Creativity is a problem these days. Business and civic leaders pay to attend classes and workshops led by self styled “Creativity Experts.” For a fee, these leaders of the community are taught to “think outside the box” and develop non linear insight into business and community problems. I wonder if creativity is merely a fad or a much needed lesson for corporate and civic leaders. Is this more than the ultimate revenge of the geeks, nerds, weirdoes and outcasts of life? What does it mean when the “perfect people” pay to become what they once shunned, weird.
Creative people are weird. I am not talking about genius, which is where creativity has been traditionally examined. I am talking about the run of the mill creative individual who can see things in ways others cannot. These are the people that most of you have spent your life avoiding because they are strange. Creative people do not think like normal people. They see relationships that most people cannot see. Creative people are uncomfortable, intense, odd individuals who use different parts of their brains to interact with the world. The successful ones start businesses, develop innovative processes or come up with great ad campaigns. The less successful hide their creative and insightful nature from the world, learning to keep to themselves their observations and insights in an attempt to conform to societies’ norms.
In our quest to be “normal” creativity is often stunted in our culture. Organizations, once formed, thrive on maintaining the status quo, not allowing divergent personalities to roam free. Organizations are by their nature resistant to change, so the insights and ideas developed by a creative employee are often disparaged or ignored. When a business or organization is young, ideas are its lifeblood. Start ups are about making something out of nothing. Existing businesses are about keeping something from becoming nothing. Individuals who have spent their careers in existing businesses have never had the demands on their creative talents that those in startups experience. The individual or team responsible for starting an existing business may remember the creativity challenges of days gone by, but rarely do they need to delve into their creative self once their organization becomes established. Success blunts the edge of creativity. Many business and civic leaders have never had to worry about any of the issues found in young companies. They rarely think outside the box, and are discouraged from doing so. The mantra whispered is “what has worked before will work again.” These same individuals now pay experts to teach them creativity skills. I guess the same old same old is not working any longer.
Creativity is challenging and exhausting. Scientific interest in the creative mind has been growing over the past few years. Interest in why some people are more creative than others and technological advances have let scientists and doctors look into the human brain to see where creativity and insight live. What has been found is that creative, insightful, intuitive people use their brains differently than most people. Creativity is not solely a function of intelligence. Just because you are smart does not mean you are creative. People who are creative are different, even a little weird. Lucky for the leaders of the community that there is evidence that creativity can be taught. At the very least, people can learn to look at things in new ways and see new relationships. This opens the door to new ideas.
Maybe these classes in creativity are not a total waste. If for no other reason it might be fun to see some of the civic leaders and business executives get a little weird. Wonder what happens when they see what we have seen all along.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18266217
http://www.ted.com/talks/charles_limb_your_brain_on_improv.html
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