Social and Individual Components of Creativity
This is very good. And it is fast.
I have enjoyed several of Steven Johnson’s previous books, Emergence and Mind Wide Open and his latest one, Where Good Ideas Come From looks to be a must read, though I think those of you who have read Wikinomics or works like Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi will find some of Johnson’s points in the video to be familiar as will those long time readers who have seen my views on horizontal thinking and insight.
My students watched this and reacted by defining themselves as those who were creative mostly through social collaboration but a decided minority required solitude and an environmental filter to think clearly and creatively – not a catalyst of a series of social-intellectual stimuli. For them, the cognitive load generated by the environment amounted to an overload, a distracting white noise that short-circuited the emergence of good ideas.
This suggests to me that there are multiple and very different neuronal pathways to creativity in the brain and a person’s predisposition in their executive function, say for example the classic “ADHD” kid at the back of the class, may have different requirements to be creative than a peer without that characteristic. It also means that creativity may be subject to improvement if we can cultivate proficiency in several “styles” of creative thinking.
April 14th, 2011 at 6:49 pm
We are spending a fair amount of time at my company researching innovation. We are interested in the impact of physical space (since we sell office environments). Here is one example of prototype space: http://www.mlive.com/business/west-michigan/index.ssf/2010/04/new_grid70_to_combine_creative.html Switching between social interaction and quiet is very important.We also have an innovation management office for internal efforts. We found plenty of good material on fostering innovation and ideas such as http://www.innovationkiller.com/ But far fewer works on how to effectively implement those ideas. The best book we have found to date is http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/pages/faculty/chris.trimble/osi/It is one thing to have a good idea and a completely different problem in how to develop and execute on it.
April 15th, 2011 at 1:10 pm
Hi Zen, You concluding paragraph is the topic of a book by Carson called Your Creative Brain—I’ve read most of it, and all-in-all it is quite good—if a little campy in places. One thing I enjoyed about Carson’s approach is her admission that brain functions are enormously complex and that much of our testing/analysis is still in the sense-making stage. You and Stuart may find this title useful with your students/clients.
April 15th, 2011 at 1:43 pm
Stu,
April 16th, 2011 at 8:44 am
….but a decided minority required solitude and an environmental filter to think clearly and creatively – not a catalyst of a series of social-intellectual stimuli. For them, the cognitive load generated by the environment amounted to an overload, a distracting white noise that short-circuited the emergence of good ideas.
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Wow. That’s me. No wonder I am having trouble writing fiction for my fiction group these days. All the other stuff I’m reading in order to emulate my favorite bloggers – like Zen and Pundita – is mucking things up creatively.
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I’ve noticed since I’ve started reading more non-fiction and have developed a huge antilibrary, I feel disgruntled intellectually. It’s like there is too much mental stuff clogging up my brain or something….
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– Madhu
April 16th, 2011 at 8:45 am
The above quote goes for work, too. It’s why I shut my door at work sometimes and put up a sign that says, "hey, don’t knock unless it’s urgent." Poor residents. They become a bit afraid of me, I think.
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– Madhu
April 16th, 2011 at 3:44 pm
Hi Mark.
This post has some significant overlap with Venkat’s post on Extroverts & Introverts at Ribbonfarm.
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http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/04/07/extroverts-introverts-aspies-and-codies/
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He sees more of a symbiotic relationship between the socially networked and the introverts, the latter being primarily responsible for injecting new thought into intellectually-sterile groups (groups suffering from Groupthink), as well as keeping the over optimistic and overly-connected extroverts planted in reality (think of what John Robb does to Thomas PM Barnett).
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Anyways, some common ground there between Venkat and you. Interesting.
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Semper Fidelis,
NTL
April 18th, 2011 at 4:28 am
Doc Madhu is a tiny terror 😉
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Thank you Captain – added for the Rec Reading on Monday! I’ve had a few email convos with Dr. Venkat, very bright dude – has some good strategic insights.