The business of creativity

Prior to my postgraduate studies and my work in the creative and cultural industries with creative tourism, I thought the word "disruptor" meant breaking stereotypes, the glass ceiling and all the 'hoop la' of hogwash that we are fed by the gate keepers and those who perpetuate this ideology into the mainstream media. Now I believe being disruptive has nothing to do with your stereotyped appearance, especially if your work in your field backed by your mindset, culture and approach fail to convince me otherwise.

I’m very intrigued by people who disrupt by breaking the norms in their respective fields.?Have you seen the Netflix movie, The Glass Onion - A Knives Out Mystery? It’s impressive how the show follows a group of 'disruptors' in different fields from politics, social media, fashion, science to business and private investigation. They all possess a variety of creative resources and are brought to an island to help solve a mystery. The plot thickens when things don’t go according to plan. This provoked me to think about creativity as an investment for the individuals and the organizations they belonged to and how the definition of disruptor was defined and conveyed in the narrative versus what many perceive it to be in this reality.

I further discovered the work by Sternberg, O'Hara and Lubart on their Creative Investment Theory. Their article discusses the business of creativity; investment in creative enterprise is likened to the stock market approach of buying low and selling high. In this case, buying low means pursuing ideas that are unknown or least slightly out of favour but with growth potential. This is risky because not every creative idea is a good investment. Selling high means finding buyers for one’s work and convincing them of its worth then moving on to new projects when it becomes valued and yields a significant return.

However, they identified the pursuit of creativity as an investment. They acknowledged the obvious problem of tunnel vision where there is a focus on creative thinking and a disrespectful neglect of the combination of 6 different but interrelated resources required for creativity in the individual and the organization. These resources are represented by knowledge, intellectual ability, thinking styles, personality, motivation and the environment.

Knowledge is referenced in terms of the individual who gets acquainted enough with their field so that they do not reinvent the wheel. The trend is that creativity is domain specific so being knowledgeable would help the individual to advance in their field. Although moderation is key as too much knowledge enables a mind that is closed and oblivious to connecting dots especially of unrelated things. On the other hand, less knowledge challenges the individual to see the changes, chances and opportunities that await problem solving.

Organizations can treat with this knowledge resource when they adopt long term perspectives in giving a person time to develop their knowledge acquisition. Also they can try not to overweigh criticisms by senior employees in creative proposal evaluations. Senior employees are too knowledgeable and tend to be rigid in thinking and have an intolerance to change. Their criticism sounds more intelligent and confident even when they are wrong.

The second resource is for an individual is their intellectual abilities. The article defines this as generating, evaluating and executing ideas through the synthetic ability to see connections and define problems. Only when the creatives have practiced this synthetic ability enough to generate more ideas to evaluate then can they move on to analytic ability. It is here that judgement of the value of an idea and its potential return is analyzed. Next creative individuals move on to the practical ability where they figure out a way to present their idea to the target audience that sees the same value as they do and find the steps to implement the idea. These abilities are somewhat independent of each other with synthetic and practical abilities more often overlooked.

Organizations exploring Intellectual abilities need to determine the right ratio of mixing synthetic, analytic and practical intellectual abilities. It is even more critical to know which phase requires more investment of a certain ability than the other. At the idea generation phase, the synthetic ability is important. After the ideas have been generated and the company has decided upon which to pursue then they can begin to bring forward more of the analytic intellectual ability. Once the most promising ideas have been selected it is time to shift members to apply high practical ability to implement the ideas.

Individual thinking styles matter as they are the preference for thinking in a novel way of one’s own choosing. Style is whether and how one uses their ability rather habits or practice with a particular intellectual ability. People prefer to do things their own way when they choose an inventing style. The implementing style is endorsed by people who follow an established way of doing things. They implement the ideas of others rather than invent it. The evaluating style rears its ugly head where people enjoy observing, analyzing and criticizing what others do.

In organizations thinking style preference is aligned with reward structure. The organization prefers an implementation versus an investment style. The norm is that employees are rewarded for the implementing style of following orders or the evaluating style of finding flaws in people’s work. Creativity as an investment is stifled unless managers can address this by adopting an inventing style. They use the style and become the example of the style. Allowing an employee to do their job their way versus the manager’s way influences them to use an inventing style. When the employee gets rewarded for this inventive style it encourages others to use it.

An individual’s motivation is consistent with making a move and having fun. Motivation is an investment in being responsible for converting an idea into an action. It involves building up necessary knowledge to make a creative contribution dependent on years of constant experimentation, revision, discarding and playing versus passive learning.

Organizations seeking to nurture the resource of motivation in their creative enterprise need to understand that people will only invest their time in pursuits they enjoy. Anita Roddick suggests that in order to encourage creativity in a project is “to have fun working on it, put love where labour is, go in the opposite direction to others.” Matt Weinstein believes, “the company that plays together stays together.” Playfulness in work is not to be underestimated because it helps to mix the things employees see before them so that they can form new combinations. There is strong evidence that suggests a direct relationship between job satisfaction and productivity where happier people are more effective at decision making and personal negotiations.

The creative individual’s personality in creativity as an investment for the creative enterprise is the sum of determination and persistence in overcoming obstacles. Creativity requires a risk taking personality by people who can take a stand, be a contrarian and buy low when they defy the crowd to stand on their own. Risk takers can relax knowing that risks are minimized by other creative capital resources like the aforementioned knowledge, intellectual abilities, thinking styles, motivating/persistence and the environment.

In the organization, it is important to have a diversity in personalities on staff. The ones who have their own way of doing things?that are far from conventional are the ones that should not be overlooked but included. These are the people who can accurately see the variety outside of the organizations. They are able to make connections and innovation.

The creative individual’s environment entails the investment game and risk spreading. Generally, people are risk averse when they choose between potential gains. They become risk seeking when they must choose between potential losses. People fear change and like what is most familiar to them. Creative ideas involve risk that can seem too great and or contradict what is known to be true. People are fixated with negativity bias. These same people who criticize are perceived as more intelligent than idea generators. Naturally, this influences decision makers to be dismissive of idea generators. Some companies try to counteract this with brainstorming to promote idea generation versus criticism. Research has been proven to be inefficient in face to face meetings where idea generation did not multiply.

Organizations with an interest in creativity as an investment need to consider risk management for the creative and the company. Companies investing in creative people need to spread their risk the same way as venture capitalists who invest in high risk investments. They do not invest the entire fund in one project nor do they promise their investors that every investment will be a winner. Although, the majority of investments incur loss this is offset with a few huge big winners. Rosabeth Moss Kanter believes creativity does not derive from order but from attempt to impose order where it does not exist to make new connections and facilitate innovation. She asserts that uncertainty creates opportunities and enhance creativity and leads to successful products in organizations that are able to manage chaotic environments.

Source:

Sternberg, Robert J., et al. “Creativity as Investment.” California Management Review, vol. 40, no. 1, 1997, pp. 8–21., https://doi.org/10.2307/41165919.?