Bias Against Creativity
In Bias Against Creativity, a team of researchers at Cornell discuss the bias against creativity they revealed in their study. Originally published in 2010, the article resurfaced yesterday on Hacker News. It raises the question of how to evaluate creative ideas and how to engender internal incentives to support creativity.
From the Cornell paper:
People often reject creative ideas even when espousing creativity as a desired goal. To explain this paradox, we propose that people can hold a bias against creativity that is not necessarily overt, and which is activated when people experience a motivation to reduce uncertainty.
Theoretically we all support the notion of creative ideas. But, in practice, creative ideas aren’t free. The cost of failure is real, both in terms of capital outlay for an experiment that may not work. Perhaps more importantly, a manager who supports a creative idea bears some personal career risk.
Presented with a novel idea and a less risky option whose execution is similar to the status quo, inertia often prevails. As decision-makers, we calculate an implicit expected value to determine which option begets a greater likelihood of career advancement.
Jessica Olien at Slate wrote about this topic and identified Barry Staw, a researcher at Berkeley, who contributed a chapter to a book on creativity, titled “No One Wants Creativity”:
Most people fall short of the creative ideal. They are satisficers rather than searchers for the optimal or desired solution… and unless they are held accountable for their decision-making strategies, they tend to find the easy way out—either by not engaging in very careful thinking or by modeling the choices on the preferences of those who will be evaluating them.
Staw has five recommendations on promoting creativity in business:
- Hire people who’s skills aren’t precise matches for the needs of the company.
- Encourage employees not to listen blindly to corporate policy and conventional wisdom; not all to speak with the same voice.
- Those in power should go as far as possible to encourage active opposition to ideas. (Similar to Drucker’s obligation to dissent).
- Optimize for adaptiveness. Have extra labor capacity and explore side projects. (How many creative companies started or were reinvigorated by side projects? Twitter and Slack are two that immediately come to mind).
- Lead rather than follow. Take risks.
These aren’t easy things to do. It requires a huge amount of confidence in the team and a culture that’s supportive of risk-taking. Bezos said it well: We are willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time. That has to be true at every level of the company to maximize creativity.
It is interesting, I have seen a similar issue within the community that supports innovation, with people espousing the virtues of innovation but looking for any reason to question new ideas.
Miracles in minutes - Impossible things with a slight delay!
7 年"Miracles we do in minutes - impossible ones tend to take a bit more time!" :)
Human Resources Manager at Feeser EyeCare
7 年Who wants to be in a room of people that think the way you think. BORING! I love to hear about different ideas. It's called thinking outside the box. Ideas and discussions can change, it just takes a difference in opinion.
Professor of Practice for Bioproduct Technology at Aalto University and XAMK
7 年Creative ideas are often hit by the wall of (immediate) "doability". "yes, but...." dilemma. Even if the idea itself sounds intriguing. I have found a practical way of identifying and defending of those "Interesting but challenging" ideas: When dealing with a list of ideas, e.g. from an ideation workshop: - Draw a four-field, in which the Y axis is "Interestingness" (= "I like it" factor), and X axis is "doability" - Evaluate each idea separately with "I like it" factor and "doability", and place them on the four-field => Now, look at the results: There are two sets of "no-brainers": High both at "I like it" and doability" should of course be taken forward. On the other hand, low in both axis should be scrapped of course. => Look at the 2 remaining corners: The High in "Doability" and lowish on "I like it" are most probably your "usual" ideas, that are "easy" to do, but often rather conventional. The results from all your previous ideation workshops are likely to be in this corner => Now, the high on "Interestingness", but low (or uncertain) on "doability" is often the most potential corner: they are most probably ideas of "This sure is great if it could be done somehow". And before you may have scrapped them before because they are not immediately seen as doable. => This corner most probably holds the most creative ideas. Go ahead and pick a few ideas forward in this corner as well. Ideate the ways of making them possible!