Avoiding The Myths of Creativity
For too long, too much of the discussion about innovation has been stuck in solitary geniuses, the quest for near-magical visionary powers, and trying to teach individuals techniques of ideation, brainstorming, and empathy with ever more sticky notes added to the mix. All of this has little to do with the actual practice of either creativity or innovation, and most of it actually hinders early-stage innovation and creativity.
Below are the highlights and challenges of the five great innovation myths along with resources to dig deeper, strategies for your organization to avoid falling into the traps of the these embedded myths, and an alternative approach that is designed to support transformative early-stage innovation.
The powerful framework: The Innovation Design Approach, provides an alternative to linear, ideation focused models (ideate, plan, make) giving real-world practitioners powerful clear methods, practices and tools for disruptive innovation.
Myth #1: Creativity is in Your Head
Creativity Is in the Head — If it does not begin as an idea, it most certainly will not begin in the head. The good news is that thinking itself is irreducible to the brain — it is extended, embodied, embedded and enactive with others and an environment.
Additional reading:
What Your Organization Can Do to Avoid This Myth
- Refuse the Ideation Model for early stage radical innovation (ideate plan make.) This model might work ok for improvements— change-in-degree, but be very wary of the “ideation, planning and making” process — and any linear “future backwards” ideation driven process if the goal is radical innovation. These are fundamentally conservative processes that limit creativity to the known in advance.
- Thinking-doing: It is important to say at this point — it is not thinking and conceptualizing in general that are bad — we are always doing that. The problem is in believing that having a clear idea of what must be realized is how one begins the creative process—that ideation essentially equals creativity. We like to say: “no ideas but in doing”.
- Be Active, Responsive & Open: Radical Innovation processes of any kind are not linear, they do not operate in a closed and wholly deterministic manner. Any design process that is going to work on radical innovation needs to be responsive, dynamic, experimental.
- Engage not Ideate: How should we begin instead? The early stage process will need to be deeply engaged and not withdrawn into the realm of ideas occurring in boardrooms and workshops. To stress this we like to call the first task of innovation not ideate but engage. And engage is about doing. Not executing a pre-determined plan — but developing ways of joining and sensing the context/situation that is of interest. Think Kitty Hawk. Probing, sensing, shifting, probing sensing adapting — an open attunement… This is where one begins…
- Be Abstract: Critical to this is to have abstract goals not concrete plans (eg not “we will build this to do that”— rather “lets explore the space of ________”.) We can think of these as “horizons” and general “headings” over ideas, answers and solutions.
- Actively Refuse: It is equally important that we not only have abstract goals only but that we actively refuse all “solution thinking” — jumping to outcomes and answers before we have even begun. Fall in love with your area of interest and not the solution. We need to have and maintain an engaged dynamic experimental process that will allow us to probe, pivot, shift, learn and change from doing in a highly dynamic manner.
Myth #2: Creativity is Individual
Creativity Is Individual — The new emerges from the middle of doing in a manner that is irreducible to any one component of the action. In this manner it is always with others in highly interdependent and collaborative ways: humans, tools, practices, habits, actions, processes, concepts, environments…
Additional reading:
- Something From Nothing? On Emergence and Creativity
- Creativity Is in the Middle
- Creativity Hides Everywhere All Around
- On Minds and Mindsets
What Your Organization Can Do to Avoid This Myth
- Ecosystems & Not Brains: Don’t obsess about what is inside the head — the psychology of individuals, mindsets etc. Creativity in general and early stage innovation in particular is about what emerges from collaborations — collaborations with others, with tools, with environments. The focus needs to be on the conditions that will foster and support an ecosystem for innovation.
- Thinking is Extended — cognition is extended — it is distributed this brings us to a better way to understand “thinking” and “knowing” — especially in regards to early stage Innovation — Thinking does not happen somewhere deep in the head — but it arises from the middle of doing things with things — this is called Extended Cognition or Enactive Cognition.
- Ecosystems not Moon Shots: Don’t focus on a one-off process with a singular focused problem and goal. Focus on developing a holistic ecosystem for disruptive early stage innovation in general. This focus on ecosystems will allow for a resilient practice of innovation to emerge in a dynamic, responsive and ongoing manner — rather than just being a one-off gamble.
- Ecosystems are Assemblages and Assemblages are Processes: The new — whether it is a thought or a practice or a tool — does not come about in a linear manner from a solitary individual or source of any kind. The new always emerges from the middle of an assemblage. The focus needs to be on producing the right ecosystem (think Kitty Hawk). And protecting this ecosystem. It is open and protected — protected from falling back into the known.
- Feedback and Change: This ecosystem needs to foster a co-emergent process that connects novel practices, environments and subjects in a feedback loop that tends towards the qualitatively new.
Myth #3: Creativity is Human
Creativity Is Human — This one is most perplexing, for we see creativity all around us — dinosaurs evolving into birds — new and novel life confronts us everywhere and at every moment. Creativity — the emergence of genuinely new, is a basic feature of reality that we can participate in — it is not something unique to us.
Additional reading:
What Your Organization Can Do to Avoid This Myth
- Connect An Ecosystem to A Process: We can now add and connect a process to the ecosystem we were developing. We can now develop a context relevant version of this process with the four key tasks: ENGAGE, DISCLOSE, DEVIATE, & CO-EMERGE. How these will manifest themselves is context dependent and requires a great deal of experimentation to get right.
- Radical Innovation’s Task Is to Develop a New World: The first three tasks have as a goal developing a novel world and the fourth task is about stabilizing this as the new normal. Remember: Early stage innovation is not about solving a problem but making a world - the Wright Brothers were not trying to make an airplane, they were opening up a world of mechanized flight… a world that we now live in… The mistake innovators make is that that believe they made a thing when in reality they made a world…
- Focus on Disclose & Deviate: The two critical tasks for early stage disruptive innovation are (1) Disclose: This involves two questions: What are the underlying logics? What are unintended affordances that might offer a starting point for Deviation? and (2) Deviate: This is the exaptive and experimental process of blocking and following.
- “Manufacture” Novelty: Do not rely on serendipity to introduce something novel and unintended. Introduce intentional critical tools to the process: that Connect exaptations to affordances: blocking, threshold setting, novel world articulating
- Let the New Stay New: Protect the nascent novel world that is emerging from being pulled back into the old. As we like say - keep your difference alive.
Myth #4: The Iceberg - Big Change is Mindset Change
Creativity First Requires a Change in Mindset — This is one of those false chicken and egg problems. We are changed by what we do. Far too much energy is expended on individualizing, internalizing, and essentializing creativity and its purported mindsets and far too little attention is put to the intersubjective conditions of action — ecosystems, tools, environments, processes and practices.
Additional reading:
What Your Organization Can Do to Avoid This Myth
- Stop Focusing on Single Causes: The first and simplest thing to do is to stop focusing on singles causes — silver bullets that will cause, fix or change everything — whether it be “mindsets”, or any thing else.
- Focus on Cyclical Systems and Processes: How do you build a system that is going to allow change to evolve and grow?
- Foster Feedforward Processes: The feedforward — Epicycle process is a vital technique for change making.
- Mental Changes are the outcome of changes in action: Focus on working conditions, institutional practices, We are what we do. Fabricate low to no risk situations for change making.
- Make the Unknowable: You cannot know what will happen. But you can effectively develop strategies to participate in a system to generate change…
Myth #5: Order Must Be Imposed — and Only Change Needs to Be Explained
Creativity Is Imposed — The new emerges from the dynamics of an experimental situation. It does not begin as an idea that is imposed upon passive matter and then released to an awaiting world. Self-organizing processes (which we participate in) are continuously at work engaging the latent unintended capacities to move processes in novel directions. Our actions do not come from the outside but co-emerge with the systems evolution.
Additional reading:
- Organizational Creativity Come From?
- Creativity: It was Never in Your Head
- Things Are More Than Interdependent — They Are Intradependent
- Creativity Emerges From the Middle
What Your Organization Can Do to Avoid This Myth
- Reality is creative and self organizing: Always remember that creativity is a processes that does not begin with us and our ideas — it is a permanent feature of reality. Reality, left alone does not fall apart — it is always organizing dynamically into differing forms
- Surf the Self-Organizing: All of our practices dwell in and of self-organizing systems. We “surf” the self-organizing. Our creativity is also a very deliberate process to engage with and ultimately partner with self-organizing processes.
- Play the Propensities: Organizations, like any system, have a mind of their own — they have emergent propensities — patterns and logics. You need to be able to sense and articulate these. This itself takes great effort and techniques. Sensing involves engagement — probing and testing.
- Change the Probabilities: Leaders leading is putting the cart before the horse. The system is already leading. Ignoring this fact that complex systems are self-organizing and have their own emergent propensities leads to a failure to make any meaningful change happen. Leading is a leading with and a co-shaping of the propensities of the dynamics of the self-organizing logics of the system.
- Make the Unknowable: Our only choice for radical innovation is to “Make the Unknowable.” Because if it is radically new, we cannot know what will happen. Nor can we ideate the new. However, if we avoid the myths outlined above, and follow an exaptive innovation process, we can make what we cannot know.
Glossary of Critical Terms
Some terms used in this talk require additional definition, clarification and context:
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