Scrum & Creativity

Jeff Sutherland states on page 9 of his well-known Scrum book that

Scrum embraces uncertainty and creativity.

I totally understand how it helps to handle uncertainty well, especially through short inspect-and-adapt cycles. But I can’t see what it does for promoting creativity?

Well maybe in the Retro a bit when discussing how to improve the scrum team’s own way of working together, but what about supporting the generation of ideas and concepts that will be making the software product better? What do you guys think? Am I perhaps missing something?

This is not at all a theoretic question. I really do think that there should be some regular event in the Scrum framework that is dedicated to generating creative ways of even better addressing the customer’s challenges and thus increasing customer value. As far as I know, it is out of scope how Items actually find their way into the backlog in the Scrum framework.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but usually the product owner, who is prioritising the backlog, has a background from project management or is a subject matter expert. They rarely know the technology’s possibilities for example or have a grip on non-functional requirements. 

As collaboration with the customer is one of the key values of the Agile Manifesto, why not foresee a regular brain storming event e.g. with pilot customers and development team to weave new visionary ideas that would make the product even better?

Of course, the Scrum framework is flexible enough that a company could incorporate such events in their development processes. I just feel the core Scrum framework could already do better in promoting creativity, especially as this not only helps the product, but also the team spirit and the people’s motivation.