UNIVERSITA’ DEGLI STUDI DI URBINO “CARLO BO” FACOLTÀ

MINISTERO DELL’ISTRUZIONE DELL’UNIVERSITA’ E DELLA RICERCA UFFICIO
11122000 14301630 UNIVERSITA’ DEGLI STUDI DI PARMA FACOLTÀ DI
8 UNIVERSITA’ DEGLI STUDI DI PADOVA FACOLTÀ DI LETTERE

ALMA MATER STUDIORUM UNIVERSITA’ DI BOLOGNA FONDAZIONE ALMA MATER
ASSOCIAZIONE “ANTONIO E LUIGI GOI” ONLUS UNIVERSITA’ DEGLI STUDI
BANDO RIVOLTO A GIOVANI RICERCATORI NON STRUTTURATI DELL’UNIVERSITA’ DEGLI

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.

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-d, 2-c, 3-a, 4-b, 5-e.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

COD ID AL MAGNIFICO RETTORE DELL’UNIVERSITA’ DEGLI STUDI
II DIVISIONE 76) CONVENZIONE TRA L’UNIVERSITA’ DEGLI STUDI DI
MINISTERO DELL’ ’ISTRUZIONE DEL’UNIVERSITA’ E DELLA RICERCA UFFICIO SCOLASTICO

Tags: degli studi, studi, degli, universita’, “carlo, facoltà, urbino