Brain Farm

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2010-04-28T09:36:00.001-07:00

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Creativity researchers and gurus

2009-03-03T22:00:00.000-08:00

pieces

MEET THE CREATIVITY RESEARCHERS

Theresa Amabile

Mahali Csikazentmihalyi

Howard Gardner?

M.A. Runco

Dean Keith Simonton

Roger Sperry - split brain

Robert Sternberg

Richard Florida

MEET THE CREATIVITY BUSINESS GURUS

Roger von Oech

Doug Hall

Michael Michalko ...army, nato, cia...american business

Right-brain and left-brain creativity

2009-02-19T17:48:00.000-08:00

pieces

you've heard: left & right human brain hemispheres have different functions...that right = intuitive, creative, focuses on the whole and left = logical, analytic, focuses on pieces.

IS THIS TRUE? Are there dramatic functional differences between our right and left brain hemispheres? Is "human creativity" located more on the right side than the left side? I have a Ph.D. in psychology but I'm not really qualified to give the best answer to this question. I'm no neuroscientist. But here's my best speculation: the typical discussion of the types and differences in brain functioning that are attributable to the right and left brains are probably exaggerations and oversimplifications. I suspect that our understanding of the biomechanical operation of the brains AND our ability to measure these operations is still pretty primitive (i.e., we will know a hell of a lot more about mammalian brain functioning 100 years from now than we do now...and still only be part of the way there). I also have come to the conclusion that the idea of two different types of brain-functioning--one that is rational and deductive and one that is intuitive and inductive--is a very useful metaphor and explanatory device for understanding and working with humans.

It's easiest to see these "two different ways of thinking" in the different things that humans do. Take finger painting vs. simplifying an algebraic formula. Finger painting is clearly very expressive, subjective, and not easily subjected to verbal analysis or explanation. Simplifying an algebraic formula follows a clear set of rules, can be objectively evaluated, and is easily explained.
[other examples]
These intuitively feel (both mentally and physically) like radically different tasks--tasks that our brain seems to approach differently. It doesn't feel like I'm using my brain in the same way in these different pairs of tasks. It may turn out that I am, but until we have established that as fact (and understand how that is), I am probably going to rely on the "two brains," "two different types of tasks,"

The confused state of "brainstorming."

2009-02-17T14:04:00.000-08:00

pieces

Why do people who do brainstorming for a living claim that brainstorming sucks? What is "brainstorming" how bad does it suck? If you ask a lot of people who conduct brainstorming activities for a living what they do, they probably won't call it brainstorming. They'll call it Eureka!IdeaEngineering, Merwyn Concept Research, TRIZ, Synectics, Creative Aerobics, or any number of other weird names or acronyms. There are many different commercial and proprietary brands of brainstorming. Only they won't call themselves "brainstorming." If you try to call what they do "brainstorming," they'll probably get a little defensive and point out how what they do is different from and much better than "brainstorming." In fact, one of the best brainstorming facilitators I've run into, an Australian gent named Ian Gee who has invented a brilliant process for generating a wide variety of marketing ideas called "Big Day Out," spends the first 15 minutes of his brainstorming groups explaining how brainstorming really sucks and how the brainstorming activity he is about to put you through is not really brainstorming.

In the parlance of marketing and advertising, "brainstorming" has a serious branding problem. I have come to the view that "brainstorming" is best thought of as a very broad and generic category for many different human creativity and problem-solving efforts and activities. THAT'S HOW MOST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD USE THE TERM. Brainstorming professionals, however, have been trying to define "brainstorming" much more narrowly--as being a very specific and somehow outdated activity (e.g., how Alex Osborne ran his brainstorming groups). This has been going on for nearly two decades now...and it has never worked. The well-established everyday view that brainstorming is a broad intention (i.e., "let's brainstorm some ideas") more than it is a particular method persits and grows. I know this is true. I've even tried it myself: I spent money and time to official register "Creative Aerobics" as a legal trademark for my own particular style/activities of brainstorming. I could completely refrain from using the word brainstorming, or I could spend time pointing out how Creative Aerobics was better much better (or more advanced or powerful) than "regular brainstorming." I could repeat the branding label "creative aerobics" over and over throughout a two-day long creativity workshop...and people still walked away thinking "that was (or wasn't) a good brainstorming session."

So why have professional brainstorming facilitators fought so long and so hard (and so uncreatively!) against applying the label "brainstorming" to what they do? There are two main reasons. First, most people (at least in the business world that I've worked in) are pretty cynical about "brainstorming" and "brainstorming meetings." Most people--and especially people who are paid to be creative for a living (like writers and art directors working in advertising)--think brainstorming meetings suck. That brainstorming meetings are usually lame, that they don't really work (i.e., they don't produce a lot of really good, creative ideas), and even when they do, the ideas never have an effect (i.e., they don't get implemented, they get rejected by the system. The second reason why professional brainstorming facilitators avoid calling what they do "brainstorming" is because of the desire to brand their own variant of brainstorming as being a unique and proprietary process. Counter-positioning Creative Aerobics as being different than mere brainstorming tries to accomplish both goals: avoid that fact that most people have had prior sucky brainstorming experiences and help them believe that this is going to be a lot better. Trouble is, it doesn't work. Even if you mange to deliver a fabulous brainstorming session that generates an enormous amount and quality of creative ideas and insights, people walk away thinking "that was a good brainstorming session...that's how a good brainstorming session should be conducted." The brainstorming category still sucks, but you've managed to create a little beachhead for the idea that there can be "good brainstorming meetings." I am now happy to surrender to this. I am happy to live with this. I just wish my other brainstorming colleagues would quit fighting the losing and sometimes bizarre fight of denying that what they do falls under the umbrella of "brainstorming."

I should also like to point out that just like there are branding-happy, trademarking-crazy, intellectual-property-claiming people in almost any professional area or endeavor, professional brainstorming and creativity facilitation has them, too. The biggest example of this in the world of brainstorming is Doug "Patent Pending" Hall. Doug PP Hall is one of the world's leading practitioners and professional experts in creative business problem-solving. He's authored more than four great books on creativity and creative problem solving. He's also a trademarking and patent freak. He trademarks just about everything. Create a variant of a standard brainstorming technique--brand it and trademark it. Use research to assess the value of your brainstorming activities--brand it and trademark it. In fact, I won't be surprised if Doug Hall develops a system or process for branding and trademarking his stuff, that he'll run out and brand and trademark that process. It's remind me of the old joke that Microsoft was trying to figure out how it could copyright the word "the." I should not like to point out, however, that Doug Hall is a lot wealthier and a lot more successful than I have been. So maybe I should be following him instead of criticizing him. I do worry, however, that branding and trademarking every little brainstorming activity (and every personally different approach to running brainstorming meetings) contributes to the general cynicism about "brainstorming" and the suspicion that it is prone to hoakiness and puffery. I say this having committed these crimes myself. I still call my brainstorming approach "creative aerobics", I call the brainstorming activities I use names I like, and I call them "creative thinking activities" more frequently than I all them "brainstorming" activities. I guess I'll have to cling to the fact that I'm not as hoaky, puffed-up, or overboard with all of this as many others are. Am I?

Creativity is an infinitely expanding force

2009-02-17T10:27:00.000-08:00

pieces

Human creativity never ends. It never runs out of new space to play in. In fact, the more human creativity is exercised, the more creative potential there is. This is truly remarkable. Maybe even a little eerie.

I sometimes think of my brain's potential to imagine and think of new things (things I haven't thought of before) as being a 3-dimensional space of unexplored territory. It's the mental space of possibilities, of new ideas, of new insights, and thoughts about anything and everything. My ability to explore this territory (my creative ability/imagination) are surely a function of things like my education, my mental "flexibility," my intention and motivation to engage my imagination, my persistence and goals in doing so, and probably a whole bunch of other factors. In the physical world, the more unexplored territory we explore, the less unexplored territory there is left. But in the realm of the unexplored territory of the imagination--I believe something quite different and remarkable happens: the more territory we explore, the more new unexplored territory is created. Human creativity expands its own potential. Even a little bit of human creativity creates a lot more new creative space to be explored, We get more back than we put in.

I think we can confidently infer--after this much time and experience with various human civilizations--that human creativity is a force that has yet to run out or become exhuasted. My own deep intuition tells me that we are not getting closer to running out of new ideas, insights, and imagination, but that there is much more left to be imagined now than ever. Creativity doesn't use up or deplete ideas, it creates even more space where even more creativity can be generated. If true, this is REMARKABLE and violates our basic sense of how things work. Maybe "human creativity" is a magical force.

Creativity always seems to create more space for humans to work and play in. Creativity works to expand its own potential. The more creativity the more creative potential. This property of creativity runs counter to most natural and intuitive thinking about creativity. Because inspired (and certainly radical) creativity seem to be fairly rare commodities, it leads us to the mistaken inference that "creativity" is a limited or "precious" resource. There's not enough of it to go around.

You occasionally will hear someone lamenting that "nothing is new," "it's all been done before," that all the "really creative" stuff in [field-X] has already been done. There aren't any new riffs left to be discovered in rock n roll. Someone claims that the early days of X were the golden days for creativity when everything was fresh, new, creative and inspiring.

THERE IS NO AREA, EDGE OR FACET OF OUR WORLD THAT CREATIVITY CAN'T CHANGE, IMPROVE, EXTEND, OR REFRESH. CREATIVITY CAN'T BE STOPPED. It doesn't run out of room or space in which to operate. It knows no absolute road blocks.

As a society, we honor Jimmy Hendricks, not because he laid claim to the largest area of creative space in rock 'n roll. We honor him for how much creative space he opened up for others. He opened doors into rooms that we didn't even know were there.

The perpetually surprising nature of creativity is that it never gets exhausted. Humans can get temporarily exhausted or "drained" from being creative, but we've never heard of anyone getting permanently drained of all creativity. Creativity itself never gets used up. Anywhere or anytime. There are no documented cases of any area of human endeavor, craft, or art where it has all been done before and there is simply nothing new or creative that can be done. That's an amazing quality and runs contrary to our normal scarcity thinking. It defies out understanding of physics...it appears to violate the law of the conservation of matter and energy.

Someone always comes along and finds more creative potential. Opens doors to more creative space and possibilities.

That's been done before . This assertion, this attitude is one of the enemies of creativity. It's one of the perennial put downs of the sophmoric art student. "Oh, that's just derivative of X."
- The story of Dada & Fluxus. The irony of dramatically expanding creativity being dismissed as being "over."

Creativity is the perpetual motion machine.

Right brain dominance.
Rise of science/left brain
Renaissance -- right & left brain, with left-brain leading
The rational/scientific age--left brain dominance
Fluxaissance -- right & left brain, with right-brain leading

Information overload and creativity

2009-02-16T23:03:00.000-08:00

in pieces

Years ago, during my extended run of graduate school, I began having some ideas and pretensions about creating a "new psychology." This new psychology was built on several ideas and insights. I christened this "approach" New Wave Psychology--the "new wave" part being an attempt to align it with the creative spirit of a new genre or school of rock & roll music known at the time as "new wave" (as represented by bands like Talking Heads, DEVO, The B-52s, Blondie, The Cars, etc.). I actually don't remember which came first, the name "New Wave Psychology" or some of the loose ideas I put behind it.

Eleven issues published from 1980 - 1985

#1 - reward & punishment
#2 - creative culture
#3 - new wave stationery
#4 - organization & documentation
#5 - mind & body
#6 - manic games

#7 - romance & depression
#8 - creativity & self promotion
#9 - mental illness & treatment
#10 - DIY fashion
#11 - language and thought
online archive

People and the world would benefit from more creativity
One of the ideas had to do with creativity. It seemed to me that the world could benefit from more creativity, that a psychology that would help people be more creative in their own lives would have positive mental health benefits for them as well as civilization. A simple notion that creativity was good and the more creativity the better. That instead of defining and encouraging people to act "normal," psychologists should be helping them act more creativity and thus more abnormally. We psychologists should be encouraging "deviancy" rather than working to ameliorate it. I knew if wasn't being completely fair to or accurate to counseling psychology, but I was happy to do so to give my "new wave psychology" a more rebellious feeling. It's an old art student, hipster, and creativity trick: find something to rebel against (even if you have to make it up).

Cognitive input and cognitive output
Another idea or "hypothesis" of New Wave Psychology was that people need a "balance" or equilibrium between the inputs and outputs of their brains. I speculated that the burgeoning "information overload" and stimulation of the modern world needed to be met with a corresponding increase in mental output or it would lead to a "constipated" and unhealthy mental state. Perhaps a lot of increasing mental stress in the modern world was a function of this imbalance between sensory input and cognitive output. You take stuff in, you need to let stuff out. Seemed like a basic general systems theory principle to me. And I was pretty sure that I was hearing a lot more music (from radio, television, and my portable cassette player), that I was getting a lot more information (from news and scientific progress), and receiving a lot more varied visual stimulation (from an increasing number of magazines and television programming) than most of my ancestors ever had. I imagined that I probably had more music inputted to my brain in one week than most of my ancestors had in a year (when the only music they heard was that performed by live musicians). Maybe all this stimulation and "energy" was becoming bottled up inside of us and was responsible for some of our mental stress and psychological discomfort. If so, the solution would be to increase our "output." Maybe we needed to do more things with all this input. Maybe we needed more ways to process it and turn it into output in order to restore a "healthy" system balance.

People need to be encouraged to engage in creativity more
I put these two ideas together--that the more creativity the better and that people needed to engage in more "output"--and "derived" the idea that helping people to be more creative--to engage more frequently/deeply in creative activities and pursuits would be a great way to restore cognitive balance, improve personal mental health, and make the world a better and more interesting place. Maybe the universe was throwing more creativity at humans in hopes of getting humans to raise their creative game--individually as well as collectively.

New types of creativity needed
A third idea was that the new world of communication technology and information overload required new, expanded avenues of creativity and creative expression from humans. Humans needed new ways to be creative--new types of creative output. The old, conventional hobbies and artistic pursuits (e.g., woodworking, painting, sewing, etc.) didn't seem nearly sufficient or synchronous with this developing new world.

New technologies and materials can foster new types of creativity
New technologies, materials, tools provided the basis for a wide variety of new creative games, hobbies, and pursuits.

One of the aims of New Wave Psychology was to encourage people to explore and develop new avenues of creativity and creative expression and to serve as a vehicle for promoting these new creative pursuits in human culture.

Do-It-yourself creativity

2009-02-16T08:59:00.001-08:00

in pieces

Human creativity keeps following traditional outlets as well as constantly finding new outlets. Traditional outlets never get exhausted or used up. Human creativity never gets exhausted or used up. Creativity creates new space/morespace. Humans turn almost anything & everything into a creative activity. The information & science age explosion has fueled a creativity explosion:
1. revolutionized traditional creative outlets
...with new tools and materials
...by importing new sensibilities (reject traditional craftsmanship -> start from scratch, again...punk music, punk sewing) [[...is left brain -> new wave?]]
2. created a wild variety of new creative outlets/crafts
- this goes throw several phases
...jumping on new technology as new territory for creative exploration - (Nam June Paik & video art)
...discovering the hidden rooms

DIY (home depot), monster garage, discovery craftsman shows
BoingBoing , Maker & Craft DIY festivals

The desire and motivation to make something, to create something, to do something... generates a lot of creativity. Sometimes this urge is very general and directionless ("I want to do something...I just don't know what!"), and may be a simple reaction to feelings of boredom or a feeling of restless energy. Most often it is the combined product of opportunity ("Tonight I'll have some time..."), desire ("...to do some more work..."), and a specific interest or focus ("...on my photography project."). And sometimes creativity goes in the opposite direction: the need for something specific drives the creative process (e.g.,"Susan needs a new dress." "We've got a problem we need to solve."). As has been repeatedly pointed out from Plato to Thomas Edison, "Necessity is the mother of invention." Not its only mother. But definitely one of the big mothers.

I grew up at the end of an age when many men still made things out of wood in basement or garage shops and women had a wide range of personal creative pursuits from special-dishes and special-occasion cooking, to sewing and decorating. Propelled by the need for furniture, clothes, and "homemaking," these tasks had originally been appreciated for their utility and craftsmanship ("quality"). Craftsmanship reflects how well something is made and depends on the skill of the maker, their tools, and the materials used. For some people, these once necessary crafts became hobbies and an outlet for creative expression.

Craftsmanship morphs into creativity (and creative expression) when new materials, designs, and decorations are intentionally introduced.

Women still sew today and men still maintain woodworking shops. Some of this may be motivated by nostalgia and the desire to maintain a connection with traditional culture. Increasingly sewing and woodworking seem more like creative hobbies than practical pursuits. And as "being creative" becomes the goal, the extablished standards of craftsmanship get actively challenged. Creativity--not durability and pleasant appeal--is actively pursued. Craftsmanship actually regresses. Creativity likes to start over. Punk music. Punk sewing.

Traditional "crafts," artistic pursuits (including writing and making music)--and all manner of "making things" can be used to exercise the desire to be creative, to find and encourage our creative side. They're fun. There can be a sense of learning and growth. They can be part of a "spiritual journey" of self discovery. And who knows, my pursuit may even lead to riches and fame--maybe there really is a great painter/poet/artist/inventor inside of me just waiting to get out. Maybe I'll design and sew the thing that turns out to be the next "beenie baby," cabbage patch kid, or tickle me elmo.

Traditional hobbies themselves have dramatically changed, however. The materials and tools for virtually every traditional human craft and hobby have undergone a transformation during the last fifty years. Today's home sewing machine is lightyears more capable and versatile than the one my grandmother owned. The range of cloths and other materials now available for me to sew with is also amazing. Human ingenuity, advances in materials science and engineering have transformed and expanded the tools, materials, and knowledge available in virtually every area of human endeavor. The availability to new tools, capabilities, materials, and abilities has produced creative revolutions in even the most conservative and traditional of human crafts (e.g., sewing and woodworking). Even if people were nott trying to be more creative, to practitioners of "traditional" human crafts and artistic activities.

all these new materials, and tools, and knowledge has created a whole new realm of human creative endeavors, hobbies and crafts. As new materials and manufacturing processes were developed and deployed by business in large-scale manufacturing operations, people have begun to figure out how to downscale and transpose many of these activities into the realm of the home craftsman and basement tinkerer.

One of the arguments made in "The Age of Imagination" (McCann WorldGroup presentation, 2004), is that the "information age" has produced a lot of new technology and tools that have been "diverted" to small-scale, creative pursuits (from the personal computer, to the internet, to small-scale manufacturing). Surrounding all of this has been the remarkable explosion of materials science and engineering.

Boing Boing. Make. Craft. Small scale/hobby manufacturing.

How things are made, constructed. All the DIY or professional craftsmen (& cooking) shows on TV, ...from monster garage to xxxx. It's skill learning and observing--being entertained--by the creative process. Discovery channel.

The creative process is fun (and challenging and frustrating & growing ...). Producing something creative can be fun, inflating, deflating). Vicariously watching someone (someone good) creating can be entertaining, creatively inspiring.

2009-02-16T08:59:00.000-08:00

Found objects, surveys, and catching frost

2009-02-12T16:05:00.000-08:00

working draft

Turning the forms and methods of scientific research into art

Found-object taxonomies
During my extended run of graduate school, I ran across an art student, Robert Crise, Jr., who was doing something that I thought was very interesting. One of his projects involved picking up objects that had been lost or discarded on the ground. He placed every found-object in a small transparent plastic bag, and filled out a data sheet or card that recorded information about the object and when and where it was found. He had done this for thousands of relatively small objects--many of which were quite interesting and mysterious (unrecognizable and broken pieces from other objects). He would create wall displays of different subsets of these items (e.g., items that contained the color pink, pens, objects found during October). These displays by themselves were very visually interesting--sort of a cross between a butterfly taxonomy and the organized output from an archaeological dig. The display of objects was frequently accompanied by a parallel display of the data sheets. The "data" was part of the art. It all looked and felt very science-y, data-y and art-y--all at the same time. This was inspiring to me because I was also engaged in my own little efforts to use the methods and artifacts of social psychological research (the focus of my studies in grad school) in art projects. Robert Crise's found-objects project convinced me that this was possible--and that there were probably many other creative opportunities for turning science stuff into art stuff.

Survey research as art
American social psychologists became famous for staging research that disguised the true purpose of the research (e,g., your partner in the experiment was actually an actor following a script)--sometimes by disguising the fact that research was even being conducted (e.g, a staged theft in a library, an innocent request on the street). Disguising the true purpose of the research (so as not to contaminate natural responding) often required a lot of creativity--and I could appreciate that. Some where along the way in graduate school I began wondering about turning "research" on its head and doing it as "art." One of my first forays into this was to conduct a scientific survey that would be more performance art than serious science. In other words, performance art wrapped in a survey. So on St. Patrick's Day in 1981, I walked around campus and town, approached people I knew or had some acquaintance with, stuck out my tongue--which in honor of the holiday had been dyed bright green with food coloring--and observed (then recorded) their response. I later prepared a one-page summary of the research and its "findings" and distributed this document widely.
I would like to point out that I was not just doing "silly research." The Journal of Irreproducible Results was already quite famous in the academic world for publishing amusing fake research reports--like research that purported to demonstrate that dead rats display an impaired ability to learn. The purpose of my Saint Patrick's Day survey was not just to be entertaining (although it was), but to use research methods and activities to create art. This project asked my left brain to create a research project around my right brain's idea of turning a simple prank into performance art. It was like asking my left brain to dance a left-brain dance...that had been choreographed and set-designed by my right brain. It was fun. It felt creative.

Frost catchers
Jamie Newton is one of my favorite artists and inventors. His work (and what I perceive to be the mentality behind it) is--to my mind--very creative. His invention of the idea of a "frost catcher," for example, opened a door to a very interesting and previously-hidden creative space around one of nature's great magic acts: frost. He's beenl creating devices to capture the ephemeral natural phenomenon of frost formation. The creation & construction of these devices bridges both an artistic-object aesthetic and a real do-it-yourself tinkering-around-with-science aesthetic. This concept creates a space in which playing around with frost and the scientific method is now art, art process and performance. This idea is beautiful and inspiring to me and has prompted me to embark on my own backyard frost catcher program.

When the left-brain leads and the right brain choreographs
Over the years, my interest in this area of overlapping creativity--using science stuff for art stuff--has grown and combined with other areas of interest (e.g., my Fluxus art work, my creativity consulting work). What has emerged (coalesced?) is a fascination with the occasions on which the left- and right-brains dance together creatively. I would divide human creativity into several different types of "dances:"

the dances of the right brain--where the right brain choreographs and leads (e.g., artistic expression and creativity)
the dances of the left brain--where the left brain choreographs and leads (e.g., scientific, applied, and practical creativity)
the dances where the right and left brains dance together

Within this last category, I am especially interested in those rare and unusual dances in which the left brain nominally leads (i.e., dances the steps it knows how to dance) but does so under the guidance and direction of the right brain. By exploring and learning how to facilitate this particular "dance" process--this type of creativity--I believe we can liberate even more human creativity and develop the type of creativity that human culture increasingly needs.

When creativity works

2009-02-12T10:05:00.000-08:00

in pieces

Not all efforts to be creative are successful. Sometimes creativity works (e.g., solves a problem, get embraced, creates a new path, or takes root). Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes creativity is a good thing. Sometimes it isn't. So when does creativity work? I'm pretty sure the best answer, as always, is "depends on the situation...it depends on what creativity is being applied to." For a lot of creativity the judgment of whether it "works" is very subjective. I think artist-X (or movie-X) is very creative. You don't. We can argue about it and try to to change each other's mind. We can see if more people agree with you than me, we can appeal to the opinions of experts, but for a lot of artistic creativity there is usually no definitive way to settle the argument. It's a subjective judgment.

If creativity is being applied to solve some problem or fulfill some goal, then we can use this problem/goal to assess how well it works. In these cases the goal is not to "be creative" but to be creative to help accomplish some task (e.g., create a distinctive sound, sell more books, invent a new beverage, etc.).

For many other--non-artistic types of creativity and innovation--we can often appeal to external and objective criteria about what does and doesn't work--about what is and isn't creative. The judgment of whether a new creative scientific explanation or theory "works" or not is whether it is supported by the outcomes of research designed to test it--usually against other explanations. Whether a creative new product idea or marketing idea "works" is ultimately determined by whether it is successful (i.e., makes money, expands market share, creates a new category or approach) in the market place.

Part of why science has been so powerful and successful is that it subjects human creativity to the judgment of an objective external criteria--to research and facts. It allows us to pick one crazy idea over another--regardless of whether we subjectively like the idea or not, regardless of whether we want to believe it or not, regardless of whether it fits with a prevailing religious view or not...at least most of the time and after a while. There's no comparable objective external criteria for purely artistic creativity--although we sometimes turn to the judgments of "experts" and "gatekeepers" (such as record companies, disc jockeys, art galleries and museums) in lieu of an objective criteria to guide us.

Popularity may actually work against judgments of creativity.

I suspect that most attempts to be creative or do something creative probably fail--at least initially. From my own professional experience conducting brainstorming groups, I'd say that more than half of all the "ideas" proposed during a brainstorming session don't even rise to the level of even everyday creativity--the ideas are either totally not new or original or are obviously flawed or impossible. I would estimate that most--but not all--brainstorming sessions I have conducted have uncovered at least a couple new "inspired" ideas. I don't think I have ever had a truly radical and world-changing idea created in one of my brainstorming sessions (and I live for the day that it happens but don't necessarily ever expect that it will).

In my professional consulting work I primarily work with advertising agencies, media agencies and marketers to help them brainstorm creative new insights, ideas and plans that will work for them in the marketplace. How do I know if I am successful doing this? I have two primary professional criteria for evaluating this: 1. did I help them produce many more new and inspiring ideas than they would have on their own (if this task had been left to their normal business processes), and 2. do any of these ideas "work" for them (do any of them make it to market and produce success)? On the first criteria I am almost always successful--nearly every client after every brainstorming session has indicated that they are impressed by the number of ideas the group generated and how hard we worked. Even without having ever pitted myself against an appropriate control group (i.e., the normal business process running in parallel), I know from experience that I can design and conduct a meeting that will produce many more ideas than will be created through normal channels. Great! So why don't all businesses employ professional brainstorming and creativity assistance? 1. Because it is difficult to find an outsider who 1. is very knowledgeable and experienced in your business and all its subtle nuances, and 2. has any training and experience in conducting intense and efficient brainstorming sessions, 3. because this service is not a typical business cost, and 4. because many people consider this type of help as a sign of weakness (or worry that others will view it as a failing or struggling on their part).

I suspect that the hit-rate for workable creative ideas produced by brainstorming, idea generation and creativity-production vary across different domains and tasks. I suspect that coming up with creative ideas for humorous situations in television sitcoms is easier than coming up with creative ideas for ways to integrate classical and quantum physics. Some types of tasks and problems are going to be more creatively challenging than others.

I would like to point out, however, that in most practical, real-life, working situations, what works--what solves--the problem the best is more important than how creative it seems to be. These judgments (except in the realm of scientific explanation) are very subjective...and I don't always trust myself to be right. An experimental approach to finding something that works probably produces as many failures as successes. ity efforts are probably a disappointment.

Creativity is a risk. The common folklore about creativity is that it takes courage (or perhaps a thick skin) to be creative and expose your efforts to other. A lot of creativity doesn't work--it doesn't solve the problem, it doesn't take root, it doesn't open the door to something new. The fact that an idea, a insight, an artistic effort is creative is no gaurantee that it will work. In fact, it may even be true that the more creative something is, the bigger the gamble, the lower the odds of success, the higher the payoff.

Are there any rules or guidelines that will help increase the likelihood that ones creative efforts are successful? Let me tell you what I've learned from my creativity consulting work.

Thorough understanding of the domain, the task, the issue (getting to the heart of the matter)...without getting locked into the prevailing conventional wisdom (breaking mindset). Energize the brain and make it stretch. Feed the brain lots of relevant stimulation.

Everyday, inspired, and radical creativity

2009-02-11T14:24:00.000-08:00

early draft & pieces

Creativity is certainly not a unidimensional phenomenon. Artistic creativity may be different than scientific creativity may be different than economic creativity. I'm also pretty sure that creativity comes in different strengths or degrees. I suspect that the strength or amount of creativity falls along a continuous quantitative dimension. If I had to break this continuum down into sections or groups, I would probably group "creativity" into three levels or degrees:

everyday creativity
inspired creativity
transcendent or radical creativity

I think of "everyday creativity" as being the first level of creativity--when someone creates something (an idea, an insight, an object, a performance, etc.) that is relatively new and different (it's not a literal copy of something else). Everyday creativity is all the small incremental changes that keep individual lives growing and human culture changing and moving.

I think of "inspired creativity" as creativity that is "stronger" than everyday creativity. This is the creativity the wows us, that gets us excited, that really stands out, that wins awards. It's creativity that makes an evolutionary jump.

The highest and rarest level of creativity can be called "radical creativity" (Theresa Amabile, 1996) or even "transcendent creativity." This is creativity that is so extreme and so game-changing that it frequently isn't immediately even understood or recognized as such. It's revolutionary, not evolutionary. It's creativity that is so far ahead of its time, that is such a departure from the current context, that it is initially ignored or dismissed by mainstream culture.

You can see an example of the difference between inspired creativity and radical creativity in the two paintings below. It's hard for me to believe that the first painting, The Potato Eaters, and the second one, Bedroom at Arles, were painted by the same person--Vincent van Gogh--and that they were painted only three years apart (1885 & 1888). This is not an evolution of a personal painting style--it's a revolution. The change in
Van Gogh's color palette alone is breathtaking. [Although this dramatic change is often attributed to Van Gogh's mental illness, we also know that Van Gogh intentionally pushed himself to find a new style of painting.] And what was the immediate impact of this transcendent creativity? Van Gogh sold one painting during his lifetime. Most of the western world had painted in a style like The Potato Eaters for hundreds of years and most artists continued to do so for another fifty years. It wasn't until the middle of the twentieth century that the world caught up to Van Gogh. It's actually hard to appreciate now how radically creative Van Gogh's color and style were, since we now live in a world whose predominant color palette and style resonates much more with Room at Arles than The Potato Eaters. I'd like to believe that Van Gogh's transcendent creativity is the source of this change in the color palette of western civilization. Regardless of the truth of this, these two paintings by Van Gogh powerfully illustrate the difference between inspired and radical creativity in the life of one person.

Radical creativity--a shift to a revolutionarily better paradigm, aesthetic, or whatever--is the "holy grail" of human creativity. It's the stuff of great intellectual romance and legends. It's the most surprising creativity, it takes the longest to take root and to spread into main stream culture, and it's the longest lasting and most legendary of the various degrees of creativity. Because of its impact, radical, transcendent creativity is one of the most historically documented types of creativity (e.g., biographies of our creative geniuses). Because of its rareness and elusiveness, it is the least scientifically studied type of creativity. The question becomes: are radical creativity and everyday and inspired levels of creativity different ends of the same scale or are they entirely different beasts? We don't really know. Theresa Amabile, one of the leading researchers of how social psychological factors influence creativity, has argued that her groundbreaking method of measuring creativity (relying on a consensus of human judgment) cannot be used to study radical creativity (1963, pp. xxx). By its definition, radical creativity defies immediate recognition via social consensus. By the time radical creativity is recognized, the complex interplay of the variables and context that spawned it has long ago shifted. We can probably infer from its rareness in human culture and from the inability of even "creative geniuses" to produce radical creativity with any frequency or reliability, that it is a complex, complicated, and probably unnatural phenomenon. Inspired creativity also suffers from these same observational problems--even though it occurs more frequently and more consistently than radical creativity.

Historical speculation...our ancestors and their culture were less open to radical creativity than we are today. The creation and recognition of radical creativity may even exist in a positive feedback loop. More radical creativity leads to more/quicker recognition of its existence. More openness to radical creativity spawns the creation of more radical creativity.

Some of our ancestors viewed inspired instances of human creativity as being attributable to being visited of an external creative spirit or force--a force that elevated the artist's normal level of performance. The artist was honored for being an instrument and vessel of this creative spirit, but was not expected to duplicate this level of performance on their own.

In my professional creativity consulting work I try to help people/groups organize and raise their creative game. My goal is push people to higher levels of creativity than they would achieve on their own. My hope is get the participants to levels of inspired creativity. It certainly doesn't happen in every creativity workshop or brainstorming session. But when it does it's exciting. What I dream about--in my most creative and grandiose of dreams--is conducting a creativity workshop that is recognized--years later, of course--as having changed the world. May be I already have but I haven't recognized it yet!

The shifting nature of creative judgment

2009-02-11T09:35:00.000-08:00

early draft

As we know, the judgment of how creative something is is relative and changes across time. Something is only "new" and "creative" for a while. Everyday creativity ages rapidly. Inspired creativity has more of an impact and lasts longer than everyday creativity. Transcendent creativity--when it is eventually successful-- has the greatest impact and staying power. Even wildly radical creativity will, in time, however, become the normalized convention or standard against which new creativity is judged. In 1917, for example, Marcel Duchamp jumped past creating paintings and sculpture altogether and simply asserted the label of "art object" for a manufactured porcelain urinal. This was a radical expansion of the definition of "art"--many new things could now be included in the "set" of art (e.g., like a dead cow floating in a huge tank of formaldehyde). From this point of view, radically creative artists like Van Gogh and Picasso began to look a little less creative and radical for working within such "traditional" forms of art. Most artists at the time rejected Duchamp's radical redefinition of art. Today it seems fairly conventional. And so it goes.

Let's look at a less artistic and more left-brained example of the difference between inspired and radical creativity and the transitory and relative nature of creativity judgments. Newtonian physics was a radical creative leap that dramatically expanded the power of physics to explain and predict physical events in our world and in the heavens above. Quantum physics came along a hundred years later and provided a radically creative and radically different view of our world. Compared to the new, wild view provided by Quantum physics, Newtonian physics now started looking and feeling a little old-fashioned and mechanical--like an old Swiss watch. The notion that progress in science has been as much revolutionary (radical shifts in explanatory paradigms) as evolutionary was popularized by Thomas Kuhn in his 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. A radical and controversial notion at the time--and radically creative in its own right--this concept itself has also now become part of conventional wisdom.

Wherever human creativity has been applied, we find evolution and revolution. And radical creativity becomes inspired creativity becomes the boring conventional standard from which we will seek creative relief.

Creative genius as a visiting spirit

2009-02-10T20:26:00.000-08:00

working draft

In a speech at TED 2009, author Elizabeth Gilbert recommends that society re-embrace the pre-Renaissance belief that extraordinary creativity should be attributed more to a temporary visit by a capricious external spirit (genie, daemon or muse) than to the artist (18 minute video of her talk). While acknowledging the unscientific nature of this belief, she argues, nevertheless, that we should consider adopting it for the benefit of creative people and society as a whole. She believes that attributing a work of creative genius soley to the artist places a difficult and stifling psychological burden on such artists--it creates the expectation (by them and society) that they will now consistently perform or produce at this level...and that something must be wrong with them when they don't. She believes these expectations actually undermine the long-term creative output of these individuals and their value to society.

Without coming to any conclusions about the veracity of this view, I decided to see if I could use it to generate some new ideas for my own work. When I run creativity workshops I like to cover the tables with unusual and playful toys (e.g., colorful building blocks, rubber balls), objects (e.g., rubber chickens), and books (e.g., weird inventions, unusual design). I do this to help the participants elicit their own playful spirit in the belief and experience that playfulness (especially in serious business settings) promotes creative thinking (e.g., more interesting and flexible mental associations). Maybe I should now consider using these toys to create some sort of fun "ritual" in which the group formally solicits or invites its creative muse to attend. A ritual rubber chicken sacrifice?

Perhaps something a little more serious than that would be more appropriate. I could introduce a period of quiet meditation during which I ask the participants to clear their minds and open themselves up to being visited by a helpful creative muse or spirit. I have always been pleasantly surprised at how well people will go along with odd exercises like this during brainstorming sessions. If nothing else happens (i.e., no creative spirits show up), this activity would at least provide a nice break and opportunity to mentally and physically refresh the group.

One of the most interesting and powerful activities I have come to rely on in my brainstorming work is a progressive-relaxation exercise coupled to a guided-imagination exercise. After completely relaxing and quieting the participants, I ask them to imagine themselves in some external situation or experience (e.g., projecting themselves into a consumer or brand experience that the workshop is focusing on). I have noticed that when I direct participants to imagine an encounter with other people or with the personified spirit of the brand, the exercise seems to create a lot of emotional involvement and insight. Of all the different brainstorming exercises and activities I have used over the years, this activity is probably the closest I come to working with "spirits." I think the next time I do a guided-imagination exercise I will combine it with the meditation idea discussed above and create an imaginary encounter with a creative genie...and see what happens.

I am sure there are other ideas for how I might apply this provocative "visiting creative spirit" metaphor in my work. If you have any ideas about this, please feel free to share them in the comments below or to contact me by email.

Brainstorming life

2009-02-08T13:50:00.000-08:00

working draft

A provocative article about new developments in molecular evolution New Scientist (21 January 2009, No 2692, pp. 34-39), has me thinking that biology has used something very similar to the generic process of human brainstorming to create a lot of creatures--life as we know it. Seems that sequencing DNA and other biomolecules has revealed that there has been a hell of a lot of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) going on across all the life forms on this planet. Horizontal gene transfer means one life form or organism picks up some genetic material from another--perhaps very different--life form (through a traveling virus, through a direct mash-up,

etc.), incorporates it, and if all goes well, this thing goes about its business as a slightly different life form passing this new hybrid combo down through its descendants. Investigating these HGTs has uncovered some weirdness and prompted some wild new thinking. Like this: the cow genome contains a piece of snake DNA...and you know cows and snakes don't ever be having sex. Or wrap your mind around this: The starfish Luidia sarsi starts life as a little jelly-like larva, then metamorphoses into a starfish. It's almost like it's two different organisms. It turns out it might be! Some evolutionary biologists are now thinking that many organisms that go through radical metamorphoses (including catepillars ->

moths/butterflys) are really an oddly working mashup of two different organisms...who can't really fully live together so have adapted by taking turns "coming out." That's the wildest thing I've read about biology and evolution in a long time. And it got me thinking...

These HGT mashups are very very similar to the basic process that brainstorming relies on to produce creative ideas. New creative ideas (e.g., new insights about human culture, retail consumption, etc.) result when the human brain connects two or more otherwise/previously unrelated "things" (facts, concepts, objects, feelings, etc., etc.,) together to create a new "thing" out of their pieces or parts. Many new ideas are conceptual hybrids. And now we learn that a lot of life forms are biological hybrids. It's as if evolution was impatient and wanted greater diversity than it was getting from the process of reproductive variation within species and created these different "brainstorming techniques" for mashing-up all sorts of biomolecular stuff that normally didn't go together to see if anything new and improved would result. In biology as well as in brainstorming, most of these experiments don't work, they don't live to find a life and a home of their own. But when they do...we say, "wow," that's different, that's new, that's creative. What if the mash-up process behind "brainstorming" new ideas (and behind YouTube video mashups!) and the mash-up process behind new creatures follows very similar principles? You can almost hear the general-systems theorists cooing.

Brainstorming compared to what?

2009-02-06T20:29:00.001-08:00

early draft

Although brainstorming has become a popular group technique, researchers have not found evidence of its effectiveness for enhancing either quantity or quality of ideas generated.--from Wikipedia's 2009 entry on brainstorming.

As a social psychologist, an experienced researcher, and practicing creativity consultant, I have two big problems with this statement. First, most people will read this as being a definitive scientific rejection of the value of "brainstorming." It's not. Research results like this are known as confirming the null hypothesis, and trained researchers know not to draw any quick conclusions from such findings (e.g., maybe the researchers could have used a stronger brainstorming technique, maybe the data is so noisy it's hard to see the real differences). The wisest conclusion to be made from creativity research to date is not that brainstorming doesn't work, but that its impact varies across circumstances (e.g., the people involved, the nature of the problem or challenge, the organizational culture, implementation factors, etc., etc.). The next wisest conclusion from creativity research is that the research to date is very incomplete and fails to give us more than sketchy guidance in designing effective brainstorming sessions.

The second big problem with both the Wikipedia statement and the research that is cited is that they rely on an unnaturally narrow and misleading definition of "brainstorming" (i.e., face to face group idea generation). Instead of comparing "brainstorming" with "no brainstorming," the research actually compares various brainstorming approaches with each other (e.g., individuals brainstorming together vs. brainstorming separately). Brainstorming in its most generic and everyday sense is "trying to come up with ideas." For example, people often refer to spending some time (by themselves) thinking about how to solve a problem or issue as "brainstorming." So our first question about all of this should be "Is trying to come up with ideas (brainstorming), more effective than not trying to come up with ideas (the control group)?" We really don't even need to do research on this, do we? Who would recommend doing nothing as the best way to get more and better ideas when you need them? The only time when doing nothing is the wisest course is when you are completely sure that 1. the problem is inconsequential and not worth addressing, 2. there is no possible solution to the problem 3. the problem will go away by itself (a variation of #1), or 4. you have zero resources to address the problem (a variation of #2). Can we ever know with complete accuracy that any of these conditions are true? Brainstorming--in all its many variations and forms and despite the shortcomings and foibles of its actual practice--remains a popular tool and option because it always holds out the promise and potential to help us find a brilliant and surprising solution to even the most impossible problem. Sometimes brainstorming is our only tool. That's the nature--and promise--of human creativity and that's also the promise of brainstorming.