What Is
Creativity,
Innovation?
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“May the Force Be With You…Always”
What is the Force?
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Creativity
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Adams: “The combination of seemingly disparate
parts into a functioning, useful whole.”
Picasso: “Every act of creation is an act of
destruction” and “art is a lie that makes us
realize the truth.”
Einstein: “Imagination is more important than
knowledge.”
Robinson: “Creativity is the process of having
original ideas that have value.”
Richard Florida: “Human creativity is the ultimate
economic resource.”
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Creativity
1.
Traditional teaching methods are worse
than useless – they stomp out creativity
by trying to eliminating mistakes.
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2.
Becoming creative is getting in touch with
our inner child.
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3.
We are never as creative as when we were
three.
And getting rid of inhibitions
We become creative by making mistakes.
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Creativity
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Creativity can be learned.
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We’ll learn about the creative process.
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And some creativity-enhancing techniques
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Three Creativity Perspectives
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The creative person
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The creative product
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The creative process
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We’ll focus on the process.
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Three Creativity Elements
1.
Expertise: In-depth knowledge about a
field
2.
Creative skills: Problem-finding and
problem-solving skills, creative process
skills
3.
Intrinsic task motivation
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Intrinsic rewards: Love of the work, the
process involved, not extrinsic reward such as
money, awards *
Teresa Amabile, Creativity in Context,
Westview Press, 1996
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Innovation
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Innovation is the result – the working solution –
of the creative process.
Innovation is the most dominant trend in
business … the key to success
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Non-profits, too.
Innovation = problem finding and problem
solving.
Most of all, innovation is fun.
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The Creative Person
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Six traits of creative people *:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Self-confidence
Unconventionality
Alertness
Ready access to unconscious processes
(incubation)
Ambition
Commitment to work
*Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity
Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Picasso, Stravinsky,
Eliot, Graham and Gandhi. (1996).
Howard Gardner. New York: Basic Books.
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Four Roles Of The Creative Process
(von Oech) *
1.
The Explorer
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2.
Gathers information, explores for knowledge
in new places.
The Artist
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Experiments with new approaches,
combinations.
Follows intuition, breaks rules, brainstorms,
takes risks.
A Kick in the Seat of the Pants, Roger von Oech,
Perennial Library, New York, 1986.
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Four Roles Of The Creative Process
(von Oech)
3.
The Judge
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4.
Evaluates ideas and solutions, critically
weighs evidence.
The Warrior
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Takes the offensive, fights for
implementation, sells the ideas, has courage.
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The Explorer
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Know what the objective is.
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Look in other fields.
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Camouflage came from cubist art (Picasso &
Braque).
Unbreakable code in WWII came from the
Navajo language.
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Look for lots of ideas.
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Look behind the first right answer.
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“How do you stop a fish from smelling?”
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The Explorer
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Don’t overlook things right in front of you.
Look or ideas in places you’ve been avoiding.
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The drunkard’s search
The Adjacent Possible *
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The city and the web are engines of
innovation, created for creation, diffusion and
adoption of ideas.
* Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson
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Create or find Liquid Networks. *
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Sharing of ideas (open, collaborative) double-entry bookkeeping *
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Forcing Mechanisms
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Trigger concepts
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Creative Whack Pack, Creative Strategies and
75 Tools for Creative Thinking apps
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Matrix
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Random words
 http://textfixer.com/tools/randomwords.php
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Starbursting (Who what, where, when, why,
how)
See “Creativity Techniques” paper on my
website.
Brainwriting and cyberstorming
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See “Better Brainstorming” paper on my
website.
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Brainswarming
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http://hbr.org/video/3373616535001/brainsw
arming-because-brainstorming-doesnt-work
Hockey Puck (Google)
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The Artist
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Adapt
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Imagine (“What if?”)
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Reverse (backward, upside down)
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Connect
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Compare (metaphors, literature, music, art,
sports, warfare, gardening)
Exaptation *
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Gutenberg, Apple
* Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson
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Parody
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Incubate
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The Slow Hunch (Darwin, Tim Berners-Lee) *
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Serendipity *
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The 10/10 Rule – Ten years to develop a platform,
ten years to build an audience – used to be.
Google, Facebook cut it in half because of the web.
In dreamwork.
Error *
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Make mistakes.
* Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson
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The Judge
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Does it meet the objective?
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Positives?
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Negatives?
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Probability for success?
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Downside?
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Upside?
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Timing?
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Deadlines?
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Biases? (assumptions)
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Blind Spots?
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The Warrior
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Be bold.
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Develop a strategy.
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What are the consequences of failure?
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Get started immediately?
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Sell it.
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Persistence
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Learn from victories and defeats.
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Creativity Blocks
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Accepting conventional wisdom
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Not taking time to investigate or elaborate
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Seeking only to satisfy the perceived needs of
bosses
Having tunnel vision, compartmentalizing
problems
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Looking for quick, yes-no answers
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Fear of failure
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Adult thinking
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Creativity Blocks
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Expecting others to be creative
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Being unwilling to question others
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Being unwilling to accept others‘ input
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Being unwilling to collaborate
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Darwin: “...those who learned to collaborate and
improvise...prevailed.” *
The wisdom of crowds
Where Good Ideas Come From, Stephen Johnson
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Methods For Killing Creativity
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Evaluation
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Fear of evaluation kills the love of creative
activity.
Surveillance
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Looking over creative people’s shoulder or
policing them de-motivates them.
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Methods For Killing Creativity
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Reward
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Extrinsic rewards lower motivation.
Reward creative people with autonomy, the
opportunity to learn.
Competition
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Win-lose competition kills creativity.
In a competitive environment many people
think about how not to lose instead of how to
win.
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Methods For Killing Creativity
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Restricted Choice
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Making choices for creative people or severely
limiting their options lowers creative output.
Extrinsic Orientation
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External rewards such as prizes and money
hurt creativity.
Creative people love the intrinsic rewards of
doing the job.
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Creativity Enhancers
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Assume every experience can stimulate
personal growth.
 Look for positives, growth,
opportunities: Chinese character,
“crisis.”
Clearly visualize a positive outcome.
Don’t react too quickly. Give yourself time
(incubation), have patience.
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Pixar’s Rules For
Collective Creativity
1.
Empower your creatives.
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2.
Give your creative people control over every stage of
idea development.
Development’s job is to find people who can work
together.
Create a peer culture.
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Encourage people to help each other do their best
work.
Creativity, Inc. Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way
of True Inspiration. (2014). Ed Catmull. New York: Random House.
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3.
Free up communication.
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4.
The most efficient way to resolve the numerous
problems that arise in any complex project is to trust
people to address difficulties directly, without having to
get permission. So, give everyone the freedom to
communicate with anyone.
Craft a learning environment.
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Reinforce the mind-set that you’re all learning – and
it’s fun to learn together.
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5.
Get more out of postmortems.
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Most people dislike postmortems. They’d rather talk
about what went right than what went wrong.
Structure your postmortems to stimulate discussion.
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Number-one creativity rule:
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Get in touch with the child you once
were.
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