a bright idea: he has full-length mirrors put into
the lifts, and also outside the lifts on each floor. The result is
that guests, who are now admiring their reflections as they travel
from floor to floor, do not notice how slow the lifts are, and the
complaints stop. The total cost of the mirrors is $18,000, and so
the hotel saves $382,000.
3.
“Lateral thinking” is described in the article as “the result of
looking at a problem in a different and unusual way.” The
executive, in fact, redefines the problem completely: whereas the
logical way to solve the problem would be to speed up the lifts,
he sees the real problem as boredom, and so his solution focuses
on stopping the guests from getting bored.
4.
Creativity is of fundamental importance in business, according to
the article. The author states that creativity is seen by
successful companies as essential to their survival, and that
particularly in research-driven industries like IT and
pharmaceuticals, companies need to be creative in order to gain
and keep market leadership. The example is given of 3M, where
employees spend up to 15% of their time on new ideas, and where
managers’ product portfolios contain a considerable percentage of
products under three years old. The author also mentions that at
Hewlett-Packard, more than half of their orders in 2004 were for
products under two years old.
5.
The author cites the Cranfield School of Management, who say that
creativity is about coming up with ideas, whereas innovation is
about their commercial application. In a brainstorming session,
which takes place during the creative stage, it is unhelpful to be
critical. Criticism may be appropriate, however, at the innovation
stage, when an idea is being evaluated for its commercial
viability. These two stages are completely distinct.
6.
Here the author is pointing out that however important creativity
may be for a company, it is completely useless if the company
cannot exploit its ideas, and it is worse than useless if the
company’s competitors profit from them. Although it was Xerox who
designed a system for making personal computers easier to use,
Apple “borrowed” the system from them and copyrighted it, and then
led the market for almost ten years.