Making Sense of Communities

Welcome back Humantific readers. Summer winds down and early autumn is arriving in NYC! This week a short post sharing a response to a creativity related question that popped up on LinkedIn recently, asked of me:

"GK VanPatter ?- I keep seeing text in journal articles from various authors where they say something like, for example: "...choosing foresight, design, or creative methods and tools...I have a question, is Design different from Creative in your experience?"?

Happy to share my brief response: Short answer would be big YES! The English language contains only so many words and often the same words seem to be used for different things but generally speaking the way we make sense of the picture is to first think of communities, their histories, their knowledge, their approach, etc.?

At the same time we understand that each communities knowledge is always in motion being advanced and recombined constantly. In our Humantific practice we work across multiple communities and are particularly interested in methodologies.

While the term “creative” can be applied to a vast body of knowledge inclusive of art it was around the early 1950s that some smart folks in Buffalo saw need to narrow the aperture in their emerging community to what they termed Applied Creativity, which was fundamentally Creative Problem Solving, often referred to today as CPS. So lets note there was a two-step dance shift there…not just "problem solving"…not just "creativity".

The roots of that communities history and how it plays itself out in terms of methods is an entire conversation unto itself….very different from design. CPS tends to have not only different roots but very different approaches, assumptions, starting points, values, challenge framing, early pioneers and process development milestones including notions of inclusion.

Some years later in a parallel universe, originally rooted in craft, came the 1960s design methods movement, as some in that community saw need to drive towards more robust and sharable methods. Much of that methods related R&D work in that era was done without much understanding that CPS was already underway. We later termed this the Buffalo/Berkeley Divide.?

Other communities that arrived later such as soft systems thinking, foresight, so called anthro-design etc, all have their own histories, strengths and weaknesses etc. Most would claim to be creative, no doubt. Later still came Agile, etc…late arrivals to the innovation party so to speak and this continues to unfold.?

Somewhat oddly Design Thinking was an invention intended to drive much needed change in behind-the-times graduate business school education and in the business community…not the design community in which it actually had the opposite effect, blocking meaningful design education change for a decade. Why admit to need for change when Design Thinking is selling like hot-cakes…:-)?Much of graduate design education fell into that hole and some parts of it at least, are just now beginning to see need for climbing out.?

One upshot is that today not all designerly practices are teaching "Design Thinking Workshops". Some including Humantific have for some years (a decade +) been teaching new combinations of skills imported from multiple communities with the weaknesses of design acknowledged and left behind.?Part of this approach is to leave behind old school notions that there is a special group in the organization called "The Creatives"as today we recognize that can take many forms.

Its a little tricky to understand/appreciate that some in the community subscribe to the notion that everyone has the capacity to be creative….but not to the notion that everyone is a designer…at least not a professional design person.?

Not everyone believes that deep design is a set of skills that can simply be taught in workshop form. That does not mean human adults cannot be taught other ways to participate in cross-disciplinary innovation and changemaking. There are ways to get to inclusive innovation without insisting that everyone is a designer. Many are looking to bolt new strategic sensemaking and changemaking skills unto their existing toolsets.

If creativity is an a lemon, CPS is an orange and design is tomato. Perhaps most important is that todays forward advancing innovation enabling practices are already creating/using hybrid Lemon/Orange/Tomato/Rabbit/Helicopter combos to better address perceived rising complexity of organizational and societal challenges. Many different combos and flavors now exist.

An added complexity is that this is all occurring while what a designer is and does is changing from Design Arena 1 & 2 to Design Arena 3 and 4. Many changes are occurring simultaneously so this is our own community complexity.

Hope this is helpful.

Have a good week all.

End.

UPDATE: Sept 19, 2022: Someone asked me if creativity is a lemon, CPS is an orange and design is a tomato, what is design thinking? I would say design thinking, is the skin of a cherry sized tomato ....different in size, depth, texture, purpose, range and applicability from what design is intended to be...and is hopefully becoming . Lets not let the many issues with design thinking distract from the need to rethink, reimagine design methods for more robust application to complex contexts.

*For the purposes of clarity a few sentences have been added to the original post.

Published Previously:

Humantific: Innovation Methods Movement in Context?

Humantific: Design Thinking is Creative Problem Solving: Truth or Fiction?

Humantific: Understanding Deeper Creativity