Last updated: 1/31/99
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Summary and Comparison of Points about
Creativity and Creative Individuals
from Different Researchers

I had hoped that I would post this once and be done with it, but I can see now that I will be working on this for a long time. What I am trying to do here is to collect all of the general points (that is, not having to do with a specific case) about Creativity, and to compare them. So I have decided to make one last update before putting it up on the course web site, and then to update it as I have am able to.

Collecting the points about Creativity

Howard Gardner, Creating Minds

1. Extreme absorption in work, sometimes to the extent of damaging others, always resulting in restricted family and personal life
2. Unique combination of child-like and adult behavior
3. Early life in a supportive household that also placed a high value on work and achievement, positive role models available
4. Professional marginality and even isolation at the time of the greatest achievement, sometimes returning to marginality for renewed creative achievement after initial success
5. Making use of professional colleagues, often dropping them when they could no longer be of use
6. Ten-year cycle of achievement
7. High output
8. Personal and professional support at time of breakthrough
9. The Faustian bargain of a personal sacrifice to maintian the creative experience

Robinson and Stern, Corporate Creativity

1. Corporate alignment (which I think means that the real, actual goals of the corporation must be widely known and consistent from unit to unit)
2. Self-initiated activity must be encouraged or at least tolerated
3. Unofficial activity must have sources of support
4. Serendipity -- it is impossible to tell who wil be creative, or when, or in what area
5. A wide range of stimuli help
6. Good communication within the corporation is needed
7. Extensive experience in creative field is necessary
8. Initial ideas need substantial improvement
9. Corporate resources available at critical times
10. Intrinsic motivation, not extrinsic (e.g. grades, salary, promotion and other extrinsic motivators often decrease creativity and innovation)

David Packard, The HP Way (ISP 5990)

1. The HP objecitves, from pages 80 - 81
   1. Profit, as a means of measuring corporate strength
   2. Continuing improvement in value for customers
   3. Concentration of areas of expertise
   4. Growth as a measure of strength and requirement for survival
   5. Provide opportunities for employees to share in company's success, and for personal satisfaction in the job
   6. Organize to foster individual motivation, initiative and creativity
   7. To be a good corporate citizen
2. Corporate alignment -- every member of the corporation should know the real priorities of the corporation, including their application to his/her unit and assignment. This implies that the stated priorities should be the real priorities.
3. The highest corporate officers should have knowledge of what it is really like to work for the company, for a wide range of the employees (Management By Wandering Around or MBWA).

Comparing the points

First, there is a group of points that I think are related, that have to do with loving the creative work:

• The love of the work is likely to have originated in childhood enthusiasm for the subject area.
• Loving the work and feeling that it is fun is likely to lead to study and learning in that area
• Doing a large amount of work in the chosen area means making a commitment to that area; spending a lot of time in it.
• The commitment implies a risk.
  • What if the individual will not be up to the challenge? What if others are so much better, or better organized or financed, or there are just so much more of them, that the individual effort will not be recognized. What if the individual has chosen the wrong problem or area to work in? Many researchers say that creative individuals are risk-takers. This is one type of risk.
  • There is another type of risk involved in being creative -- just the act of putting something new out there, making it public, hoping that it will be accepted, fearing that it will be found "not worthy". This is the second type of risk.
  • Peter Drucker, in Innovation and Entrepreneurship (ISP 5990) says that entrepreneurs (business innovators) are not risk-takers. But Drucker, I believe, is referring to financial risk. The other types of risk still apply for an entrepreneur. And anyway, even the most comprehensive analysis of business risks cannot guarantee that the new business will succeed. There is still financial risk in starting a new business.

Second, there is a group of points about doing a lot of the work and participating in the field.

• Highly creative individuals do a lot of whatever it is they do. The more creative, the more work. A lot of this work is not particularly notable, very ordinary, in fact. The average worthiness may be high, but it is their greatest works that are so far beyond the average level and that secure their reputations.

  • Actually, this works out so that everybody can win, at least some of the time. If there are two creative individuals in the same field, say two composers, and one is a giant while the other is just average, the some of the average composer's work will be better, and recognized as better, than the low end of of the giant's work. This is illustrated in the figure to the right. The vertical scale is the worth of creative works, and the horizontal scale is the number of works. The giant's output is shown in black, and the average composer's work in pink.

• To reach the highest levels of creativity, the creative individual must balance two motivations. Actually, "balance" is probably the wrong word; "manage" is better.
  • The creative individual must interact with and seek criticism from others in the same field, in order to make sure that the work is of the highest calibre, and is significant and innovative, or even iconoclastic, within the field. Even novices outside of the field may be consulted. In this mode, the creative individual must behave as a coequal, a friend. Otherwise the needed honest criticism may be replaced by awe or some other approach appropriate to a superior and an inferior.
  • On the other hand, the creative individual must at other times have the greatest faith in his/her work, and call attention to it, and try to convince others of its worth.

  Csikszentmihalyi, in Creativity, says that this is normally one of the constant aspects of personality, whether one is aggressive or compliant. But highly creative individuals assume these conflicting roles at different times.

• I think that the aggressive and compliant roles are assumed to meet the needs of the work. The work is so important to highly creative individuals that they are driven to assume roles that would not come naturally to them. Someone that would normally be compliant may be driven to speak up for his/her works if s/he feels the works are not valued as they should be. And someone who would normally rear up and blast away the competition might have seen through past reflection that other people can have something useful to say, and that these insights from others may need to be incorparated into her/his work to have it be the best.