CHAPTER 10

INNOVATION AND THE CREATION OF IDEAS

The cornerstone of innovation is creativity: the process by which humans generate

new ideas. Any desire to promote innovation must necessarily speak to how we can be

more intentional and supportive of this process. We must therefore turn see what scholars

have to say about creativity. Surprisingly, the study of creativity is a relatively recent

addition to the research agenda in psychology. Except for some notable attempts early in

the 20th Century, the study of creativity was conspicuously absent within psychology until

the 1960s. As experimental psychology began to emerge as a legitimate academic

discipline after 1900, empirical studies of perception, learning, and memory proliferated.

But as the Century progressed and Behaviorism came to exert hegemony over

psychology, deeper interest in the nature of mind and the study of thinking were kept

under a bushel.

As mentioned previously, the radical position espoused by leading Behaviorists,

such a John Watson and B. F. Skinner, was that Mind was not a legitimate topic for

scientific investigation, despite what Professor James had to say in his 1890 masterpiece.1

The mindless psychology movement was a product of an over zealous attempt to place

psychology on sound scientific footing. Psychology has always been self-conscious about

its status as a science. The Behaviorists’ strategy for overcoming the discipline's self-

doubt was to obsess over observational objectivity. The aim was for psychology to be

more chemistry and astronomy than alchemy and astrology. The Behaviorists’ passion for

avoiding the chimerical world of mental states was justified as a noble attempt to emulate

physics, the quintessential science. Ironically, the physics that Behaviorists sought to

emulate, Newtonian Mechanics, had already been transformed into the highly inferential

New Age physics of relativity and quantum mechanics. Electrons, quanta, wave-particle

dualities, cats that were simultaneously dead and alive, and four-dimensional space-time

continua were no more observable than ids, egos, or superegos.

Fortunately, the icy grip of Behaviorism began to thaw as psychology began to go

cognitive. Riding a growing tide of respectable mentalism, catalyzed by the advent of the

electronic computer, creativity attained legitimacy as a scientific topic within psychology

and other cognitive sciences. Nancy Andreasen, a leading creativity scholar, describes the

pivotal moment as when J. P. Guilford delivered his Presidential address to the American

Psychological Association in 1950. He offered a clarion call for the scientific study of

creativity proclaiming that the ability of individuals to generate novel ideas was for too

long ignored and must be on the agenda of modern psychology.2

Today there exists an extensive literature on creativity reflecting a vibrant and

diverse field of study. This broad based enterprise emphasizes psychology, but it also

captures the role of biological, social, and cultural forces from perspectives beyond

traditional psychology. Research in psychology is organized around three broad

strategies. First is a deep interest in psychometric analysis of creativity. These studies

attempt to develop tests that ‘measure’ creativity in individuals that can then be related to

measures of personality, intelligence and other attributes that distinguish people. A

second strategy involves case studies. The goal here is to find individuals who have

demonstrated extraordinary creativity and determine what they are or were like, which

attributes they share with other highly creative thinkers, and how they went about

creating novel ideas. As with the psychometric approach, the emphasis of case studies is

on discovering and describing correlations between expressions of creativity and factors

presumably responsible for that creativity. The third strategy relies on methods and

conceptual tools of modern experimental psychology and cognitive science. The goal of

these studies is to go beyond correlations in order to discover causal relationships that can

lead to explanations of creativity within the context of modern theories of cognition.

Notable within the psychometric approach to creativity is the pioneering research

of Lewis Terman begun early in the 20th Century. Terman contributed broadly and

significantly to the growing American interest in intelligence. Most pertinent to creativity

is his landmark project launched in 1921.3 This longitudinal study tracked a group of

children for several decades. The subjects of interest were boys and girls, quaintly labeled

‘the Termites’, with IQs over 135. Realize that an average IQ is 100 and less than 2% of

the population has an IQ over 135. The Termites were thought to be very, very smart.

Terman’s expectation was that these kid geniuses would grow into exceptional adults and

leave behind a trail of creative contributions. The higher one’s intelligence, the higher

one’s creativity seemed a reasonable assumption.4

Surprisingly, the data showed something different. As Andreasen summarizes:

“… as the cohort matured, its members did not produce a significant number of creative

individuals.”5 There were some exceptional achievers among the group, but certainly not

enough to affirm any causal linkage between intelligence and creativity. Subsequent

research has clearly established that intelligence and creativity are not the same. Creative

individuals are not necessarily very intelligent, and very intelligent individuals are not

necessarily very creative. In other words, creativity is not merely expressed intelligence;

although, there seems to be agreement that the very creative among us are smart if not

exceptionally so. An IQ of 120 is about enough cognitive capital to leave a creative mark

on the world, but IQ points beyond 120 do not add much. This fact has important

implications for promoting innovation, especially through education.

If creativity, as the capacity to generate novel ideas, is not merely an expression

of general intelligence, then how are we to understand why some individuals are more

creative than others? The case study and experimental approaches are valuable here, but

modern psychometrics also offers insights. Rather than looking at creativity as it relates

to general intelligence, contemporary approaches conceive of creativity as itself a kind of

intelligence. Howard Gardner and Robert Sternberg have helped pioneer the idea that

intelligence is not one, monolithic ability but rather several different abilities. Gardner

favors eight intelligences and Sternberg opts for three.6 They agree, however, that each

aptitude must be assessed through a targeted test. The familiar IQ tests, which measure

general intelligence, do not accurately assess creative intelligence. The latter requires a

test that measures how well people respond to novel situations, rather than one that

exposes how well they manage well-structured problems, vocabulary levels, memory

capacity, or spatial ability. Today there exist a number of popular tests of creativity, and

considerable attention is now on relating measures from those instruments to other

attributes of creative individuals. Although it is no doubt valuable, the psychometric

approach is still limited to uncovering variables that correlate with creativity rather than

revealing cognitive mechanisms responsible for creativity.

The case study approach similarly attacks the question of creativity in terms of

correlations. The assumption is that by studying individuals deemed creative, dead or

alive, we can gain insights into what makes some people more creative than others. But

again we must proceed with caution. There are limits to what case studies can tell us.

Many assumptions are not sufficiently recognized or clarified, and we need to appreciate

how easy it is to do a bad case study.

In order to pursue a case study of creativity, it is necessary to first identify

creative individuals, which depends on the ability to identify creative acts. The latter is

not easy. True creativity entails more than merely novel ideas. To be labeled creative, an

idea must be somehow significant, important, or of value; ascriptions that depend on

some form of judgment. Margarett Boden, one of the first cognitive scientists to tackle

creativity, offers some important insights into this basic issue in her classic, The Creative

Mind.7 She first distinguishes two types of creativity: Personal and Historical. The former

refers to those instances whereby individuals generate ideas that are novel to themselves;

the ideas that we as individuals have never had before. Although novel to us, our ideas

may not be of significant value to the public square, or they may not be novel with

respect to the history of ideas. How many times have you generated a great idea only to

discover that someone beat you to it? The other type of creativity, Historical Creativity,

entails ideas generally acknowledged by others to be important, profound, or significant.

The innovations we celebrate as clever ideas represent historical creativity. If it

were just a matter of generating novel ideas, then hell we are all creative. Every new

thought I generate is an act of creativity, but most of my creativity goes unnoticed,

thankfully. I once had the idea of building a gigantic unattached ring encircling the earth

some 500 feet above the ground. Attached to the ring would be ropes with comfortable

handles hanging within reach of the ground. One could venture to where a rope was

dangling, grab on, and as the earth below moved one could travel to a new location. Let

us not bother unpacking the ridiculous assumptions behind this idea; I was only seven

when my Eureka moment struck. My point is that creativity is more than having a novel

idea; it has to be an idea that matters to others.

The obvious challenge here is to determine who gets to define an idea as

sufficiently valuable to qualify as creative and by which criteria. Here we can benefit

from the work of another leading scholar in creativity, Professor Csikszentmihalyi. Now,

if you need a creative name as a prerequisite to getting into the creativity business,

Professor C has set the bar quite high. His work is equally noteworthy.8 He has been

especially effective is using the case study approach to develop a theoretical framework

with which to understand the process of creativity. With respect to identifying ideas

reflecting historical creativity, he emphasizes the critical role of context and timing.

Many ideas that we now generally accept as being very creative ascended to that status

over time. In some cases the ascension took a very long time, and often it occurred well

after the idea’s creator became one with the earth. Great acts of creativity are not

necessarily recognized as such upon arrival.

The temporal lag in creativity is easily observed in the arts. Many artists, their

works, and their entire style were met with scorn and rejected with extreme prejudice

when first introduced. Henri Matisse, who today is regaled as one of the best painters of

all time, helped introduce Fauvism in 1905. Recall that the appellation derives from

Fauve, the French word for wild beast, which is consonant with the public’s initial

outrage when the style first appeared. Leonard Shlain aptly captures that reaction: “ The

Fauvists assault on the senses led one critic to warn pregnant women to stay away from

the exhibition because he believed the paintings were so disorienting they could possibly

cause a miscarriage.”9 Seems that Henri was on to one hell of an idea. Cubism similarly

evoked invectives when introduced by Picaso and Braque early in the 20th Century.10

In my own lifetime I witnessed the emergence of Pop Art, with its ready-mades,

exploitation of advertizing logos, and prolific use of cultural icons and celebrity images

as content staples. The reaction of the general public was at first derision, but try buying

one of Lichtenstein’s comic book offerings and report back on whether his crazy idea

possesses value today. Great artists have been dissatisfied giving the public what it wants

and have instead fought to give it new wants. Many ideas in art that initially provoked

disdain are today displayed in prominent museums and sell for prices that defy reason.

Were my father alive, he would be dumfounded, and probably a little pissed off, that a

Warhol self-portrait fetched over $38,000,000 at auction.11 The lesson here is that ideas

are not creative by their inherent nature; it is how the idea is judged to matter that

determines whether or not it qualifies as creative. And judgments can change over time.

In some cases, however, an idea arrives that is self-evidently creative by virtue of

how quickly and how profoundly it assumes value. Cases of near instant acclaim are at

the heart of innovation. For example, the iPhone is regarded by most as a very creative

device and has been so from its introduction. The entire panoply of ideas generated under

the Apple rubric has earned Steve Jobs admission into the pantheon of modern super-

creators. Reference to Steve Jobs illustrates another dimension of historical creativity

linked to innovation. How much of what an iPhone is can be attributed to design ideas

emanating from the mind of Steve Jobs? Especially with creativity attached to complex

technology, personal credit can rarely be assigned exclusively to one person. Individual

creativity and invention are nurtured by others also engaged with those ideas, sometimes

beyond the awareness or acknowledgement of the individual given most of the credit.

Yet, despite the designers and engineers who may have contributed to what the iPhone,

iPod, and iPad are, it is the idea of these devices, not their ultimate manifestation or

detailed structure, that attaches accolades of creativity to Jobs. It is as a creative

entrepreneur that Jobs is to be celebrated, a point that will be revisited. For now

appreciate that Jobs was especially effective in pushing ideas. The creative essence of the

Apple II technology owes more to Wozniak the engineer than Jobs the entrepreneur, but

the spread of the Apple II as a great idea is credited to Jobs. To reiterate, in order to

understand innovation it is necessary to appreciate both idea creation and idea adoption.

Returning to historical creativity, Professor C offers a formal schema by which to

understand the process of social judgment essential to understanding extraordinary acts of

creativity. His approach relies on a systems model in which three critical components

interact. Individuals contribute ideas within a Domain: a well-defined knowledge

structure. Recall the Idea Space concept of Richard Ogle I introduced earlier. Domains

are well structured in that they consist of symbolic rules by which ideas, concepts,

theories, and schemas are connected and organized. A creative idea functions in one of

three ways: it significantly changes a Domain by adding some powerful new idea; it

changes a Domain by restructuring existing ideas within the Domain; or it establishes an

entirely new Domain.

Each Domain has a set of ‘overseers’ who adjudicate the process by which ideas

are proclaimed creative: a Field of experts. The Field is composed of those respected as

being knowledgeable about a particular Domain. In some cases they are credentialed. A

PhD in physics qualifies one to judge ideas in physics. Each domain sets its criteria for

the acceptable credentials and qualifications to judge creativity, which include areas such

as music and art in which expertise is often self-proclaimed or indirect; every critic and

every consumer of art offers a judgment that contributes to shaping the creative standards

in the arts.12

In specialized fields, as opposed to major cultural contributions associated with

innovative consumer technologies, the Field serves as the jury and usually does so tacitly.

There are usually no annual evaluation meetings at which new ideas within a Domain are

formally vetted and hierarchically ordered with respect to creativity. There are, however,

some social conventions whereby members of a Field do select from among the most

creative ideas in order to honor a particular standout; i.e., Pulitzer awards, Noble Prizes,

etc. The key criterion is the degree to which an idea matters to a particular Domain.

In many cases the Domain is well defined and can be partitioned into sub-

domains. For example, science as a whole is a Domain, but physics, geology,

anthropology, psychology and other disciplines are themselves sub-domains. Similarly,

journalism, apparel, and the music industry are domains. Each domain has it own rule-

governed process, implicit or explicit, by which the label creative is bestowed on worthy

ideas, but in all cases a creative idea must be more than novel.

In some cases the Domain is expansive and might include an entire culture. So,

while we defer to experts to tell us which ideas in physics are most creative, we

consumers ‘vote’ on the relative creativity of a new product or service by merely

purchasing it. We do not need experts to tell us that the personal computer is one hell of a

creative idea, as is true for television, the automobile, and many other technologies that

have transformed individual lives and entire cultures. Implicit in all of this is the principle

that for an idea to be regarded as a case of historical creativity, it must be recognized as

such. When we speak of innovations, we are speaking about ideas that, by virtue of their

broad adoption, have passed the threshold to be deemed historically creative.

Although case studies have contributed much to our understanding of creativity,

there are some caveats. It is worth mentioning here Francis Galton’s Hereditary Genius,

published a decade after his half-cousin Charles Darwin published Origin of Species.13

The book summarized Galton’s case-study analysis of ‘famous people’ and concluded

that genius runs in families; talent is in the blood. It was the first shot in the nature-

nurture controversy that referenced empirical evidence. A great many philosophers had

previously offered views on the role of nature and nurture, but the likes of Adam Smith,

David Hume, Thomas Hobbs, Jacque Rousseau, and other notable humanists had

proffered their personal observations without rigorous empirical evidence.

Despite his empirical approach, Galton’s research reveals just how difficult it is to

engage in postmortem analysis of creativity. His book consists of a list of hereditary

lineages of famous personalities. One problem is that the research is too vulnerable to

interpretational bias: Galton’s prejudices regarding the hereditary foundation of genius.

He just might have been looking for evidence for what he already believed. His

methodology in this and his subsequent books has led some to criticize the flawed

sampling techniques he used and the resulting spurious correlations it produced. Be that

as it may, I am more interested in the radioactive dimension of his conclusions, which

have in the minds of many earned him status as enfant terrible in the social sciences. He

is credited with launching what has been a long and persistent ‘debate’ over how much of

what we are is the product of nature and how much is due to nurture. Although

Shakespeare may have introduced the nature-nurture phrase, Galton popularized it as a

major theme in psychology; one that has been preeminent for the past century and a half.

And the nature-nurture debate is pertinent to the question of what produces creativity.

Where Galton accrued his harshest critics is in his efforts to apply his conclusions.

Galton took a strong nature position: geniuses are born, which we can extrapolate to

creativity is innate. He coined the word eugenics and outlined the key ingredients of a

social movement that sought to control the quality of society by controlling human

breeding. If you are looking for a case study of how ideas matter, here it is. As with the

concept of Social Darwinism, the concept of eugenics is often unfurled as the first assault

on any position that embodies or merely hints at a nature bias.

Not surprisingly, there is a sharp asymmetry to the nature-nurture controversy,

which contributes to the level of acrimony surrounding the debate. The strongest

emotional reactions and most flamboyant vituperations are targeted against the nature

position. The arguments and counter-arguments often generate more heat than light. It is

the kind of intellectual controversy that symbolizes Francis Bacon’s contention that the

human mind is not inherently rational.14 Professional scholars, public intellectuals, and

general citizens similarly engage the topic of nature-nurture guided more by prejudice,

anxiety, and anger than reason. It is no surprise that the ideas encompassed by the nature-

nurture controversy elicit strong visceral reactions that debase the debates into mere

shouting matches.

Perhaps it is the American mythical impulse toward egalitarianism that sensitizes

people to claims, actual or inferred, that some part of what we are is the result of what we

bring into the world as biological specimens. We do not like the idea that some might

have a head start. The public reaction to Herrnstein’s and Murray’s The Bell Curve,

which appeared in 1994, is telling.15 I have met many scholars who hold the authors in

contempt and reject what they assume is the message of the book, despite not having read

it. Apparently, they could more or less smell the argument in the title. The old

omniscience of the PhD surfaces again! We academics often believe we know more than

we actually know; a condemnation we are wont to hurl at the general public.

It is not just ideas that inflame antipathy, but so too do the people who proffer

them. A number of scholars who have attempted to argue for nature’s influence have

been vilified and have become the target of violent scorn within and outside of academe.

In launching Sociobiology, E. O. Wilson, like Herrenstein and Murray, received a tidal

wave of disrespect after publicizing ideas that his opponents concluded, based on

something between careful reading and clairvoyance, were unduly enthusiastic about the

influence of our biological nature.16 Among our most formidable enemies are those we

invent, and imagined ideas can generate as much fear as anything found in the real world.

Interestingly, the more recent appearance of evolutionary psychology has begun

to accrue a more widespread tolerance for the nature position than Sociobiology could

ever muster, but there are still plenty of hostile naysayers; there are many who are

ardently against something that they can name but not articulate. There are also credible

voices encouraging a rethinking of the sources of talent. From Malcolm Gladwell’s

Outliers to David Schenk’s The Genus in All of Us, modern authors are offering

provocative arguments and evidence that experience, luck, and hard work seem to explain

a great deal of where the sources of talent and creativity can be found.17 Of course, if you

want to find evidence of people holding a strong prejudice for nature, talk with parents

who have been told that their children are gifted. The nature-nurture debate over the

sources of creativity continues, but there is little likelihood that we will learn much about

why some people are more creative than others by sifting through their genes.

On a personal note, well before The Bell Curve appeared I had the opportunity to

meet Professor Herrnstein. He had built a career in psychology as a card-carrying

Skinnerian. He even discovered an important Law of Conditioning. I could not have

encountered a more humble, kind, and warm individual. He was a true gentleman-

scholar, and he was immensely generous to a very young academic. Yet, I had a

conversation with a social scientist after The Bell Curve appeared during which my

colleague not only condemned the book but suggested as well that Herrnestein was Hitler

reincarnate. Of course, he never met Herrnstein, and he had not actually read the book.

Oh yes ideas matter, and they mater in ways far more complicated and significant than

can be discerned from the ideas themselves.

Let us return to case studies of creativity. In his book Creativity: Flow and the

Psychology of Discovery and Invention, Professor C describes a process for conducting a

solid case-study of creativity.18 His research relies on careful analysis of extensive

interviews of individuals deemed creative. In describing how the individuals were chosen

and what they were asked, one comes to understand how to complete a rigorous living

case study. Others have used credible historical case studies to uncover principles of

creative minds. With careful constraint, the analysis of erstwhile individuals can add

significant value to our understanding of creativity. D. K. Simonton’s Origins of Genius

and Richard Ogle’s Smart World illustrate the value of the approach.19 The latter is

particularly pertinent to innovation. Ogle uses the case study method to analyze

celebrated innovations and the innovators behind them in order to derive theoretical

principles of the innovation process.

Case studies and psychometric approaches concentrate on molar aspects of

creativity. In contrast, experimental approaches adopt reductionist analyses of

psychological processes presumed to be involved in creativity. Several different

strategies exist within the experimental perspective. One approach, called creative

cognition, takes advantage of what is known about cognition to ask very detailed

questions about how minds generate novel ideas. One of the implicit assumptions of

creative cognition is that creativity is a process shared by all of us; it is not something

abnormal or an ability imbued in the minds of some but not all. Creativity is not a gift. In

that respect, these studies focus on what Margaret Boden calls Psychological Creativity,

in contrast to Historical Creativity.

Research on creative cognition is of inherent value to the study of mind and offers

some important insights into the processes that produce novel ideas. The Geneplore

Model guides much of this research.20 The basic concept behind this model (the

neologism is a contraction of generate-explore) is that our minds generate candidate ideas

that we then further explore for creative potential. The generative and exploratory

processes involve a number of basic cognitive functions such as perceptual organization,

memory retrieval, conceptual synthesis, imagery manipulation, use of metaphors, and

others. Accordingly, creativity is not viewed as some magical process that transcends

basic thinking. Rather, creative ideas, which by definition are novel and therefore

abnormal, result from the quite normal processes of cognition. Although we may not be

able to predict the ideas themselves, we can explain the process by which they arrive.

As an example of research in this field, consider a simple study by a leading

creative cognition investigator, Thomas Ward. He was interested in how subjects are

influenced by information in their memories when asked to create new ideas. For

example, subjects were asked to draw and describe an imaginary animal living on a

planet very different from earth. The key finding was that the imagined animals were

highly structured and composed of features derived from real, remembered animals. Most

imagined critters possessed the bilateral symmetry we see in nature: bodily structures in

which the right side mirrors the left side. The imaginary animals also had at least one

typical sense organ (an eye or an ear) and some kind of appendage (a wing or a leg).21

What this simple study tells us is that in the process of generating a novel idea we

are influenced by ideas we already have. This finding may not seem provocative, but it

reflects an important principle of the creative process: you can only work with what you

have. That principle should serve as a warning to those seeking to be creative. One of the

sad ironies of modern times is that many youthful minds so wanting to be creative fail to

do the hard work. They are unwilling or unable to recognize that they have deficiencies in

their knowledge either in terms of formal education or raw experience. One expression of

that tendency involves attitudes toward higher education. I am especially distressed when

I hear aspiring art students disparage science or when I witness science students express

their disdain for the arts and humanities. Students passionate about their desire to write

need to know something in order to write something worth reading. Creativity is not a

mere impulse, and you cannot know too much. We cannot allow the next generation to

think that it is all about finding your muse, nor can we allow them to embrace the

penchant to explain creativity as inexplicable genius. Ignorance does not fuel creativity;

learning does not blunt a creative mind. We educators and parents contribute to the

problem when we capitulate and accept unbalanced curricula, at any level of education

including college. As Kris Kimel, founder of the IdeaFestival in Kentucky, is wont to say

‘there is no such thing as useless knowledge.’

So, the kinds of findings by creative cognition researchers are especially

important in separating fact from fiction in the realm of creativity. Too many self-help

books on creativity are more content to spin magical tales than accept empirical reality.

Ward and his colleagues have taken many small steps, and as the research findings

continue to accumulate important insights will emerge in understanding both the general

nature of cognition as well as the processes responsible for novel ideas.

This claim also says something about the general nature of scientific analysis;

progress in science usually occurs one small step at a time. Science has been the single

most important creative force in civilization, and we can glean much of value about

creativity by reflecting on the scientific enterprise. For instance, rarely does science serve

up a revolutionary discovery. Most of the success in science is attributed to the gradual

accumulation of knowledge gained through hard work, rigorous commitment to detail,

and constant reflection of what is gained through each small step. It requires persistence,

patience, and discipline. Yes, there are moments when giant leaps occur. Kuhn’s concept

of paradigmatic revolution captures the principle that major bursts in scientific progress

do occur. These revolutions fundamentally revise conceptual frameworks dominating a

domain.22 But revolutionary moments in science are rare and depend on the slow

evolution of knowledge. So, if you want to be a creative success by doing something easy

or by avoiding learning too much, then do not become a scientist. Sadly, many seem to be

heeding this advice. There is shrinking interest in science majors and too many students

fail to recognize science as career for those wanting to be creative. And that is ironic.

The nature of creativity in science applies to creativity in general. Eureka

moments have occurred, but they are extremely rare. Especially with respect to

innovative ideas, the path to achievement is more often one of blood, sweat, and tears. As

supported by the collective insights derived from creativity research, many less exotic

factors beyond Plato’s divine inspiration underlie human creativity.

Another very productive research perspective within the experimental approach is

identified with Teresa Amabile; one of the most highly regarded scholars in the field. She

published the first edition of her The Social Psychology of Creativity in 1983.23 This book

summarized findings and described a conceptual framework for examining creativity as a

social phenomenon. As such, her approach considers a broader perspective; one that

intentionally links personal cognition with social forces that shape and constrain

individual minds. Similar to creative cognition, research in this area relies on

experimental methods, but it also incorporates other social science tools and focuses on

social and cultural variables involved in creativity.

Her more recent Creativity in Context is an excellent foundation for those wanting

to know what science has to say about creativity.24 It also serves as an excellent guide to

the intricacies of both the empirical (e.g., measurement of creativity) and theoretical (e.g.,

models of creativity) aspects of doing research on creativity. Amabile is especially

effective in synthesizing results across a large body of research that has examined such

variables as intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation, birth order, loss of a parent, the

facilitating and inhibiting effects of thinking in groups, and the impact of expectancies

about evaluation.

Her theoretical contribution includes an emphasis on distinguishing three

components of creative performance. Domain Relevant Skills include knowledge

associated with a particular domain and one's talent level in managing that knowledge.

These skills depend upon innate cognitive factors as well as formal education and

informal experience. Creativity-Relevant Skills include cognitive style, facility with using

heuristics pertinent to a given domain, and general work habits; skills that depend on

training, general experience with creative challenges, as well as personality factors.

Finally, Task Motivation encompasses attitudes toward a particular challenge as well as

awareness of one's own motivation. These attributes depend on intrinsic motivation as

well as external forces that induce extrinsic motivation. The model itself emphasizes the

variables pertinent to each component as well as the ways in which the three components

interact in order to explain creative performance.

Yet another stream within the experimental approach to creativity emphasizes

metaphorical thinking. I have already mentioned the work of Lakoff & and Johnson,

Metaphors We Live By.25 The idea of a ‘hot topic’ makes sense to us metaphorically. Our

bodily experiences with temperature, ranging from sweating under a hot sun to grabbing

the handle of a pot from the stove, offer experiences that we can then use to attach

meaning to the abstract idea of a hot topic. Hot ideas, like hot liquids, entail higher levels

of energy, greater activity, more potential to stimulate action. By relying on metaphors

we use the known to imagine the unknown, which is a central aspect of being creative.

A focus on the study of metaphors may afford a good opportunity to overcome a

major challenge for creativity research. Experimental research has focused on personal or

‘Small c’ creativity, whereas the kind of creativity that gains the spotlight is historical or

‘Big C’ creativity. The latter is difficult if not impossible to analyze with any method of

inquiry. Boden actually suggests that Big C creativity may remain forever a mystery.26 It

entails the production of ideas that are so unexpected, surprising, and unpredictable that

the process by which those ideas are generated may not be amenable to scientific

scrutiny. Big C creativity may forever be limited to retrospective explanations and

speculation. Although we might be able to make sense of what has occurred, we may

never be able to predict what will occur.

We should not, however, prematurely accept this limitation. As the mind sciences

progress, and as studies in all areas of creativity forge ahead, unanticipated insights into

Big C creativity may emerge. The embodied cognition perspective in particular may be

sufficiently rich to spawn an understanding of Small c creativity that ultimately captures

insights into Big C creativity.

One extension of the embodied cognition perspective that has considerable

potential to advance understanding of creative thinking of all kinds is the theoretical

proposal offered by Fauconnier and Turner in their book The Way We Think.27 In contrast

to the research emphasis on core mental functions, such as learning, memory, and

problem solving, these authors elaborate a conceptual framework that focuses on

conceptual blending of metaphors especially those that derive from sensory-motor

experience. In contrast to theories of cognition framed in terms of formal structure,

algorithms, and axiomatic approaches to meaning, conceptual blending emphasizes

unconscious processes especially identity (the coffee cup you periodically put to your lips

is the same cup each time you drink from it); integration (the complex matrix of neuronal

activation on your retina instantly coheres into your recognition of your coffee cup as

distinct from the other visual stimulation concurrently available, such as the table and

your hand); and imagination (your seemingly effortless ability to think of your coffee cup

in the teeth of burning giraffe, a thought that has no real world referent). These

unconscious, emergent biological processes percolating in our connectomes undergird

our conscious experience of meaning.

Like other scholars, these researchers assert that “creative thinking is clearly part

of ordinary thinking.”28 All thinking, including creativity, involves a single operation that

is the same across all individuals; i.e., the minds of creative people do not function

differently than the minds of those less creative. Also, our minds are not doing something

uniquely different when creating new ideas than what occurs when we find our way out

of our bedroom and go to the kitchen for a cup of coffee. Creativity is not an App

available only for geniuses. We are all creative, and the process, if not the substance, of

creative thinking emanates from a quite normal process shared by the entire species.

Our capacity to conjure a new idea by combining ideas we already have is an act

of metaphorical blending. Guided by this broad theoretical framework, research on

conceptual blending now concentrates on discovering key principles and developing

appropriate models that have the potential to make sense of the processes that underlie

my simplistic claim that ‘creativity involves generating new ideas by combining old

ideas.’ If successful, this complex area of inquiry may illuminate what currently remains

a mystery, including the very meaning of ideas themselves.

All of the experimental approaches above share a focus on understanding how

minds create ideas. There is yet another experimental perspective that is important to

understanding creativity but one that adopts a very different focus. Rather than analyzing

how minds create ideas, it concentrates on failed creativity: factors that inhibit or obstruct

creativity. A classic phenomenon in this arena is functional fixedness, pioneered by Karl

Duncker.29 In these studies subjects are given problems to solve that do not have obvious

or easy solutions. In the example depicted in Figure 1, you find yourself in a room

containing a table upon which there is a cardboard box of thumbtacks, a candle, and a

book of matches. Your task is to affix the candle to one of the walls and light it before the

room goes completely dark.

Figure 1.

Another example involves a crime scene in which a man is found hanging from a rafter

suspended 3 ft above the floor. There is a small pool of liquid below him. What

happened?

In both situations researches are not interested in whether a subject discovers a

correct solution but rather in the thought process they use in seeking a solution.

Accordingly, participants in these studies are asked to ‘think out loud’ as they go about

trying to solve the problem. Now, when you actually do this kind of experiment with

college students, which I do when teaching introductory psychology, you first hear a lot

of what I would kindly call ‘dumb-ass solutions’ such as “well, I would light the match,

melt the bottom of the candle and stick it on the wall.” Try attaching a long candle to a

wall by melting its bottom surface.

The answer to the candle problem, of course, is that you empty the thumbtacks

from the box, use a couple of tacks to stick the box to the wall creating a small shelf upon

which you place the candle which you then light. And of course, the other problem is

explained as a suicide; a man with a rope around his neck that was attached to a an

overhead beam stood on a large block of ice until it melted. Again, researchers are not

interested in the answers but rather in how people try to get an answer. The classic

finding is that among those who do not solve the candle problem, their primary obstacle

is not seeing the cardboard box as a potential shelf. They become 'functionally fixated' in

seeing the box only as a container or even more concretely, they see thumbtacks but do

not ‘see’ the box as a separate entity. In order to solve the problem, in order to be creative

in this situation, one must escape this functional fixedness and come to see the box as a

potential shelf.

James Adams frames his self-help guidebook to better ideas in terms of this

phenomenon.30 He argues that the path to new ideas, creativity, depends on what he terms

Conceptual Blockbusting, which entails the many perceptual, emotional, cognitive, as

well as cultural and environmental 'blocks’ that inhibit conceptualizing new ideas. The

key culprit is commitment to consistency. "Habits are often inconsistent with creativity.

Creativity implies deviance from past procedure; habits are consistent with it."31 Because

creativity places a premium on being able to break away from normal patterns, you have

to be a bit of a cognitive maverick, somewhat 'abnormal', a nonconformist.

Interestingly, these attributes conflict with core attributes of being a political

conservative, which raises an interesting question: Are conservatives less creative than

liberals? Now there is a friendly question that has no potential to arouse debate! I fear to

say anything here, but I cannot resist mentioning that there actually is some direct

evidence in support of the idea. Stephen Dollinger has reported that among

undergraduates, conservative students scored lower on creativity measures than liberals

even when controlling for openness and verbal ability.32 Admittedly, we could use much

more research on the question, and we especially need to examine real creativity;

thinking that takes place by people in the real world well beyond the confines of a

psychology subject pool. It is also imperative to ask the question with respect to specific

situations rather than general assessment of creativity. I imagine that there are plenty of

successful conservative entrepreneurs who regularly express considerable creativity; the

kind that garners substantial wealth. Humans are especially good at compartmentalizing.

We can be conservative in one aspect of our lives and liberal in another; we can admire

some of our habits while escaping others.

Beyond the experimental psychology of creative thinking, much has been learned

by both historical analysis of idea creation and the natural history of ideas deemed to be

creative. As examples, Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From, Richard Ogle’s

Smart World, and Frans Johansson’s The Medici Effect describe general principles of

creativity that have produced innovations.33 The natural history of innovations

emphasizes the importance of structural features of existing knowledge that promote the

development of innovative ideas. The authors above argue that the real action is at the

intersections of domains, fields, or idea spaces. Once again we confront the importance of

knowing; without knowing there is no chance of being creative. To be at an intersection

of domains one needs sufficient knowledge of those domains and the ability to connect

ideas from within them. It is tautological that without domain-specific knowledge, it is

impossible to generate ideas that transcend the boundaries between domains.

Johansson distinguishes new ideas that emerge within fields, directional ideas,

from those that combine ideas between multiple fields, intersectional ideas.34 The latter

are associated with Big Ideas, those that spur highly consequential innovation. Each of

these three books is necessary reading for anyone interested in understanding innovation.

The framework conveyed by these authors is especially pertinent to our need to realign

formal education. To be intentional about innovation is to recognize the vital connections

between learning and creativity, which should inform our curricula and the nature of

teaching and learning. Sadly, that remains but a hopeful aspiration; higher education is

especially immune to the real needs of the thinking world.

Steven Johnson's Where Good Ideas Come From is especially apposite for those

willing to contemplate the big picture of innovation as a topic worthy of scholarly

engagement.35 His scope is broad both in terms of the timeframe and the array of

innovative ideas he examines. I found most valuable his perspective, which far exceeds

the typical analysis of the creative process underlying innovation. For example, Arthur

Koestler's The Act of Creation is heralded as one of the classic books on creativity.36 In

contemplating the shared aspects of the creative enterprise among art, science, and

humor, Koestler points in the direction embraced by modern cognitive science, which

asserts that creativity is creativity regardless of the domain it entails. Unlike Koestler,

however, and more in line with psychologist Tersa Amabile, Johnson importunes us to

extend analysis of the creative process to include the information environment in which

creators function. Both the city and the worldwide web comprise that environment for us

today, and each is intimately linked to the minds of creators. The environment is

therefore responsible, in part, for what those minds create. In my terms, creativity entails

at least one individual mind connected to the public square, and both the mind and the

public square should be credited for the arrival of new ideas. Impressive acts of creation

reflect a creative system more than a creative individual. Smart minds detached from the

world are not that smart and are rarely creative. By placing the emphasis on innovative

systems, Johnson provides an invaluable framework with which to better understand the

variables that influence creativity pertinent to innovation.

There is one final issue I want to mention. Given the extreme, almost desperate,

urgency to promote creativity across the full spectrum of modern work, there is an

understandable desire to find ways to teach creativity. I have participated in formal panel

discussions that have engaged this very question: Can creativity be taught? My answer is

no, which will probably annoy or even enrage many of you. Despite a vast literature in

psychology that represents impressive progress in understanding creative thinking,

despite real advances on the topic shown by other mind sciences, despite the development

of credible techniques for fostering, supporting, and catalyzing creativity, and despite a

robust self-help industry that proclaims differently, I maintain that teaching creativity is

currently beyond our ken.

Let me make my case. Consider what it is to teach content knowledge, say

history. A teacher can select the content to be transferred to the wanting mind of a

motivated student and do things that actually inspire learning; they can actually teach that

content. Perhaps by lecturing, employing Socratic questioning, or merely answering

questions, a teacher can indeed teach history. Such a teacher serves a causal role in

creating knowledge in the mind of a student.

Now consider what it is to teach tennis. A coach can explain the rules of the game

and the basic physical actions used to play tennis; they can demonstrate how to serve, hit

a forehand, approach the net, and use the lob and drop shot, etc. As the student acquires

this procedural knowledge, a coach can also help the student refine her performance. By

providing critical feedback and guidance during careful monitoring of the student's

performance, coaches coach. So, yes one can teach tennis.

The question is can one do anything like a history teacher does or a tennis coach

does to help someone 'learn to be creative'? Consider what is involved in creativity and

compare that to the declarative knowledge accrued in learning history or the procedural

knowledge acquired in learning tennis. When an individual mind creates, it generates an

idea not previously represented in that mind by combining ideas that are already present.

Now, clearly learning is required for creativity to the extent that one must learn the ideas

that end up being combined in forming a new idea. But the accumulation of those ideas is

simply acquisition of knowledge. Any teaching involved in history or tennis entails

attaining knowledge, declarative or procedural, but the creative act itself is something

else. The ideas that are combined to create a new idea can be taught, but the process of

creating a new idea eludes a level of understanding that makes it possible to teach

someone how to create an idea. Knowing variables that might influence creativity and

understanding conditions that promote creativity is useful, but it is not the same as

teaching the process by which an individual actually combines ideas. No one knows how

to do that.

I say that we have no idea of what is actually occurring when we create. When

each of us does it, we simply do it, but trying to introspect and explain to yourself what

you did when you created an idea is a fool’s errand. We do not 'know' what it feels like to

create. I ‘know’ what it feels like to hit a tennis ball, and I can indirectly convey that to

someone as I help him or her learn to play tennis. It may be difficult, but I can put into

words what it feels like to swing a racket in a particular way, what it is to hit a tennis ball.

But I cannot do that for what it is for me to create an idea. It is like trying to explain to

someone what it is like to digest, urinate, or have an orgasm. I can teach you to eat food,

drink, or do those things that often yield an orgasm, but I cannot put into words the

processes that are digestion, urination, or orgasmic pleasure. We do these things naturally

and seemingly effortlessly, similar to S1 thinking, but we cannot describe how we do

these things.

Adding to the obscurantist nature of creativity are the mysterious externalities that

often influence the process. In many of the celebrated acts of creativity, our vaunted

innovations, chance and good fortune have often intervened. For instance, serendipity has

launched many a good creative idea. We go searching for something and stumble on the

unexpected or an answer appears before we have asked a question.  Consider the humble

Kellogg’s Cornflake. While working at the Battle Creek Sanitarium in the late 1800s, Dr.

Kellogg, as a good strict Seventh Day Adventist, wanted to ensure that the passions of his

patients remained in check by serving them a steady diet of bland foods. He wanted to

bore their palates in order to render them quiescent. In attempting to remedy some

cooked wheat that had gone stale, he and his brother tried to roll the stale dough but

discovered that it crumbled into flakes instead. Being cheap, they attempted to minimize

their loss by baking the flakes, which they then served to the delight of the their flaccid-

paletted patients.37 And on many a morning I am the beneficiary of this serendipity.

How do we teach serendipity? How do you guide someone toward eureka? How

can we teach incubation? The latter is exemplified by the great mathematician Poincare

who had exhausted himself trying to solve a particularly thorny math conundrum. He

turned to other matters. Suddenly, as if struck by a bolt of lightening, the answer comes

to his mind as he steps onto a bus. While his S2 thinking apparatus was disengaged, a

creative idea pops into his S1 mind.38 The intellectual history of mankind is replete with

similar examples of unintentional problem solving and creativity. For instances, there is

Kekule starring into his fireplace in a dreamlike state, imagining the flames licking their

own tails. From that thought he 'discovers' the ring like structure of benzene, which is a

fundamental achievement in organic chemistry. We can talk about these examples of

incubation, but we certainly cannot teach incubation.

Now, I am not going to disparage the many books that have been proffered to help

promote creativity. These clever contributions include useful general advice as well as

explicit techniques and strategies. Many of these books rely on intriguing exercises that

purportedly teach creativity. In the end, however, these tutorials merely point us in a

direction or talk about creativity. I feel the same way about college curricula that are

being devised to answer the creativity challenge. My own university has as a creativity

requirement as a part of its general education program. The requirement can be satisfied

by an array of courses that includes the arts, the sciences, and many applied domains.

Many of these courses are excellent and of real value, but if we think we are actually

teaching creativity by asking students to be creative, then prepare for disappointment.

Part of the problem is that such curricula imply incorrectly that creativity is a skill

that easily transfers across different domains. Koestler may be correct that there are some

fundamental components of creativity common to such diverse applications as science,

art, and humor. But I would maintain that there is no omnibus skill set that enables

creativity that is domain independent. To be highly creative in one domain does not

imply that one will be at all creative in another. Creativity in painting is distinct from

creativity in biology, design, or engineering. To create in psychology is different from

what it is to create in geology. Of course, there are some general level cognitive demands

shared by diverse domains, but each domain has its own specific cognitive demands as

well. To that extent, creativity is domain specific. A similar constraint applies to

creativity related to the intersection of multiple domains.

Of course there have been some polymaths who have made creative contributions

to multiple domains. These extraordinary individuals, however, are the exception. They

have attained multiple creative skills, the essences of which may, as Margaret Boden

suggests, remain forever hidden from any real understanding. So, by all means go forth

and arrange the conditions conducive to creativity; encourage young minds to fill their

attics with disparate knowledge; assist them in doings things that require connecting idea

spaces; teach them every intellectual app available, from logic to convergent and

divergent thinking; teach them to be mindful as well as disciplined; encourage them to

think, and reward them for any creativity they might exhibit, especially when they are

young before their spirited minds become programmed by the banalities of formal

education. But do not try to teach creativity. It cannot be done. Now, I imagine that this

last statement aggravates or even enrages many of you; see how ideas matter!