By Linda van de Sande
Edition 1 – August 2012 Pages 14-17
Tags: creativity • design • psychology • research
Good ideas seem to come to us at the strangest moments in the strangest places. Archimedes was soaking in a bathtub, Descartes was in bed, and well, Isaac Newton was allegedly sitting under an apple tree when they made their discoveries. Is this a coincidence? Does where you are impact on how or what you think? Are some places more creative than others?
Creativity has become a significant competitive factor in today’s economy (Florida, 2005). “More than half the economic growth came from activities that had scarcely, if at all, existed ten years previously.” (Hospers, 2003, p. 260). Employee creativity can substantially contribute to organizational innovation, effectiveness, and survival (Amabile, 1996; Nonaka, 1991). It is no surprise, that fostering creativity within the organisation is at the top of many a business leaders’ to do list.
Organisations, such as Google, Microsoft, MTV and Red Bull have implemented the idea of creative space in workplace design. Common strategies are to create open and collaborative spaces, to encourage serendipitous encounters around coffee and food and include ‘fun’ spaces with colourful and playful design elements (and the quintessential beanbag) for inspiration. ‘I just know it, I don’t need to measure it’, is what a manager at Microsoft said when asked about the creative effectiveness of their office. Fair enough, but the response made me wonder how much we actually know about creativity and the workplace.
The concept of creativity is often portrayed as something that cannot be defined, described, or copied; A gift limited to the talented few and subject to whims, divine inspiration and highly palpable muses. Indeed, there is something magical about having a creative breakthrough. Yet, our brain doesn’t generate new ideas at random. You are stuck with a problem and suddenly something you have seen or heard somewhere before is compounded and transposed, and the light in your brain is turned on. It is this ‘stuckness’ that differentiates creative thinking from analytical thinking. Wallas (1926) recognised that the creative process happens in four stages: (1) Preparation and definition, (2) Incubation, (3) Illumination and (4) Verification, others have added a fifth and sixth stage of (0) Problem recognition and (6) Marketing the idea. These stages will most likely overlap and may not happen in a linear but more iterative fashion. Elusive as creativity may seem, cognitive scientists have been studying creativity for several decades and have made headway on understanding what goes on inside the creative brain. By their definition, creativity is ‘using old ideas in new ways, places, or combinations’, that are (a) novel and (b) potentially useful. Creativity requires a variety of distinct cognitive skills such as: fluency, flexibility, association, and originality. Creativity is considered both a trait and skill, partly innate but can be practiced. Everyone is creative, and the more and more diverse expertise you have, the greater the promise for creative output. In fact, “if you’re trying to be more creative, one of the most important things you can do is increase the volume and diversity of the information to which you are exposed” (Lehrer, 2012).
The creative brain
In discussions about creativity people will often refer to left and right brain individuals, implying that creativity and analytical thinking are two distinct practices, physically separated in the brain. Consider the following brain-teaser from a creative thinking experiment: Mary and Ethel were born on the same day of the same month of the same year, to the same mother. Yet they are not twins, how is that possible?
This problem requires analytical thinking to understand the problem, more creative thinking to generate alternatives and again analytical thinking to test every answer’s suitability. You may ‘see’ the answer straight away, but most people will only realise the answer three days later, when they have stopped thinking about it, at least consciously. Creativity is not linked to either hemisphere. It is the parts of the brain that direct attention and motivation, which are more important. Attention to seemingly unimportant details and motivation to keep going when you are stuck and to aim for perfection.
Attention
This is where the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that sits behind the forehead, the part of the brain that regulates attention and working memory, comes in. In the illumination stage, this part of the brain is less activated, commonly called zoning out or daydreaming, allowing us to focus less on details and have more free flowing thoughts. Research shows that this happens a lot, 47% of the time under normal circumstances and even when we try to concentrate, it happens 20% of the time (Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010). This mind wandering is devastating for analytical tasks, yet creative tasks benefit greatly from it.
People who were asked to do a mindless task in the middle of a creativity experiment performed better than people who worked on a more mentally taxing interval task. This might also explain why people with ADHD are generally more creative, their mind wanders often. Fatigue can make it more difficult for people to concentrate, therefore night owls tend to be more creative in the morning and early birds have more original ideas late at night. Contrarily, a good night’s sleep also does wonders. More so, because creative thought is heightened just before going to sleep or when we first wake up. Furthermore, lay off on coffee, because this intensifies analytical thinking and being anxious or under pressure also tends to put you in a more analytical mindset. Alternatively, a drink of alcohol or the use of marihuana or amphetamines have been found to loosen the mind. It is this state that, on EEG scans, in the right hemisphere of the brain alpha waves are emitted. Although the function of alpha waves are still a mystery, researchers have found that they are a precursor to creative insight. They mark the transition from incubation to illumination. Hot water increases alpha waves, perhaps that’s why so many eureka moments happen in the shower.
This doesn’t mean the prefrontal cortex switches off. Although it might not be entirely focused, the working memory still processes and monitors our thoughts. Good ideas are stored in short-term memory and directed to connect with other ideas. Research done with highly creative people, as measured by their achievements, shows that they have a way of paying more attention to information which others will consider ‘noise’. Also when working memory is not bogged down, it allows us to think more freely. For example classical cellists, who were asked to remember several different words during a performance were rated as less creative in their musical improvisations. So if you are stuck with a problem, take time out, step away, clear your thoughts, creating so called ‘psychological distance’ (Liberman & Shapira, 2009), whatever gets you to focus less on the problem. Often, the best way to solve a problem is to stop thinking about it. Or as Einstein put it: creativity is the residue of wasted time.
Motivation
It is a great feeling when you have that creative insight and all falls into place, but it takes strong motivation to get there and keep going, a certain stubbornness and resilience to failure and rejection. Thomas Edison wisely said: “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”. Creative motivation is strongest if it comes from within and increases when the task is engaging, satisfying and or challenging and when the person has creative confidence, a belief in their own creative aptitude. External drivers such as evaluation, rewards and a controlling culture can undermine intrinsic motivation. Goncalo & Duguid (2012) suggest that creative people are stifled by strong group norms. They need the freedom to determine their own behaviour.
A common idea is that positive emotions encourage creativity and negative emotions are to be avoided. That’s why there is a tendency to create fun and happy workplaces. In recent years thinking about emotion has changed dramatically. Emotions function as a motivator for behaviour and they determine which type of action we will choose and how active we will be. Anger and sadness are both negative emotions but anger has a mostly positive effect on creativity whereas, sadness a mostly negative effect (DeDreu, et al, 2008). This perhaps explains why conflict and frustration in the first stage of creativity is not a bad thing.
Creativity is innate in each of us, but must be nurtured to thrive. An overview study by Furnham (2008) suggests that personal characteristics explain only 5 to 15% of the difference in creativity between people. This means our creativity isn’t fixed, but depends on context and circumstances. So how important is the space around you for creativity?
Creative space
Discourse on the context of creativity centres on either social and organisational aspects, or macro- and medium-scale geographic areas. As a consequence, only a few studies investigate the relationship between physical space on a micro spatial level, such as the workplace. I believe space affects creativity in three ways: direct effects, implicit message, and facilitation of behaviour….