The Characters of Creativity by Prof. Alastair Pearce | BIS Publishers

THE CHARACTERS OF CREATIVITY

ALASTAIR PEARCE

BIS Publishers

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ISBN 9789063696696

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humanity’s pool of creativity by contesting its suppression and neglect through enriching management and interpersonal practice to the benefit of all.

One final, bathetic apology: ‘creative’ as a noun rather than just an adjective. I don’t like it, I railed against it, but well, language has its own creative and innovative process too, I suppose.

“HANG ON A SECOND, THERE’S JUST ONE MORE THING...”

interactive capability, be impressive on social media, have childfriendly colours and retail for under £20.’

I strongly suspect that the second brief will spark Picky’s interest most. This is because it’s the most open-ended, giving her the greatest opportunity for picking around the myriad possibilities within the social media market. She will survey and minutely criticise the range of toys already available, find out what children are saying about them on social media, what currently attracts them, and examine the characteristics that could be translated to a physical format. She will doubtless spend more detailed, productive and intrinsically satisfying time in this process than she would exploring the comparatively closed opportunities of the first and last briefs.

Creativity scholars’ noses will have twitched at three key words I’ve recently used: ‘maze’, ‘time’ and ‘intrinsically’. They will have correctly sniffed that I’m hinting that ‘time’ spent in what we call ‘the maze’ with its ‘intrinsic’ motivation lies at the root of this brief’s power in energising Picky’s deeper creativity. These complicated ideas of the maze and motivation are discussed in detail in Chapter 8 Why do I do what I do? It is sufficient here simply to conclude that Picky’s creativity is almost certainly inextricably entwined with her pickiness and her manager would consequently be unwise to try to separate them. If Picky stops picking, she’ll probably also stop being creative.

ARE WE ALL CREATIVE?

You are sitting in a restaurant and your table wobbles. You stick a napkin under one of its legs. It stops wobbling. Have you just been creative?

But sitting in restaurants isn’t your full-time job. You’re a highly respected artist, so after lunch you walk thoughtfully back to your studio wondering about how to solve a particularly difficult problem with your latest portrait; somehow the hands just don’t look right. And then, you’ve got it! Let the hands rest on a book and then that pesky angle between hand and arm comes just right. Have you just been creative?

How do you recognise creativity? Many would say that coming up with the wobbly table solution wasn’t creative whilst your walk back to the studio was. That seems to make sense: sticking a napkin under the leg is hardly original; a bit more imaginative than the traditional beer mat, but still pretty obvious. No invention was required, not much effort, thought, or inspiration. None of the characteristics we like to associate with ‘proper’ creativity: the lonely inventor, striding, tortured, around the laboratory, or the writer huddled over a manuscript pouring out their soul. These are old images but they’re still shaping the way we think about creativity today. So, let’s strip away that romantic stuff and look at what actually happened in the restaurant and then walking to your studio.

“I’M JUST NOT PUTTING UP WITH THIS ANY MORE!”

instinctively disruptive attitude to established practices. This is the energy that drives her. All creativity is about change. Molotov isn’t excited by the brand that works through graceful evolution, she waves the flag for change now.

DEFINITIONS AND CHARACTERISTICS

A colleague is chatting to you at work. “Hey, listen to this! I’ve just had a really good idea for a new way of getting more clients: we should do…(x)… and that will get them to do…(y)… What do you think, creative eh?” (We can assume she fills in x and y plausibly.) “Right,” you reply: “I’ll just nip back to my office for a dictionary and check whether what you’ve just said matches its definition of creativity. I’ll let you know.”

Definitions of creativity seem little used; both surprising and unsurprising. Surprising in you’d expect companies that rely on creativity would want to know what it actually is; unsurprising in that dictionary definitions aren’t really very helpful.

This chapter discusses definitions of creativity, drawing from them two key starting points – but only starting points – for recognising creativity: ‘new’ and ‘useful’. But it also recommends that recognising the characteristics often seen in creative colleagues can be helpful in actually working with them.

Sounds good? No not really, for in that last paragraph I’ve slipped in some really poor logic, saying that it’s useful to recognise characteristics of creative people having just asserted that definitions of creativity are, at best, only marginally helpful. So how do you recognise the person whose characteristics are worth noting? A schoolboy error, but semi-deliberate, for it points with a determined finger towards one of the key ‘take-aways’ from