How to Be an Innovator (Part 1)
We typically view creativity as a right brain process. We create divisions among people. Either you’re "left-brained" or "right- brained". You’re creative or you’re not creative.
Turns out creativity is a much more complex process than that. True creativity is a whole brain process. It actually requires different functions of the brain working together in a sort of harmonious way.
Creativity seems to sit at the line between "rigid order and random chaos" (William Baumol) .
It’s the ability to turn the abstract into the concrete, the logical into the transcendent, the mundane into the divine. Remember High School Physics? Well, quantifying the creative process is like trying to pin down an electron in the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. You can’t know both where it is and where it’s going at the same instant in time.
“I start out with an idea, and then it becomes something else.” - Pablo Picasso
An Important Distinction? CREATIVITY vs. creativity
There’s a difference between how psychologists define creativity and how the general population defines creativity. In the field of cognitive psychology, in order for something to be classified as creative, it has to be both novel and useful (to a large segment of the population).
In his book “Creativity”, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the father of the concept of Flow, calls this type of creativity, Capital "C" Creativity. Big C Creativity drives a field forward; it breaks barriers and pushes boundaries. Big C Creativity is what most people refer to as innovation. Innovators then are what researchers call Creative Achievers.
Small c creativity, on the other hand, is your everyday variety of creativity. Hobbies like baking, drawing, and painting usually fall into this classification. This type of creativity is valuable in its own right as a tool of self-expression. Research has proven that practicing a creative strength in daily life can lead to enhanced well-being and increased happiness. It’s also worth noting that this type of creativity can act as a catalyst to Creative Achievement and innovation. After all, the professional was once an amateur.
Unleashing Your Creative Superpower OR
How to Be More Creative (Big C)
If creativity is a paradoxical process and it’s hard to quantify, then how do you be creative? Do you just be? What if you’re a knowledge worker or a maker or a creative? What if your career is based on developing creative insights?
While the creative process can be difficult to quantify in its entirety. There are some potential steps you can take to produce creative work. If creativity is a mix of both elements; chaos and order, the right and the left, then producing creative work or creative insights should require a mix of these types of habits.
Jordan Peterson alludes to this point in his book “Maps of Meaning”. In the book, Peterson discusses the basis and underlying themes of the great myths and stories of civilization. Peterson discussed the repeated decision of the hero to venture into unknown territory, explore and engage with the abstract (that which is not well understood by humanity) and emerge with enhanced insights and constructed meaning that benefits or transforms the whole society.
The hero is then viewed as a god. If that doesn’t sound exactly like what modern day innovators do and how we treat them, then I don’t know what does.
In their book, “Wired to Create”, Psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman and Writer Carolyn Gregoire outline “Ten Things Highly Creative People Do Differently”. These traits, habits, and mindsets come from Kaufman’s research on creativity, as well as findings from other creativity researchers.
“Ten Things Highly Creative People Do Differently”
1) Imaginative Play
2) Passion
3) Daydreaming
4) Solitude
5) Intuition
6) Openness to Experience
7) Mindfulness
8) Sensitivity
9) Turning Adversity into Advantage
10) Thinking Differently
The Trouble with Producing Innovative Work
The trouble with producing highly creative or innovative work is that because it involves opposing and contradictory processes of the brain, it is extremely difficult (impossible) to have all these processes under conscious/voluntary control. We see this lack of voluntary control often in society. We see individuals who are brilliant with ideas but can’t execute. (The clip below from the movie, Phenomenon gets the point across )
We also see the opposite. People who are great at getting things done but can’t think or ideate. Most people fall somewhere in between these two extremes.
“…Like so many people he believes ideas move mountains. But bulldozers move mountains; ideas show where the bulldozers should go to work.”
Peter Drucker – Managing Oneself
Creative Achievement then is the ability to stumble upon creative insights, as well as have the capability to do something beneficial to humanity with that insight; having a bulldozer and knowing exactly where to bulldoze.
So then…the process of producing innovative work should really focus on two questions.
1) How do you stumble on ideas and insights?
2) How do you share those insights with society?
I think Kaufman’s and Gregoire’s “10 Things” is a great starting point. They are methods of ideation and methods of a creative and innovative lifestyle. An innovative lifestyle though requires more. It requires those “10 Things” as well as consistent production of high quality creative work. It’s a dynamic interplay and a feedback loop. Creative habits and mindsets feed into productive work and productive work can feed into creative mindsets and habits. So with all that being said, I’ve come up with a formula that can simplify things.
QUALITY OF INNOVATION = QUALITY OF IDEA X QUALITY OF WORK ON THE IDEA
Sources:
Kaufman, Scott Barry. "Opening up openness to experience: A four‐factor model and relations to creative achievement in the arts and sciences." The Journal of Creative Behavior 47.4 (2013): 233-255
Kaufman, Scott Barry, et al. "Openness to experience and intellect differentially predict creative achievement in the arts and sciences." Journal of personality 84.2 (2016): 248-258.
Peterson, Jordan B. Maps of meaning: The architecture of belief. Routledge, 2002.