
People Don’t Actually Like Creativity - wikiburner
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/12/creativity_is_rejected_teachers_and_bosses_don_t_value_out_of_the_box_thinking.html
======
simonsarris
John Cleese (of Monty Python fame) gave a lecture on this topic, which I think
is pertinent if you want to consider some solutions to this problem:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU5x1Ea7NjQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU5x1Ea7NjQ)

(I posted it to HN almost a year ago, but it got no upvotes then, though I
think it is excellent and merits its own discussion so we don't derail this
article's comments too much, so here's a repost:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6862219](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6862219))

He gives several pointers on how work environments could foster creativity if
they wanted to, but also weighs the merits of both "open" and "closed"
thinking. I thought it fascinating, and a good breakdown of "being creative"
versus "getting things done", and the environment needed for each.

I definitely prefer written articles to videos, but I do think the video has a
lot of merit for anyone interested in this topic. It has a lot more actionable
advice than this Slate article.

~~~
hsitz
"It has a lot more actionable advice than this Slate article."

I enjoyed the talk, but I don't really see how actionable the advice is. Or,
rather, I think it's either wrong or what he says is incomplete. As he sets
things up creativity is unleashed in sessions where you have "open" mind and
you do the more mundane work in sessions with "closed" mind.

This bifurcation, at least as he sets it up with (e.g., "set aside at least 1
1/2 hours for your open mind session"), doesn't really fit with how creativity
gets expressed. In many endeavors -- e.g., music, acting, sports -- the
opportunity for creativity comes about only because of huge amounts of
practice, in which the endeavor is developed to a point where it becomes
second nature. Then, when placed in a situation where you have to perform,
creativity comes out. I can't see how this fits with the process of switching
from open mind to closed mind, as Cleese describes it.

I also have problems when I think of how creativity comes out in process of
writing, whether it's writing fiction, non-fiction, or software. This process
of getting work done is much more fluid than Cleese describes. People don't
brainstorm for ideas for an hour or two, then sit down to do the mundane work.
The work gets done in sessions that are better described by the concept of
"flow", where if you still want to use Cleese's concepts of "open mind" and
"closed mind" then it is best said that you drift frequently perhaps
imperceptibly between the two.

Cleese's characterization in the talk is much more like brainstorming, where
you just ponder, daydream, think things up, for an hour or two to find a right
"answer", then go to work with "closed mind" implementing your answer. That
doesn't seem to me to be how creativity happens, at least not for wide variety
of different "creative" endeavors. Creativity comes out when you're in the
flow, getting work done in single long session that is not characterizable as
an "open mind session" or "closed mind session".

~~~
nardi
Where you are missing the point is that in those endeavors you mention—music,
acting, sports—the activity IS play. Playing is what you are expected to be
doing, and you actually practice at it. (Source: I majored in acting and
music.)

Certainly Cleese is more interested in the creativity of ideas, especially
writing, but his requirements for creativity (space, time, time, confidence,
humor) apply to anything.

~~~
analog31
Math, science, and programming, are also play. ;-)

------
vezzy-fnord
This is a very old observation and in fact, the suppression of creativity and
individualism is one of the key goals of the compulsory schooling system.

From John D. Rockefeller, Sr.'s General Education Board, _Occasional Papers
No. 1_ , 1913:

"In our dreams, we have limitless resources and the people yield themselves
with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present education conventions
fade from their minds, and unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will
upon a grateful and responsive rural folk. We shall not try to make these
people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning, or men
of science.

We have not to raise up from among them authors, editors, poets or men of
letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians nor
lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have an ample
supply…The task we set before ourselves is very simple as well as a very
beautiful one, to train these people as we find them to a perfectly ideal life
just where they are. So we will organize our children and teach them to do in
a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect
way, in the homes, in the shops and on the farm."

~~~
codingdave
It may not be new, but in regard to education in particular, it is worth
repeating loudly and often. I work in the educational governance arena, and am
exposed to many discussions that go on at the school district administration
level.

It is very popular to talk about improving creativity in education. Many
educational leaders recognize the issue. But at the same time there are even
more discussions about Common Core standards and other ways to standardize
education. Sometimes both conversations come from the same people.

I was at a conference this fall, with two session at the same time, in rooms
right next to each other -- one promoting why the Common Core is the greatest
thing ever, the other denouncing it. Both sessions were equally full, and both
sessions got the worst reviews of the entire conference, mostly because the
people are so conflicted about how to deal with innovation and creativity vs
standardization.

It is a problem that is easy to identify, but much more difficult to fix.
People are trying. For example, Khan academy is a great resource for
independent learning, but even their elementary math lessons are categorized
by traditional grade levels.

The best solution I have to improve creativity in the American educational
system is to educate the parents. Make sure that all parents are aware of the
issues, and make sure that all parents know that the education of their
children is not in the hand of their local school district, but in their own
hands. They need to understand the pros and cons of all schooling options, and
make the right decisions for their children, and include their children in
those discussions when they get old enough.

I know this is a huge tangent away from the original article, but this strikes
a bit of a nerve with me, and I agree with you that education is an arena in
which the issue of creativity is vitally important, probably moreso than in
the workplace.

~~~
yongjik
People want to believe they are special snowflakes and the "system" is holding
them down. Have you ever heard anyone say "I wanted to be a dancer, thank god
the teachers were more interested in teaching me quadratic functions, which is
how I ended up being an accountant now, because it turned out I sucked at
dancing!"

If school systems are so inherently broken, how come all the economically
successful countries have public school systems that go on for years? It's the
same tired argument as "Capitalism is inherently evil." Yeah, maybe, except
that no other system was shown to be better.

~~~
Frozenlock
An accountant using quadratic functions?

I would guess that the most advanced math people use in their daily lives is
cross-multiplication.

That is also true for what is usually considered _math heavy_ fields.

I've studied in mechanical engineering. I've never __EVER __seen anyone use
calculus to solve their problem in the real world.

~~~
sigkill
I have studied Mechanical Engineering as well, and I, on the other hand see
plenty of opportunities to use things taught in ME in real life. Might be as
simple as "How safe is this plank for me to walk on" (bending moment) to "It's
strange that there are cold pockets in this room, what's the optimum
positioning of a flow mixer".

But we don't generally think even for a second. People just take a 'common
sense approach' to most things, which while good enough for a large set of
applications breaks down in many cases. And come on, you're an engineer, you
should try to get the optimum solution possible. Obviously, I'm not pointing
to you directly but to people in general.

And yes, I do know that there's analysis paralysis situation as well, but a
good engineer know where that line is, and to stop just before that line.

------
crazygringo
Except that, most creative ideas are bad.

Like the famous observation about Churchill: "His chief of staff Alan Brooke
complained that every day Churchill had 10 ideas, only one of which was good
-- and he did not know which one."

And when I think of product meeting's I've sat in on... generally 90% of the
"creative" ideas would be complete disasters. And a lot of the remaining 10%
_might_ be good, but the work involved in figuring that out for sure would
often be prohibitive, for an unclear payoff. But occasionally you get a gem
that everyone gets excited about.

I would say that people _do_ like creativity, but only when it's clear that
the particular creative solution will likely work. Which is generally not the
case.

And if people went chasing every plausible creative idea, we wouldn't have
time for anything else, like normal productivity. That's why it's a very
difficult balance to get right.

~~~
dmazin
You are demanding something you're just not going to get. You want it to be
clear that a solution will work. Next you'll say you want market research.
Next you'll say you want to test 42 shades of blue.

This is why it's important for an idea to be distilled into something that can
be tried without much investment, so that a lot of ideas can be tried and that
you'll stumble onto something great. Larger ideas usually end up being tried
through force or by going behind somebody's back, and that's probably how
it'll stay.

~~~
roberthahn
Yeah, I don't know.

Look, You're close. I think the process of trying out ideas is poorly
understood by most people, and based on the way you wrote this, even yourself.
You touched on it a bit - "distilling ideas into something that can be tried
without much investment". That's the gem.

This is what you're supposed to do with an idea:

* Identify the hypotheses that make it work.

* Identify which hypothesis is the most critical one - if that one fails, then you know the idea isn't going to work. It's fair to say that an idea depends on 2 or more hypotheses - the key here is to identify the critical ones.

* Finally, figure out how to fail each critical hypothesis as fast (and as cheap) as you can. There is always a way. If you can't fail it, then you got something good. You don't need market research. You don't need the assurance the idea will work. Just test the hypothesis.

What about testing the non-critical hypotheses? You'll get to them. Failing
those doesn't mean the idea should be thrown out, only that you need to adjust
the idea to take your new knowledge into account.

That's it, really†. I'm using this process to build my own business, and it's
working out extremely well. I've thrown out tons of bad ideas and got some
great traction on the good ones. The scientific discipline to testing the
ideas is the key.

†I lied. There's one more step: keep track of your critical hypotheses -
that's your business intelligence. You can use them to validate future ideas.

(edit: formatting)

~~~
dmazin
So what's the part of the process that I understand poorly? I'd like to know,
so I can improve.

Honestly, we agree.

~~~
roberthahn
Perhaps I should have replied to the grandparent comment :-)

I was reacting to this part: "Larger ideas usually end up being tried through
force or by going behind somebody's back, and that's probably how it'll stay."

My impression was that you appeared to believe this is the only way to do
things. I was hoping to suggest that it doesn't have to be. Re-reading your
post again, I see better what you're trying to say.

~~~
dmazin
Oh, right. I'm sorry.

I think there are some ideas that cannot be broken down and you really do have
to be reckless to try them - they deserved a mention because otherwise my
comment was too general. They're dangerous but they're also important for
progress.

------
jerf
In general, things that we are constantly reminding each other of are things
that we either do not naturally believe and thus need constant reminding of,
or things we do not really believe (which can be determined by looking at our
actions). The things we all already know and believe, we never even talk
about. We know and agree, what would be the point?

For another example (and my, did I have to search for one that was politically
neutral...), consider how often we're telling ourselves here on HN that
procrastination is bad. If we want to believe that, we need constant reminding
of it, constant reminding to carefully consider our real priorities, or our
actions will betray our true priorities, which aren't whatever we want or
think them to be.

By contrast, consider how often we debate whether the best way to learn
programming is by doing it, (exclusive) or by studying it. We might discuss
the _best_ way to learn by doing, but virtually no one really believes
programming is best learned by extensive study before one is even permitted a
REPL. (And anyone who pops up here and claims they believe that I will assume
is being contrarian for contrariness' sake. Do take note of my "exclusive"
there; of course there's a place for study, but even in formal studies there's
no reason not to have the student in front of a compiler/interpreter on day
one, or lab day one anyhow.)

~~~
the_af
Disclaimer: I am definitely being contrarian here and do not necessarily
advocate Dijkstra's position.

In Dijkstra's essay "On the cruelty of really teaching computer science",
posted here multiple times, he states:

"Right from the beginning, and all through the course, we stress that the
programmer's task is not just to write down a program, but that his main task
is to give a formal proof that the program he proposes meets the equally
formal functional specification. While designing proofs and programs hand in
hand, the student gets ample opportunity to perfect his manipulative agility
with the predicate calculus. Finally, in order to drive home the message that
this introductory programming course is primarily a course in formal
mathematics, we see to it that the programming language in question has not
been implemented on campus so that students are protected from the temptation
to test their programs. And this concludes the sketch of my proposal for an
introductory programming course for freshmen."

(Do read his guesses about how his suggestion would be attacked and ridiculed.
Reasons he obviously didn't agree with).

~~~
jerf
I wish we could consult a Dijkstra of today. He faced radically different
costs of sitting a student in front of a computer. His opinions might change
if he could do what we do today, both simultaneously, for what might as well
be "free".

As I said, study still has its place, do not get me wrong, but I see no reason
to hold the student back from a compiler/REPL even as we are formally
educating them.

------
mathattack
Two observations...

One is general - that other people imposing their creativity on me requires me
to think. This isn't bad, but I have a limited capacity to think, and my bias
leads me to think that my new ideas are great, and yours aren't. This is an
oversimplification, but if everything changed all the time, we couldn't cope.
Some people reject all creativity as a result. Others just put up filters.

Second is just practical career advice. Someone at a large company once told
me, "People around here talk about diversity and innovation, but what they
really want is people doing the same things just a little cheaper, a little
faster, and a little more predictably."

This isn't to say that Change is bad, only that there is lots of resistance
with semi-rational reasoning behind it.

------
mdakin
I call these anti-creative people of the world who work to hold the world of
humanity fixed in one conceptual place/time "The Lords of the Status Quo."
These "lords" are great in number, but always individually weak. This group
somehow combined forces with "The Lords of Hierarchy"\-- those who built and
currently inhabit the hierarchal social structures that last throughout time
(e.g. Corporations, Religions, Governments). That combined force is the most
powerful abstract entity that I know of on this planet, and has somehow
managed to impose its collective will over everyone on this planet. (Drone
strikes, anyone?) If you want to understand the combined group you want to
understand "Slave Morality." They are all something like Slaves. The creatives
are best understood using "Hero Morality." I can't wait until this world's
"Slaves" finally free themselves. I am generally an anti-Nietzsche thinker and
I believe his ideas should be taken with a huge handful of salt, but I think
the Hero/Slave archetypes actually do explain a lot about this (effed up)
world.

------
normloman
Copywriter here.

Sometimes clients ask me to create slogans for their company. I screw around
for a bit, generate a list of maybe 25 slogans, then present them with the 5
best.

I always have a favorite out of the bunch. A slogan that's so memorable,
because it's so out of the ordinary. One that gets to the point, and really
delivers the benefit of the client's product. And that slogan never gets
picked. Business owners are afraid to stick out. So they pick the most tame
slogan from the bunch.

Example: A web design company wanted to target a display ad to small
businesses without websites. I wrote the ad with the headline: "If you're not
online, you don't exist." Client changed this to "If you don't have a good
website, we can help."

Most people don't know what they like, or they are afraid to admit it. So
instead, they pick the same thing everyone else is doing. It simplifies making
decisions. No feelings, no uncertainty. Just a quick Google of your
competitors to see what they do.

~~~
ritchiea
I have one of those awful people as a client right now. We spent hours with a
truly fantastic marketer (and I don't throw that kind of praise around
lightly, especially in marketing), who not only helped us identify great copy,
but also helped us identify some broader values to give the company character.
I sat in that meeting with the 2 founders. We took notes, raved about the
meeting, had a bunch of great concrete stuff to move forward with.

A week later the CEO designed the startup's landing page. None of the good
stuff from the meeting was there, just a generic uninformative slogan and a
generic long parallax marketing page that doesn't tell anyone what the product
does. Sigh.

------
calinet6
People love creativity, as evidenced by our love of the results of creativity.

Our _systems_ however, are not set up to reward creativity.

Our systems at work, at school, and in life in general are set up to maintain
a status quo, to result in the least amount of risk possible (especially as
those systems become larger), and in general to reward predictability,
consistency, and obedience. All of which describe the opposite of creativity.

The reasons the systems are this way is due to our style of management,
primarily in the US. Carrot-and-stick styles, with emphasis on short-term
goals and comparison of employees to each other (bonuses for the top 5% etc)
result in short-term thinking styles and discourage creativity in the
workplace. Bonuses and employee evaluations also tend to focus on measurable
goals, and creativity is difficult to measure and difficult to quantify,
therefore it's optimized away. Just one of the many negative unintended
consequences of our default individual-focused reward-and-punish management
style.

Deming-style management process would likely fix this and encourage wider
thinking and creativity, with less of an individual focus. Read more and
spread the word:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming)

~~~
Brakenshire
> People love creativity, as evidenced by our love of the results of
> creativity.

I don't think this follows. Just because you like the result of a process,
doesn't mean you like the process. For instance, just because people use the
fruits of scientific and engineering processes, that doesn't mean they
actually think, or want to think, like scientists or engineers.

------
Pxtl
People like _results_. If you demonstrated good results in a creative fashion?
Then they like creativity. If you did it conventionally? They like that too.

The problem with the "creative" way is you have to go through the process of
eliminating all the bad ideas again, which the conventional approach has
already done. But the ideas are the _fun_ part.

Being creative means producing lots of bad ideas that nobody wants to deal
with. Dragging unwilling participants through your creative process of
throwing out all the bad ideas? That's your dirty work. That's housekeeping
and laundry. The few good new ideas? Prove them, then bring in others. Unless
somebody is paid to put up with your crap.

They laughed at Einstein, but the also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

~~~
wrongc0ntinent
Most of the comments so far, this one included, evade one aspect of creativity
in the sense of unconventional ideas. The risk associated with testing out a
truely original hypothesis is often greater than we can actually comprehend
even far into the experiment; but failure doesn't mean the hypothesis was
incorrect. We often speak of an idea "before its time", etc., - sadly, in
retrospect. These are the ideas we drown by not sharing the risk as a group,
ideas that could spare us great amounts of everything from discomfort to pain.

------
colmvp
"In the documentary The September Issue, Anna Wintour systematically rejects
the ideas of her creative director Grace Coddington, seemingly with no reason
aside from asserting her power."

Having watched it, t's entirely possible that they cut the explanatory bits to
frame Wintour as even more cold as she is in public persona. I wouldn't be
surprised.

But in any case, she's the Editor-in-Chief, which makes her the final filter.
She's goes a lot by her hunch which is based on taste, a palette that
revitalized Vogue and kept it relevant in the fashion industry. Taste is hard
to justify.

In such cases, I don't think it's so much about people not digging creativity
so much as the idea isn't there. That's just part of being creative. Sometimes
you think you're doing interesting work and it's actually not as good as you
think it is.

------
simonsquiff
Reminds me of Shanks law: "Because people understand by finding in their
memories the closest possible match to what they are hearing and use that
match as the basis of comprehension, any new idea will be treated as a variant
of something the listener has already thought of or heard. Agreement with a
new idea means a listener has already had a similar thought and well
appreciates that the speaker has recognized his idea. Disagreement means the
opposite. Really new ideas are incomprehensible. The good news is that for
some people, failure to comprehend is the beginning of understanding. For
most, of course, it is the beginning of dismissal."

------
JamesArgo
Let's suppose everyone is behaving relativity rationally. How could we explain
this? One obvious suggestion: the average value of a "creative" idea is less
than that of a inside-the-box idea. Though the peek value of a "creative" idea
can be tremendous, most "creative" ideas are of negative utility, similar to
how most mutations decrease fitness, even though most increases in fitness are
caused by mutations. Though all earth-shattering ideas are creative, perhaps
all creative ideas aren’t earth-shattering and, on average, one is better off
thinking inside the box.

~~~
colomon
Let me amplify your point with a specific, personal example. I write Irish
traditional-style dance tunes, reels & jigs, mostly. I think I do a pretty
decent job of it. (Of course, I might be wrong about this -- certainly there
are loads of bad, creative ideas! Assume for the moment, though, that I
actually am okay at it.)

As far as I know, the number of people who can play even one of the tunes I've
written can be counted on your fingers. It might take only one hand. Like so
many things, there are strong network effects in Irish tunes. Most of the
musicians want to play with other people; so there is limited incentive to
learn a tune that almost no-one else knows. When you do want to learn
something novel, there are literally thousands of obscure tunes to choose
from, with more being written every day. And of course, since my tunes have
not been professionally recorded, only a very limited number of people have
ever been exposed to them; mostly close friends and a few people who heard me
get up the nerve to play them in a bar somewhere.

What I'm trying to get at here is this is all perfectly reasonable. If you
looked at it from a narrow focus on me, then you could certainly say that
creative ideas are being ignored. But if you look at it from a broader
perspective, you'd be wrong to conclude that all those musicians don't like
creativity. Most of them are looking for something new to play. There's just
no compelling reason it should be my tune.

------
seiji
A wise man once said:

 _when you have a flabby culture of consensus that rejects those who offend
the few, that’s exactly what you’re going to get: risk-minimizers, not
excellence-maximizers. It’s generally agreed upon that some people are too
creative, too interesting, to succeed in typical human organizations because
of that specific effect._

~~~
Adrock
That's a quote from here:

[https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/tag/corporate-
behavior/](https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/tag/corporate-behavior/)

Why not include a link to the source or even the author's actual name?

------
njharman
I don't know how most people define creativity. The author seems to be
equating creativity with independent, non-conformist risk takers. Which is not
how I'd define creativity, but maybe that is what makes people "creative".

------
Millennium
People generally want to be convinced of an idea's value before implementing
it, and this is reasonable. For tested and tried ideas, this value is
generally a known quantity, or at least one that can be estimated reasonably
well. As long as that value is high, convincing people to do it is relatively
easy: it's mostly a matter of presenting that value in ways they'll accept.

For untried (i.e. "creative") ideas, this is much harder. Further complicating
the process is that the creators of ideas inevitably place a very high
intrinsic value on them. There are many reasons for this, but a lot of them
are tied into the ego, either directly ("I had this idea, so it's good") or
indirectly ("This idea reinforces beliefs I hold, or advances a cause I favor,
or lets me practice my favored hobbies, or may answer a question I'm
personally curious about, etc., therefore it is good"). Other people just
plain don't find these ego-tied arguments compelling, nor really should they,
and so they cloud the process of convincing people to go along with a new
idea.

It would seem, then, that the trick is to remove one's ego from the convincing
process, and argue solely based on what's left. But the ego still complicates
things. Even when more observer-independent arguments can be found, they never
shine as brightly in the eyes of the creator as the ego-tied ones, and so it
feels like you're selling it short: not something creatives like to do, and
for obvious reasons. Worse, though, are the many ideas that just plain don't
have many (or even any) arguments that don't tie straight back into one's own
ego. No one else will ever be convinced to go alongside these, but to attack
them is to attack the creator's ego, leading to accusations of sour grapes and
headlines like "People don't actually like creativity."

~~~
trustfundbaby
This is true and more important than it sounds. There is also the problem that
a lot of people think that they will have to invest a lot in an idea to see if
it will work which means that unless something sounds completely brilliant,
there will always be friction to try it.

This IMO is what causes creativity to not respected, because people try to use
their opinions or common sense to evaluate ideas (because of the perceived
high cost of actually evaluating ideas by implementing them) instead of
relying on cold hard data. We know is that a good number of the best ideas
start out sounding really silly at first, if not they would already exist
(right?) So it stands to reason that people would scoff at creative ideas
because they would generally not "make sense" to the average person.

That is why it is important to come up with a process or culture that allows
you to _quickly_ run an idea through its paces, to validate or invalidate it
using data. Making it cheap to entertain ideas in the same way git makes it
easy to create and throw away branches.

I think that this is why you find that at the most innovative companies this
is exactly what happens, and as soon as this culture of quickly validating
ideas goes away, the company starts its slow decline.

------
swalsh
I consider myself a creative individual, mostly because my boss brings it up
in every review...

I think the thing a lot of "creative" people do is get too attached to ideas.
When you have that idea its a diamond. Sometimes its hard to tell that its
really just another rock. Of course sometimes ideas don't die. When that's
true, you just gotta do it. Find a way.

------
emhs
They're right that people don't like creativity or dissent. There was a good
post on Less Wrong about this [1], and about how the rejection of creativity,
the rejection of what to you, is blindingly obvious, is key in the break
between the creative person, the independent thinker, and their trust in
society's expectations and sanity [2]. Seeing the things that the established
process missed requires valuing finding a better idea more than how many
people you might piss off along the way. It make take several ideas to get
there, but you have to learn to reward your brain for producing ideas, and you
can't expect society to provide that reward. You have to produce that reward
all on your own, until you find the right idea and succeed with it. Then
everyone shuts up for a moment, before talking about how they knew you'd
figure it out all along, and they were starting to think in that direction
just the other day.

[1]
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/mb/lonely_dissent/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/mb/lonely_dissent/)
[2]
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/qf/no_safe_defense_not_even_science/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/qf/no_safe_defense_not_even_science/)

------
toddmorey
Catchy headline, but I feel it's an inaccurate generalization. From my
experience, there is a spectrum of people between two different viewpoints:
creative people who are energized by new ideas and non-creative people whose
default posture is to be skeptical about them.

Neither bias is either completely right or completely wrong. Most new ideas
fail, so it's healthy to know critics who can help counterbalance creative
enthusiasm and perhaps see potential pitfalls.

But new ideas—the right ones—are hugely valuable. I've heard creativity
described as a tolerance for the cognitive dissonance—that is, the natural
mental pain and discomfort—of combining unrelated or incongruent ideas. This
process likely bothers a skeptical person a lot more and they tire or
frustrate out earlier.

Less creative people can be difficult to brainstorm with because they don't
enjoy the process and want to "get to the answer." But creative people can be
difficult to execute with because seemingly everything at every moment is up
for reinvention.

The point here is that we need people on both ends of the spectrum and they
need to understand each other and the value they bring.

------
mcguire
I would really suggest reading the paper mentioned first in the article[1].
Although it has a good deal of the usual statistical ranting, it's short and
reasonably well-written. From the conclusion:

" _Our results show that regardless of how open minded people are, when they
feel motivated to reduce uncertainty either because they have an immediate
goal of reducing uncertainty, or feel uncertain generally, this may bring
negative associations with creativity to mind which result in lower
evaluations of a creative idea. Our findings imply a deep irony. Prior
research shows that uncertainty spurs the search for and generation of
creative ideas, yet our findings reveal that uncertainty also makes us less
able to recognize creativity, perhaps when we need it most._ "

The key finding is two-fold: in a normal, non-uncertain, state, creativity has
positive associations and is easier to recognize and assess. However, when
people attempt to deal with an excess of uncertainty, creative ideas have
negative associations.

That's something to think about the next time everything is on fire.

Oh, and the final bit is interesting:

" _In addition, our results suggest that if people have difficulty gaining
acceptance for creative ideas especially when more practical and unoriginal
options are readily available, the field of creativity may need to shift its
current focus from identifying how to generate more creative ideas to
identifying how to help innovative institutions recognize and accept
creativity._ "

[1]
[http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...](http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1457&context=articles)
[PDF]

------
hyp0
I've never seen a job ad for "idea people". Usually, idea people are made fun
of, like Michael Keaton's character in _Night Shift_
([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084412/quotes](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084412/quotes))
- or Scriber, in _A Fire Upon the Deep_
([http://books.google.com.au/books?id=uRjpxtbshBYC&lpg=PT110&o...](http://books.google.com.au/books?id=uRjpxtbshBYC&lpg=PT110&ots=aorLn0iZxN&dq=scriber%20%22a%20fire%20upon%20the%20deep%22%20that%20had%20always%20been%20his%20problem%20too&pg=PT110#v=onepage&q=scriber%20%22a%20fire%20upon%20the%20deep%22%20that%20had%20always%20been%20his%20problem%20too&f=false)).

    
    
      "[...] It's that, the actual doing, that's going slow."
      Scriber nodded knowingly. That had been the central problem in his life too.
    

The "big" problem is the space of ideas is huge, expanding exponentially, each
variation admitting many more ways of varying. And... the vast majority are no
good. So youth's easy enthusiasm for ideas quickly turn to caution, doubt,
ridicule, and they become bitter cynics before their time, getting very angry
with youth's easy enthusiasms.

The exception is an idea that actually has a verified concrete benefit. A
_good_ idea. But here, people don't care about the idea; but they care about
the benefit.

A common problem is when the greatest benefits of your wonderful idea are not
yet verifiable... the solution is to find (or work to create) some benefit -
perhaps much smaller than the dream - that _is_ concrete and verifiable. Then,
people will adopt it. Ideally, as time goes on, you can add more and more
benefits which comprise the dream til it is complete (or at least give you
time to work on making real your dream's benefits.)

------
Mikeb85
I think a lot of it comes down to the way societies have evolved, and our
'survival' function. We don't want to risk our limited resources and time on
ideas that, more than likely, will yield nothing.

Furthermore, a lot of 'creative people' are just hipsters that use it as a
crutch to never get anything productive done. I mean, shit like this isn't a
particularly great expression of creativity:
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/63/Robert_D...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/63/Robert_Delaunay,_1913,_Premier_Disque,_134_cm,_52.7_inches,_Private_collection.jpg/260px-
Robert_Delaunay,_1913,_Premier_Disque,_134_cm,_52.7_inches,_Private_collection.jpg)

We should encourage creativity, but also temper it with realism. While the
life of the 'starving artist' is alluring, it's really not all that...

------
overdrivetg
"If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats."
\- Howard Aiken

I suspect many here can relate.

------
jgeada
I heard somewhere an interesting distillation of creativity: \- if something
is _obviously_ a good idea, it would already be the way things are done.

Creativity largely ends up coming up with good approaches that are not
immediately obviously good and, in that respect it is inherently difficult to
tease apart the good ideas from the bad ideas.

------
analog31
An observation about the article is the frequent mention of risk. What's risk?
It's the chance that something will go wrong. If risk is how we formally
define it, then a ten million dollar idea with a 90% chance of failure is
worth a million. This suggests a potential gap between the innovator's view of
their own idea, and its actual value. On the other hand, a dullard who comes
up with a million dollar idea that's demonstrably risk free, has delivered
equal value.

What happens when the innovator presents the ten million dollar idea to a room
full of dullards? After several such episodes in succession, they've persuaded
themselves that the dullards hate innovation.

Blaming people for being risk-averse isn't good enough. There has to be
something else going on, such as a gap between perceived risk and real risk,
that influences both innovators and dullards.

------
jnorthrop
If an organization really wants to embrace creativity it also has to embrace
failure. A large percentage of creative solutions--stuff that is "out-of-the-
box," unique and innovative--are likely not to work. If the organization is
risk adverse, it will never truly embrace creativity.

------
drawkbox
I agree with this, it is mainly people's plight against change.

Don't ask for approval for creativity, noone will let you. Do it and ask for
forgiveness later. If you are waiting for approval for creativity you are
doing it wrong.

This is the same problem that plagues big companies who had a large market
share, without creativity/prototypes/new innovations those companies are dead.
The people in those companies are shut down when asking for approval. See the
pirate flag days at Apple and what Steve Jobs had to go through for a high
level at what happens, even if you start the company they won't let you be
creative without a fight.

The very definition of creativity is thinking different and with that comes
resistance.

------
chacham15
“I even say, ‘I’ll do the work. Just give me the go ahead and I’ll do it
myself,’”

That's the difference between a leader and a follower: if you strongly believe
that you are indeed correct, work on the system on your own time and then you
either learn a valuable lesson that youre not as "good" as you think you are
or you teach the others a valuable lesson that you're better than they think
you are. This way people who are good will become leaders and have a better
say in what goes on and people who are not will learn and one day be good. The
shame is in the people who are good, but remain inactive because they dont
figure out if they are actually correct and neither does the management.

------
jaimebuelta
Creativity (substitute it by change if you prefer) is only interesting if it
produces better results (by whatever definition of "better" that applies to
the area).

Creative people will produce a lot of meh stuff/crap for each interesting
output. Environments that promote creativity are easy on mistakes/failed
outcomes, because they know that, at some point, it will produce something
interesting. Will be 1/100th of the times, but it will be worth it. But most
of the people assumes that, just because someone is creative, all the stuff
will be awesome. And that's simply not possible. With no patience, there can't
be any creativity. And very few people is patient.

~~~
polskibus
It's not just about quality, the throughput also can vary. Doing something new
every time, means you will most likely not do it as fast as a person already
skilled in the same topic.

------
rswai
Normal people (none of who are on hacker news ofcourse :p) tend to be scared
of change, because change is 'different'. Little do they know that there
really is no such thing as 'different' when it comes to your personality
because the moment people start classifying you as different then you've
actually started acting upon and becoming the real you! You've stopped being
what they want you to be. Sadly enough most people in the world live in
denial,suppressing their capabilities thus most partnerships formed by a group
of 'conformists'. I guess it explains why we're still light years behind any
real WORLD development.

------
dredmorbius
Reading _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_ again, Pirsig hits on this
among other themes:

 _Schools teach you to imitate. If you don 't imitate what the teacher wants
you to get you get a bad grade. Here in college, it was more sophisticated, of
course; you were supposed to imitate the teacher in such a way as to convince
the teacher you were not imitating but taking the essence of the instruction
and going ahead with it on your own. That got you A's. Originality on the
other hand could get you anything --- from A to F. The whole grading system
cautioned against it._

The book of course is all about Quality, Creativity, and Innovation. Highly
recommended.

------
the_cat_kittles
Another simple reason I think lots of people don't like creativity: It is an
affront to tradition. Lots of people subconsciously (or otherwise) think you
are arrogant for thinking you can improve on the status quo.

------
spiritplumber
Heh, about the part where it goes “I even say, ‘I’ll do the work. Just give me
the go ahead and I’ll do it myself,’ ” she says. “But they won’t, and so the
system stays less efficient.”

I get that at least once a month. What I generally do now is tell people "You
are wrong" when I'm told no. This has caused a few surreal situations (one was
a bunch of NASA guys listening to a presentation on how Widget T was badly
behind schedule and needed a lot of work done, with the first production batch
of working Widget Ts in a heap on the conference table).

------
johnohara
It's important to distinguish the difference between elegant design and
creativity.

Elegant design is often easy to recognize and appreciate. We celebrate its
creativity and thought because it "looks right" and "feels familiar."

But true creativity is abrasive, uncomfortable, and many times, divisive. It
doesn't often look right or feel familiar, especially when it comes from
persons or sources not easily understood.

Which is why it struggles in environments where the goal is to stay focused on
the task at hand.

------
danielharan
What circular rot: because creative people have historically faced rejection,
that rejection is good, because you'll need it.

"Perhaps for some people, the pain of rejection is like the pain of training
for a marathon—training the mind for endurance. Research shows you’ll need it.
Truly creative ideas take a very long time to be accepted. The better the
idea, the longer it might take. Even the work of Nobel Prize winners was
commonly rejected by their peers for an extended period of time."

------
gwern
> Unfamiliar things are distrusted and hard to process, overly familiar things
> are boring, and the perfect object of beauty lies somewhere in between
> (Sluckin, Hargreaves, & Colman, 1983)...

(More details in
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/i0b/open_thread_july_1622_2013/9f1o](http://lesswrong.com/lw/i0b/open_thread_july_1622_2013/9f1o)
)

------
mrcactu5
some people are very creative but can't get things done

other people are not very creative but move things over.

in order to achieve that result that everyone appreciates, there is usually
some technical detail we have to work through that nobody else cares about or
understands. anyone who is both creative and wants to do stuff has to work
through that lonely period.

------
anigbrowl
_Though her company initially hired her for her problem-solving skills, she is
regularly unable to fix actual problems because nobody will listen to her
ideas._

So true. Half (or maybe more) of being successful as a creative person is
learning to play politics and sell your ideas.

------
liotier
"Here’s to the crazy ones. The rebels. The troublemakers. The ones who see
things differently. Please do it somewhere else and just give us the benefits
once you are established" \- Steve Jobs (the quote usually truncates the last
sentence)

------
rumcajz
Consider how hard is it to push through a "sane" solution in corporate
environment. "Creative" solution is out of question.

------
Ideka
Relevant: [http://youtu.be/9C_HReR_McQ](http://youtu.be/9C_HReR_McQ)

------
ffrryuu
Because they are the trouble makers. Now get back in line and do your work as
you are told!

------
j2kun
Who says that creativity implies risk? This article treats the two as
equivalent.

------
plumeria
This reminds me of The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand...

------
asiekierka
I wish I were creative.

~~~
nickthemagicman
Everyone is creative...it's what propelled human beings out of the woods as a
successful species. It's the defining characteristic of humans. We're not big
animals, you think we would have survived all the large predators if we
weren't creative or be able to populate all regions and adapt to any
environment if we weren't creative.

You are creative, trust me, you're the result of millions of years of hyper
creative areas of brain specialization however current culture has convinced
you other wise.

------
michaelochurch
I suppose what has happened to my HN account (artificially high latency, aka
"slowbanning", and personal penalties in comment placement, aka "rankbanning")
proves this. If you actually challenge VC-istan (as opposed to Graham-esque
incremental improvements) on its moral fundamentals, you've gone too far.

More generally, creativity (in particular, I'll focus on social humor) has a
status effect. Let's put social status on a scale from -1.0 to 1.0. Below 0.0,
you're an at-risk member who may be expelled from the group. At 1.0, you're an
unquestioned god-king of it (most groups' leaders are 0.5 to 0.7).

When you're above +0.4, you can't really use humor (which I'm taking to be a
microcosm of creativity) except of a stunted kind, because most good humor is
partisan or offensive, and not "presidential" or "leader-like". That, I would
argue, applies to creative expression in general.

Below 0.0, you're a disliked member of the group and your ideas (or humor)
will be rejected just because they come from you and are therefore taken to be
unskilled displays and desperate attempts to improve status. Between 0.0 and
+0.2, your jokes might be well-received, but it's not worth the risk, because
you don't have much status capital to spend. This leaves a narrow range of the
status spectrum-- 0.2 to 0.4-- in which humor (/creativity) can bring
improvement. However, people at +0.3 to +0.4 aren't high enough to end up
climbing corporate ladders-- you need +0.6 to +0.7 to play that game, and you
need to achieve that status reliably (at each level of the executive
hierarchy)-- and doubling down on humor typecasts you as "the funny guy",
which isn't the image you want and limits you at the +0.4 ceiling.

The problem isn't really that _people_ individually dislike creativity. It's
that social groups become increasingly anti-intellectual and focused on self-
preservation (which requires excluding the "different") as they get bigger.

~~~
tptacek
People challenge venture capital all the time on HN to apparent ill effect.
I'm certainly no VC champion. Not only that, but I've repeatedly annoyed Paul
Graham, talked down YC, complained about the moderation on HN, and suggested
conflicts of interest.

You very consistently manage to mine personal conflicts out of threads and
stories that have no apparent connection to you or your beliefs. It's a
worrisome habit, in the "I almost worry about criticizing you because I'd feel
bad if it turned out that you were actually ill" sense. Broken record: I
really think you need to relax and let some of this stuff go, or, at least, if
you're totally dedicated to the idea of promoting your vision of the evils of
startup culture, find a more coherent way to do it. Perhaps your ideas would
be better carried in long-form essays.

~~~
michaelochurch
You're being ridiculous. You're making this about me, and I am frankly not a
very interesting topic to 99+ percent of the readers here.

It's not that I am especially important; however, my encounter with HN
moderation has shown one of the mechanisms by which VC-istan protects its
reputation. That is all. By observing those mechanisms, we can possibly make
inferences about its health. If what is said on Hacker News actually matters
to VC-istan, then it's not a very robust system.

I really think this should be the end of the conversation. Leave the inane
personal attacks out of it.

~~~
tptacek
You're not making things less worrisome by strenuously arguing that there's
nothing personal about a comment that starts with "I suppose what has happened
to my HN account...", and then going on to suggest that your "encounter with
HN moderation" shows a "mechanisms by which VC-istan protects its reputation".
The reality is that VC-istan, whatever that is, probably does not give a shit
about you or me.

You are not being persecuted.

It is reasonable to be worried about what your comments, taken as a whole,
imply about where you're coming from. It's totally possible that I'm wrong and
you're just very shrill (you'd think that as a fellow shrill person I'd have a
radar for that). But it is not crazy to ask the question. Are you OK?

~~~
michaelochurch
"VC-istan" doesn't give a shit about you or me, correct. This is not some
paranoid Conspiracy (capital-C) theory.

Those capital-C conspiracy theories are like gods in that they are excuses to
look no further. (Why does "the Illuminati" conspire toward evil? Because
they're evil! It's a devil archetype.) They almost never exist, and don't hold
together for long. The reality is that people act according to their own
interests. If we can figure out what those interests are, we can learn things.
You learn the most if you assume that conspiracies and weird personal
vendettas, _prima facie_ , don't exist.

Paul Graham, for example, probably doesn't care about either of us either.
However, he _does_ have a need to appease VC-istan (which is not quite a
conspiracy, but has shown aggressively and illegally collusive behavior in the
past). If he wants access to the best talent, he needs to be able to place.
The fact that someone is pressuring him or one of his moderators to suppress
the ideas of someone fairly powerless tells us something-- that VC-istan
believes its reputation (the asset that enables it to get top talent cheaply)
is in peril.

~~~
tptacek
I suspect it's the opposite, and that venture capitalists are a lot more
worried about having to appease Paul Graham than the other way around, because
of YC's position in the deal flow. I have anecdotal evidence that strongly
corroborates that assertion, but you'll just have to take my word for it.

Given the notion that Paul Graham is not in fact worried about people on HN
offending the delicate sensitivities of VC firm partners, your entire argument
falls apart, and nothing you've experienced on HN has anything to do with you
being a thorn in the side of any "-stan", potential or otherwise.

Incidentally, your continued and ritualized use of the term "VC-istan" harms
your arguments, because it's a term that can mean whatever you want it to in
any given situation. Is YC part of "VC-istan"? Who knows! It depends on where
you want to be in an debate. Anyone who's been on more than a couple message
board debates sees that problem coming and discounts your credibility to price
that risk in.

It's one thing to use a term like "VC-istan" (I prefer "startuplandia"; Maciej
Ceglowski seems to like "flounders") as a way of poking fun at startup
culture. But that's not how you use the term. You write as if "VC-istan" is
something real.

You didn't answer my question, by the way. I'm easy to find privately if
you're not comfortable answering here. Or talk to anyone else. Just make sure
you're talking to someone if you need to be.

~~~
michaelochurch
Venture capitalists do not fear Paul Graham. He may be the godfather of Y
Combinator, but people at Sequoia are involved in far bigger deals all the
time.

If you want to know what VC-istan is, start here:
[http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/10/07/vc-
istan-1-wh...](http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/10/07/vc-istan-1-what-
is-vc-istan/) VC-istan does not mean "whatever you want it to in any given
situation".

~~~
tptacek
None of these people "fear" any of these people, but if you correct for the
words I actually used, I stand by my previous assertion and believe you're
simply wrong. It's pretty straightforward to work out what YC has that VCs
need, and how little VCs have that YC needs.

Once again, we're having this pointless conversation because you argued
upthread that Paul Graham is so terrified of venture capitalists that he
represses you on Hacker News to appease them, so angry are they at your mean
comments about them.

~~~
michaelochurch
_It 's pretty straightforward to work out what YC has that VCs need, and how
little VCs have that YC needs._ _Once again, we 're having this pointless
conversation because you argued upthread that Paul Graham is so terrified of
venture capitalists that he represses you on Hacker News to appease them, so
angry are they at your mean comments about them._

If Y Combinator can't place, it stops being the destination incubator with its
pick of emerging startups. It loses the top talent and the brand. Yes, VCs
would rather get along with Paul Graham than not, but the real power is with
the VCs. If they stop funding YC startups and YC can't place, then it becomes
just another crappy incubator.

Paul Graham needs the VCs a lot more than they need him. YC's only advantage
is that it seems to get a disproportionate share of highly talented founders.
However, VCs don't need more talent-- there's an ocean of untapped talent out
there-- but everyone in VC-istan needs funding to play. Money is the scarce
resource, not talent.

I respect what Paul Graham has achieved, or at least that he has achieved it.
I prefer revolution over incremental improvement, but PG has succeeded on his
own terms. However, don't kid yourself. If the VCs stop placing YC startups,
he and Y Combinator are nothing in the Valley. If the leading VCs tell him to
put the kibosh on inconvenient truths, he has no other choice.

~~~
pg
Considering the amount you talk about it, you really don't seem to understand
this business. Do you think a VC is going to refuse to fund a YC company that
they otherwise think is promising enough to fund, in order to teach me a
lesson? They'd just be handing the deal to another firm. Unless you believe
the coalition of VCs who want to suppress whatever crackpot "truth" you're
talking about = the entire VC business, which would be an amazing
organizational feat considering how many there are and how much some of them
dislike others.

~~~
michaelochurch
I think that the leading figures of VC-istan _would_ deny funding to settle a
political score, yes. It happens in big companies, and VC-istan is the first
postmodern corporation, and just a new form of the same old thing.

People stop good ideas and back bad ones for political reasons all the time,
and VCs are known for the same behavior (probably no more than big-company
high officers, but neither no less). People care more about their individual
careers and status than about the bottom line of some organization that
_might_ kick out a bonus, and that's a big part of why companies don't "act
rationally". The people in them are out for themselves because, honestly, who
wouldn't be? Selflessness leads nowhere.

You argue that VC collusion would be "an amazing organizational feat
considering how many there are and how much some of them dislike others", but
there _is_ , in fact, a lot of co-funding, social-proof-oriented decision
making, and collusion. Think of how 90+ percent of funding decisions are based
on who else is funding the round, or who made the introduction. It's a "who
you know", good-ole-boy network, business in the extreme and you're delusional
if you think it's still the meritocracy it might have been 15 years ago. The
fact that some VCs dislike each other doesn't prevent that collusive culture
from existing, just as high-ranking executives in a more traditional company
can dislike each other intensely but that doesn't stop the firm from
operating.

[ETA 1.5h: also, if you want to prove me wrong and show that you don't answer
to VC-istan, you have the option of removing the slowban and rankban.]

~~~
tptacek
This is a conspiracy theory. As it confronts evidence that might contradict
it, it mutates, steadily choosing paths that are less falsifiable. It
essentially posits the existence of a "Venture Capital Illuminati" in which
organizations that compete with each other and are united solely by a shared
general business model have teamed up, among other reasons to oppress (no
exaggeration) Michael O. Church, because his ideas are too dangerous to them.

~~~
selmnoo
Well to be fair to Michael, crazy conspiratorial shit _does_ happen in the
valley with the big players colluding together:
[http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/21/so-a-blogger-walks-into-
a-b...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/21/so-a-blogger-walks-into-a-bar/)

I agree though that Michael is taking it a little too far. What's true now,
has been, and always will be is that money is king -- all other things, all
connections, all politics come second. If YC has a startup in its class that
they legitimately think is the next Google, they will fight like animals to
get in on it.

------
andyl
I'd say: people don't like change. Creativity is change. Change takes energy,
and there's a fininte supply of energy to go around.

If you can introduce creative changes that require little energy to adopt,
you're on to something.

~~~
Arnt
Rephrasing in a most unkind way: "Change requires too much energy, but if you
also bring along a perpetuum mobile, you're on to something."

------
jd_free
We live in a society where people who use "diversity" as a buzzword are
actively promoting policies that discourage diversity of thought and demand
conformance. "Standards" dictated from on high are the bane of creative
exploration.

At the same time, many "creative" ideas are actually just really stupid ideas.
It's to be expected that the person with the stupid idea will accuse his
critics of stifling his "creativity". That doesn't mean they're wrong.

~~~
studiofellow
I think a lot of cultures (including much of startup culture) place too much
emphasis on ideas. So many creative ideas really are stupid ideas.

However, that doesn't mean creativity should be criticized--it just means we
need to teach people to do more than have ideas. Creativity comes into play
when problem solving, and determining whether ideas are worthwhile, too.

edit: spelling.

