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Creativity is Found by Nurturing Individuality

While casually browsing, I came across a December 2004 Fast Company article, The 6 Myths of Creativity. This is a good article, and while it and the study it discusses should not be ignored in any way, I feel it commits an old crime of believing creativity can be studied broadly, rather than narrowly.

The study conducted on creativity within business was under the following structure:

Working with a team of PhDs, graduate students, and managers from various companies, [Teresa Amabile] collected nearly 12,000 daily journal entries from 238 people working on creative projects in seven companies in the consumer products, high-tech, and chemical industries. She didn’t tell the study participants that she was focusing on creativity. She simply asked them, in a daily email, about their work and their work environment as they experienced it that day. She then coded the emails for creativity by looking for moments when people struggled with a problem or came up with a new idea.

This was a wonderful idea, but problems arise in Teresa Amabile’s results, I believe. She starts out narrowly, studying creativity from a personal perspective, by analyzing employees’ replies to her. The problem is that she ends up with broad results, because she comes up with average truths and generalizations. To some degree, one might say, “Well, this is science,” a means of compiling large amounts of data into tangible, easily-digested bits.

With creativity, though, I think studies like these help little. Because, while I do believe everyone is creative, I find that few of us are creative in the same ways, and so very few sweeping truths can be found and applied. In fact, that’s one of the beauties of creativity. When truly recognized in a number of individuals, the creativity of one complements the creativity of another. While creative works can be born from group projects, not just individuals, it is the creativity of two or more individuals that makes that possible. Therefore, I think studies like this one do a great disservice to the understanding and cultivation of creative thought.

Until business models recognize individuals, rather than simply view them as bodies in chairs, parts of a whole, there only to perform the same tried and true tasks repeatedly, there will be no jump in innovation. Likewise, to think you can cater to a group and get individual greatness is backwards understanding. I am glad to see the world becoming more aware of creativity, but true greatness from it will not exist until individuals are interacted with according to their unique strengths, weaknesses, interests and beliefs. Even if various rules can be reasonably applied to the majority of individuals, it does not mean they can be applied to all individuals. It’s really time for us to start seeing each person.

Comments ordered from oldest to newest.

Nikki

You have a really good point. I know I always felt smothered in group projects and I never felt like I was as creative as I could be. I felt more in control and confident in what I was doing on my own and therefore I wanted to be more creative. I think group projects can definitely reduce the amount of creativity in a project because people are afraid to go out on a limb when surrounded by others who might put down ideas.

It’s really time for us to start seeing each person.

Definitely.

Lelia

I know exactly what you mean, Nikki. I think creative group projects only really work with people that you either (a) know and trust personally or (b) know are being catered to individually as much as you are. It again has to do with complementing each other.

You raise an interesting side point about people’s insecurities when sharing their ideas with others. I think that’s a problem in society and not something we should consider as natural. People are insecure in such situations, because in the past those in authority or their peers have scoffed at their ideas. It’s a reaction to a prior event, I would argue. I know my insecurities are.

We can’t take away those unfair events, but we should find a way to strengthen people’s confidence in themselves to where one event doesn’t hinder their future of sharing their creations. For the record, I don’t think that has to do with lame self-esteem classes, but more so again with treating each person as an individual. If you encourage each step in a growing process and celebrate the good ideas that a person comes up with, it’s then a lot easier to carefully tell them “no” when another idea isn’t desirable.

You have to wonder how much our world misses out on because people are crippled by one inconspicuous problem: silence.

Anthony King

Thankyou for this. I think that individuality is purposely NOT encouraged. In fact I think that it is indoctrinated out of us. That same creative person who acts uniquely would also have the power to messa round and to cause trouble…which is too risky for any structured (most) organisation.

Nikki

I definitely agree that insecurities are often the result from a previous negative event. When I work with four year olds, a lot of them are too young to have insecurities evolve and it’s fun to see them do team projects because they, more often than not, give each other a lot of input and the end product has a touch of all of them. It definitely gets harder the older they get though.

It’s easier to treat kids as individuals because they want to be individuals. But because of negativity that they receive as they get older, they start drawing inwards and no longer want to stand out. It’s a cycle I suppose, or something to that degree.

I also agree with Anthony that, definitely into adulthood, individuality is supressed because society’s view is that we should all be one entity working towards a common goal. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but when it comes to conformity, there’s definitely a line that shouldn’t be crossed lest we venture into “crimethink” territory. But now it’s becoming political.

I don’t think there’s any way to really do a survey on creativity since it’s all objective anyway.

sandy

i’m having trouble seeing where exactly you disagree with what’s raised in that article. (maybe you’re not disagreeing and i’m reading it wrong?) apart from your criticisms, what you say makes sense, but i think the article makes sense too. in any case, i’d be interested to see “what now”, 2.5 years on from when that was written. maybe what you said above is included in what they found after they were done “combing through the results”. :)

on a separate note - as much as an organisation has to create a ripe environment, i think the individuals who’d benefit from that environment need to be prepared to fight for their creative territory too. i think when you become more concerned with what people think of your idea rather than what they think of you, awesome creative stuff happens. :)

thanks for posting about that article. that was a good read.

Heather

I think the hardest part in viewing business creativity is to find a way to balance the needs of teamwork and individuality. I reviewed a copy of Michael Michalko’s “Thinkertoys” not long ago, and that’s probably one of the better treatments of the subject I’ve seen, but it’s hardly a solved issue. Thank you for writing such a thoughtful post on the matter.