Changing the World: A Framework for the Study of Creativity
What does it take to change the world? Depending on who you ask, you may hear different answers. Perhaps diligence, ingenuity, or innovation make the list. For the authors of Changing the World: A Framework for the Study of Creativity, the answer is creativity. It’s important to note that the authors are David Feldman, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (see Flow), and Howard Gardner (see Changing Minds) – so, well-respected authors who have made substantial contributions and have demonstrated considerable creativity themselves.
Novel Insights
The sense is that if we want to get to originality and productiveness that can drive economies and nations forward, we need novel insights. We elevate them to a sense that they’re rare, special, and exalted. However, what Howard Gruber found while reviewing Darwin’s writings is that they were quite common and generally don’t stand out from the flow experience.
This is important, because it means that these insights won’t necessarily jump out as something profound. It can be that they’re just the refinement of something people already knew. Consider the fire captains that Gary Klein interviewed who couldn’t explain how they guided firefighters safely. It was just “obvious” to them. (See Sources of Power for more.)
The Individual, Field, and Domain
It’s good to consider the factors that influence creativity. First, there is a field which encompasses the social and cultural aspects of a profession, job, or craft. Second, the domain is the structure and organization around a body of knowledge. Finally, it’s the individual person who is the site of the acquisition, organization, and transformation of knowledge that can change the field and the domain.
Howard Gardner dedicated his Extraordinary Minds to looking at individuals that transformed both the field and domains with their work.
Conscious and Unconscious
In most conceptions of the human brain, there’s a hard line between consciousness and what happens underneath. However, these lines are probably not as clear as they might at first appear. While models like Jonathan Haidt’s Elephant-Rider-Path create a separation between conscious processing (the rational rider) and emotions (the emotional elephant), these distinctions are only useful as a model. (See The Happiness Hypothesis and Switch for more on the model.) As Lisa Feldman Barrett explains in How Emotions Are Made, they’re not a completely unconscious process. Elements of our conscious processing seep into our emotions and vice versa.
There’s a parallel in knowledge management to conscious and unconscious processing. It’s the difference between explicit knowledge that can be decontextualized, written, recalled, and repeated – and tacit knowledge, which exists outside of these concepts. In Lost Knowledge, we see a continuum of types of knowledge, including knowledge that is currently tacit but, with work, could become explicit, and tacit knowledge that may be impervious to conversion into explicit form. Similarly, we may find that some things are more or less conscious – rather than being conscious or unconscious.
An interesting observation is how information flows between the unconscious mind and the conscious mind and vice versa. Experiments have shown that we’ll make up conscious explanations for our behavior – even if they’re fiction. (See The Righteous Mind.) We know there’s a conversation going on between our consciousness and our unconscious brain. However, it’s almost as if we’re listening to it from another room. We can occasionally hear parts of the conversation punch through the noise, but most of the time, the conversation happens unnoticed.
One of the things that sometimes rises to conscious awareness is lucid dreaming. That is the ability to recognize that you’re in a dream – in the moment – and to take control of it. We recognize when we wake and can recall the dream that there is some interaction – even if it’s rarely discovered.
Creativity = Novelty + Acceptance
To understand something, to study it, we need to be able to define it, even if the definition isn’t perfect. In studying creativity, the authors settled on creativity as the combination of novelty – it’s something new – and acceptance – others accept it as a part of the broader field and domain. In change circles, we’re clear that anyone can advocate change. The challenge is to advocate for the right change at the right time. Anyone can be novel – but to have that novelty accepted at some level yields creativity.
Of course, this definition isn’t precise, but it provides a framework for exploration. It allows for others’ perspectives on creativity to be accepted. Consider Tom and David Kelley’s work in Creative Confidence, where they believe that creativity is an inherent part of our humanness, and it’s only through our socialization and schooling that we refuse to try to be creative any longer. Connecting the views, we try novelty, and it’s not accepted, so we stop trying to be novel.
The Cruelty of Genius
When we think about extraordinary people, we think about people who made great contributions to society, but rarely do we stop to think about the price that these men paid – and the pain they inflicted on those that were closest to them. (See Extraordinary Minds for examples of the people.) Being different isn’t easy in a world where we need acceptance, and we like people who are like us. While extraordinary people are often capable of connections with others – even quite deep connections – they are often arbitrary in their willingness to discard relationships. Their relationships to others are, perhaps inherently, unstable.
The same kind of focus that creates results can have disastrous consequences – even if the relationships aren’t severed. In The Assault on Truth, Freud’s decision to look past sexual assault is discussed – including how it severed several of his relationships. Jung’s intimate relationship with Toni Wolff (a former patient who was 13 years younger) was known and at least tolerated by his wife. (See Translate this Darkness and Love’s Story Told.)
At the time of the creators’ greatest breakthroughs, they were in at least one sense very much alone. While they required secure, strong support from other individuals, they were either literally or figuratively alone. (See Attached for more on the importance of secure, strong support.) Loneliness is a dangerous place with serious health implications – but one that the creators embraced. (See Loneliness for more.) Ultimately, the focus that the creators embodied may have been a Faustian bargain. They may have sold their soul for their desire to create.
General Creativity
Much like Howard Gardner’s beliefs in multiple intelligences, it is believed that creativity doesn’t exist generally. (See Extraordinary Minds.) Creativity can only exist inside of a domain. The creativity itself may represent the importation of ideas, concepts, and models from other domains. However, even the polymaths had a limited number of domains that they could operate in. In these domains, they may be creative, but there is no guarantee that they would be creative in another domain.
To some extent this is because the creator needs to be accepted in the field to get to the acceptance component of creativity – and that isn’t possible across every field.
Measuring Creativity
Einstein said, “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.” In this, he focuses our attention on the need to well understand and define the problem – before trying to solve it. This is a problem, because the typical way that we measure creativity is by assessing the creativity of the solutions.
That makes sense. To find a way to get to a structured evaluation, you must have some structure. You define the scenario and the problem to determine how people will respond. Drive mentions research that included supporting a candle without dripping with only a box of tacks. Creativity is expressed in realizing the box for the tacks is a part of the solution: it can be tacked to the wall as a shelf. This necessarily defines the problem as supporting a candle without dripping – no alternative approaches to the larger problem are acceptable.
If you’ve spent much time on a farm, you learn how to adapt with what you have on hand. Going to town for a part isn’t a practical option because of the distance to town and the reality that they are often likely to not have the part when you get there. The result is a sort of see-saw between trying to solve the problem with what you have on hand and trying to redefine the problem in a way that it’s solvable.
We may never get to a good way of testing creativity because of the intersection of the domain-specific nature and the need to accept that problem definition is an important part of creative problem solving.
For Love or Money
What matters most in terms of professional success and creativity? Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool in Peak explain that purposeful practice results in long term success. We get to purposeful practice by having an initial and sustained interest. (See also No Two Alike.) Repeatedly, we find that those who have the greatest probability of success are those that do it for the love of it – rather than for the money. That isn’t to say that we don’t all need to support ourselves, but rather the greater the focus on the activities rather than the outcomes, the better off we’ll be – and the more creative we’ll be.
Maybe if we’re interested in what we’re doing and are creative, we can start Changing the World.