I find my creativity comes in spurts. I agree with the Jonah Lehrer’s article on
creativity in the Wall Street Journal that often times when I am least alert I
will come up with a solution to a problem that is bothering me. I first noticed this in AP Physics in high
school. There would be particular
problem that I could not figure out and scribbling on my paper and erasing my
work several times over, I would just go to my room and lie down. I would try to sleep and I would find as I
was starting to drift off I would start thinking about the problem again. Instead of continuing to feel as though there
was an obstacle in front of me, I would start seeing connections between
concepts that I had not realized before.
These insights would cause me to spring out of bed and back to the
paper. Immediately, I would return to
the paper and start sketching out the solution to the problem that had
previously vexed me. This “get groggy”
approach as mentioned in Lehrer’s article works well for me.
What are your personal experiences with organizational creativity? Have you worked at companies that felt or behaved in ways that made them more creative or, even, especially uncreative?
I think organizations can provide structures that either help or
hinder creativity. Having worked for a
large corporation, I have seen instances of both. It may seem counter intuitive but sometimes having
a set form to handle certain things actually helps creativity. For instance, when I worked at Samsung,
whenever there was a major incident someone would have to create a
multi-paneled document explaining the cause of the problem and describing how
it could be fixed. Having a stock form to describe and solve an issue can allow
people to focus on solving the problem and not have to worry about what format
they will use to report on that problem.
On the flip side, I’ve seen managers that can hinder creativity
by discouraging feedback and input from their employees or soliciting feedback
but failing to act on employee suggestions.
In these cases, employees begin to feel that their voice is not heard and
so they tend to stop doing any more than what is directly asked of them.
Do you think you, as
an individual, are even capable of being creative by yourself? And,
better yet, do you think a group within an organization is capable of being
creative?
I think creativity can occur at the individual and group
level. The only prerequisite for
creativity is motivation and often times that motivation comes from an existing
pain. I also think creativity typically
requires getting ones hands dirty and testing different ideas until one sticks.
Creativity is really about taking existing elements and putting them together
in new and unique ways to solve problems.
It is often applying old models to new problems.
Individuals can find creative solutions to their problems on
their own. However, I think for a
creative idea to have maximum impact, individuals tend to need to be able to
work within a larger organization in order to successfully spread their
idea. One example of this is the
inventor of Post-It notes, Art Fry an engineer at 3M invented Post-It notes
based on poor adhering glue that another scientist, Spencer Silver had
invented. Prior to seeing Silver’s glue,
Fry used to use scrap pieces of paper to mark the pages in his hymnbook in
church. He would inevitably drop some of
the scrap pieces of paper outside of his hymnbook and have to quickly pick them
back up[1]. Initially Fry’s managers did not see the
benefit of the product so he created prototypes and distributed to 3M executive
secretaries to use. A few days later,
the secretaries ran out of Post-It notes and asked him more. He said that he did not have any left but
they could talk to their bosses to back his project. As a result, 3M Post-It notes are one of the
most widespread office supplies of all time.
This was an example of a creative idea that one individual came
up with but he was inspired by another scientist’s technology. After finding a novel use for a crummy
adhesive, he had to advocate his idea within an organization so that he could
actually implement it.
What do you think about this article and the way this
author describes different creative types of problems and, thus, different
creative processes? Should we trust ourselves just to know or sense when
we need one type of approach versus another?
I think that Lehrer’s article is on point. There are a number of different ways to stoke
creativity and creativity is not just a spark of inspiration but something that
actually can be obtaining by testing out different processes. I think there are probably even more creative
processes that people to use to help brainstorm good ideas than listed in the
article. I think the key is to try
different processes every day.
I think one thing that is probably implied but
not mentioned explicitly in Lehrer’s article is that people can be creative by
benchmarking other industries or areas. He
talks about chemists solving molecular biology problems. The lesson here is that we should always look
at how people solve problems in one area to determine how we can solve problems
in another area. Analogies are an
incredibly powerful problem-solving tool
As far as trusting ourselves to know when to use which approach, I think that we need to trust ourselves based on what has worked for us in the past. However, if we don't have much of a successful track record being creative or our existing systems are failing then we need to engage other people. We need to involve other people that help us by asking us what-if questions and challenging our assumptions.
However, I think that choosing a specific approach is less important than trying multiple approaches. Lehrer provides ten different creativity hacks but he could have probably as easily provided twenty hacks or only three hacks. Trying multiple approaches or thinking about the problem from the perspective of triangulation can help spur creative thoughts. I think that there is an element of luck to all creativity and by trying multiple solutions/hacks one can increase their odds.
As far as trusting ourselves to know when to use which approach, I think that we need to trust ourselves based on what has worked for us in the past. However, if we don't have much of a successful track record being creative or our existing systems are failing then we need to engage other people. We need to involve other people that help us by asking us what-if questions and challenging our assumptions.
However, I think that choosing a specific approach is less important than trying multiple approaches. Lehrer provides ten different creativity hacks but he could have probably as easily provided twenty hacks or only three hacks. Trying multiple approaches or thinking about the problem from the perspective of triangulation can help spur creative thoughts. I think that there is an element of luck to all creativity and by trying multiple solutions/hacks one can increase their odds.
