Triggers of Creative Thinking and Its Assessment
A reflection paper by Sean Marie Prythyll Patnubay |April 27, 2021
It was established that while scarcity may drive creativity and innovation by making innovators more resourceful, it will eventually kill off their motivation as they would feel devalued along with their innovation. A better alternative to this conundrum is scarcity’s close cousin, constraint. This is because creativity-friendly constraints allow room for creative freedom (Amabile & Kramer, 2011). Take for example the time where I wanted an artist friend to commission a piece for me. We were not getting anywhere because I did not know what I wanted. It was basically just me giving out a blank piece of paper without any direction, set of parameters, nor constraints. We had to settle on something quickly because we were never going to get anything done. Luckily, after much ado about nothing, I was finally able to give him more than a squiggly line before asking him to work and progress with that squiggle. I wanted a ballerina to be the subject of the art work. We were also able to establish that my budget for said commission was only P4,000 but I would be happy to pay for the framing process after he was done with it. He asked questions and I supplied answers. It was a great dynamic. After all was said and done, he made an Instagram post on how my trust throughout the process gave him a boost of numerous inspirations.
From here, I would like to dissect on whether or not creative thinking is a product of curiosity, necessity, opportunity, or tendency using the readings from our Creative Thinking and Innovation Management class.
Contrary to public perception, curiosity plays a bigger role in an enterprise’s performance in terms of innovation management. Another common misconception that leads to organizations stifling curiosity because it might increase risk and inefficiency (Gino, 2018 as cited in Kamensky, 2018) is a point that we need to address. If this were a debate competition, several types of rebuttals would already be coming in the way of this argument. First is the direct response to the argument. The statement is untrue because there are hardly any analytical links to the conclusion as encouraging curiosity among employees actually leads to better decision making from the management (Kamensky, 2018). Assuming that a sudden spike in terms of curiosity would increase risk and inefficiency, it is still less important even if it is true. Those in the corporate sector would know this more than a Legal Management major like me whose major has no singularity of subject and whose focus is divided into the legal and corporate aspects but it does not hurt to remind them every now and then. They need to weigh the pros and cons of promoting curiosity in the workplace. Since curiosity allows and encourages hires to look for new options, managers are less likely to box themselves in their pre-existing beliefs and notions which will allow them to focus on a more diverse and inclusive set of information. A field study by INSEAD, a French business school even concluded that there is a “one-unit increase in curiosity associated with 34% greater creativity” on a 7-point scale. This finding shows that there is a need for us to have a space to ask questions, to be curious, and explore potential solutions rather than just giving us a blank sheet of paper sans squiggly line with a super vague and meta instruction of “Be innovative.” To sum it up, curiosity is a necessity when we are talking about creativity. It cannot be disregarded nor will it allow itself to be disregarded in the conversation.
While de Jong (n.d.) posits that necessity may no longer be the mother of invention as we are witnessing technology create necessities and bring about societal changes, I still believe that it plays a part in the creative process. From a social science perspective, “civil” society has created new artificial wants. If necessity were not a driving force of creativity and innovation, then why did Leonardo da Vinci not actualize his visions of creativity like the parachute, the scuba diving gear, the tank, self-propelled cart, and the helicopter (British Broadcasting Corporation, 2019)? Methinks that he did not find an opportunity nor did he have a tendency to act on it as creativity and innovation go beyond simply visualizing and inventing something. A vision without execution, after all, is simply a dream. We need to strike a balance between profit and social development while taking into consideration the perennial nature of the business and its impact on the environment (de Jong, n.d.).
My take on this is that creativity is birthed by a mixture of curiosity, necessity, opportunity, and tendency. There is no one size fits all approach to achieve creative innovations. Several factors are in play here and more often than not and whether one likes it or not, curiosity plays a part in how the conversation starts which eventually leads to creativity. By saying so, I am in no way discrediting necessity, opportunity, and tendency as factors that contribute to creativity but I would just like to emphasize the often overlooked facet of creativity and innovation which is curiosity. Again and again, we go back to this paper’s first point that while scarcity may work, we need to acknowledge that the better option is constraint.
References:
Amabile T. & Kramer, S. (2011 March 25). Necessity, not scarcity, is the mother of invention https://hbr.org/2011/03/necessity-not-scarcity-is-the
British Broadcasting Corporation (2019 May 1). Leonardo da Vinci: Five great inventions by the artist. https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/48105405
De Jong, H. (n.d.). Why necessity may no longer be the mother of invention. https://www.philips.com/a-w/about/news/archive/blogs/innovation-matters/why-necessity-may-no-longer-be-the-mother-of-invention.html
Kamensky, J. (2018 September 25). The role of curiosity in innovation. http://www.businessofgovernment.org/blog/role-curiosity-innovation
