- In the United States we are raised to appreciate the accomplishments of inventors and thinkers—creative people whose ideas have transformed our world. We celebrate the famously imaginative, the greatest artists and innovators from Van Gogh to Steve Jobs. Viewing the world creatively is supposed to be an asset, even a virtue. Online job boards burst with ads recruiting “idea people” and “out of the box” thinkers. We are taught that our own creativity will be celebrated as well, and that if we have good ideas, we will succeed.
It’s all a lie. This is the thing about creativity that is rarely acknowledged: Most people don’t actually like it. Studies confirm what many creative people have suspected all along: People are biased against creative thinking, despite all of their insistence otherwise.
This doesn't surprise me. In a "job" setting, taking "risks" isn't something that is largely celebrated. People use terms like "calculated risks," which is really just a way of saying, not that risky. Creativity is essentially creating something; an idea or something tangible, that otherwise wouldn't exist. There's a risk in that and most companies don't reward that. I have pitched two large, very creative ideas to my organization in the last 3 years. The first one was stalled in the early stages and never saw the light of day because I wasn't even remotely involved in it's production and launch. -I don't have a degree in "production and launch" apparently. The second idea is a FANTASTIC idea that could literally make the world a better place. No joke. It could change individual peoples lives. I pitched the idea and it got all the way to the President of New Product Development at my company. Right now you're probably thinking "big deal," but I work for a fortune 50 company and getting to a C-level person with an "idea" is not easy. Still, they said that they've tried philanthropic ideas in the past and that unfortunately, people say they want such things but their behaviors show otherwise. Blah, blah, blah. My overall point is that I now have very little incentive to share my "creative" ideas with the company that employs me. In fact, I almost feel encouraged to go out there, use my creativity to start projects of my own just so that one day they say, "wow, we shoulda listened to that guy." But overall, I will say that the higher you go up the chain towards the C-Level people the more likely they are to listen. The midlevel management guys/gals don't care about new ideas, they care about grinding out a living. I have found that creativity can be seen as an asset at the higher levels. I mentioned this before, but at a recent national meeting our VP happened to sit next to me at dinner. (kind of a big deal, there's hundreds of us in this room) and he started telling me about his vision for the future of the organization and finished with, "your an 'ideas' guy, what do you think?" -Creativity can be appreciated, it just takes the right people and it is to be expected that risk aversion will impact what it is your trying to pitch. Unfortunately. I've got a really great Robitusin/wine buzz going, hope this makes sense.
Was gonna say - this is not an article about creativity, it's an article about risk. And whereas most people see their own ideas as "creative", we all see other people's ideas as "risky." "Creative" employees are allowed to be creative if there's an acceptable way to manage their risk. A creative idea that comes at the expense of a superior's reputation is generally to be avoided because if it fails, the superior will share in the blame. However, if the superior attempts to share in the success they will be resented by the employee. This sort of thing is clearly represented in Hollywood. "Creative" ideas are only allowed to happen when the stakes are low or when the risk has been managed. Leonardo DiCaprio had to defer his salary on Inception to get it made. Chris Nolan first pitched it after Insomnia but nobody would give him the rope to make it until he'd turned in two Batman movies. I have no less than five friends who tried to get their bosses to buy The Walking Dead to turn into a series… but none of them were Frank Darabont. Frank Darabont is allowed to be creative. If he fucks up, he's Frank Darabont fucking up. There's this notion that corporations stifle creativity because they have no soul. It's more accurate to say that the stakes are too high. This is why entrepreneurs and inventors really only thrive when they're out without a net - they're gambling on their own ideas, taking their own risks. At the same time, keep in mind that we only ever hear of the successes. Every manager on the planet has taken that little tidbit to heart.
There was a recent post about the re-release of a directors cut version of The Dark Crystal This is a film that could never have been Jim Henson's first project. It's incredibly "risky" by hollywoods standards. When it was released they didn't give it much $ for promotion so Henson bought the film from the studios and put his own money behind it. It made $40mm box office in the US. I'm not sure how much it cost, I didn't see that listed in the wikipedia post. Point is, you don't get to be risky until you've proven yourself and even then you often have to pony up your own money.
Hell, take that back to Citizen Kane. $15m, by the way. Half the cost of Blade Runner, $5m more than E.T.
Thanks. 1982 was one hell of year indeed. Some gems in there. Another film that had a big impact on me as a kid was The Secret of N.I.M.H You remember that one from '82?
Book is waaaaaaaaay better. Like, way. In the movie, the Rats are these secret-ass mystics who solve problems through gnostic sorcery. In the book, the rats are rats made extra-clever through government experimentation who solve problems through engineering. You got kids. Jump on that shit.
But what about in schools? I suspect if you asked people what the real crime is, they'd say it's that we don't nurture "creativity" (whatever that is, I seriously have no idea) in schools. thenewgreen, I watched that Ken Robinson talk a couple of weeks ago -- so in that vein, what's the deal? It's fairly obvious why bosses don't value "big ideas": risk, like you say, threat to their own stature, the fact that tons of really fucking stupid "big ideas" get pitched every day... But if we're going to foster creativity in one place in the entire world, shouldn't it be art school? I'm trying to persuade myself to agree with this article, because I don't at all, I think the world is damn good place for creative people, I think it's run by creative people, and I think the only smart thing this piece says is "creative people sometimes use rejection as affirmation."
Look at the boundary conditions. We've now lived in a "no child left behind" world for 12 years - if you were in kindergarten when it was passed into law, you're going to graduate high school soon. NCLB was an overt charge for quantitative learning at the expense of qualitative learning, and music, art and other "creative" endeavors had long since been under assault by standardization. It's not a "we hate creativity" in school problem, it's a "we can't pass standardized tests through creativity" problem. When you make the success of your entire school district dependent on math and verbal scores earned by the students under your care, Mozart, Einstein and Picasso could share a lunchroom table and it wouldn't fucking matter. A Shakespearean sonnet counts a lot less than A, B, C or D on a test about diagramed sentences.
Yeah. You're right. Screw it. NCLB germinated in Texas, and by the time I was in high school mine had built a giant "practice facility" for the football team (grant money of course) and we had to fight when they considered cutting the Latin program. Also in elementary school we often had to -- I swear to god -- share the little plastic recorders which we played, with our mouths, primarily in "music" class. (Those things didn't make music.) We were hit pretty hard by NCLB because there are so, so many poor schools in Texas. EDIT: earthquake!