introduction

• the problem is that the term "creativity" as commonly used covers too much ground. it refers to very different entities thus causing a great deal of confusion. To clarify the issues, I distinguished at least three different phenomena that can legitimately be called by that name
  • the first usage, widespread in ordinary conversation, refers to persons who express unusual thoughts, who are interesting and stimulating - in short, to people who appear to be unusually bright. Unless they also contribute something of permanent significance, I refer to people of this sort as brilliant rather than creative - and by and large I don't say much about them in this book
  • the second way the term can be used is to refer to people who experience the world in novel and original ways. these are individuals whose perceptions are fresh, whose judgements are insightful, who may make important discoveries that only they know about. I refer to such people as personally creative, and try to deal with them as much as possible. But given the subjective nature of this form of creativity, it is difficult to deal with it no matter how important it is for those who experience it
  • the final use of the term designates individuals who, like leonardo, edison, picasso, or einstein, have changed our culture in some important respect. they are the creative ones without qualification. because their achievements are by definition public, it is easier to write about them, and the persons included in my study belong to this group
• talent differs from creativity in that it focuses on an innate ability to do something very well
• perhaps we should think of a genius as a person who is both brilliant and creative at the same time

the systems model

• creativity can be observed only in the interrelations of a system made up of three main parts
  • the first of these is the domain, which consists of a set of symbolic rules and procedures. domains are in turn nested in what we usually call culture, or the symbolic knowledge shared by a particular society, or by humanity as a whole
  • the second component of creativity is the field, which includes all the individuals who act as gatekeepers to the domain. it is their job to decide whether a new idea or product should be included in the domain. it is this field that selects what new works of art deserve to be recognized, preserved, and rememebered
  • the third component of the creative system is the individual person. creativity occurs when a person, using the symbols of a given domain such as music, engineering, business, or mathematics, has a new idea or sees a new pattern, and when this novelty is selected by the appropriate field for inclusion into the relevant domain. the next generation will encounter that novelty as part of the domain they are exposed to and if they are creative, they in turn will change it further. occassionally creativity involves the establishment of a new domain
• so the definition that follows from this perspective is:
  • creativity is any act, idea, or product that changes an existing domain, or that transforms an existing domain into a new one.
• And the definition of a cretive person is:
  • someone whose thoughts or actions change a domain or established a new domain
• today many american corporations spend a great deal of money and time trying to increase the originality of their employees, hoping thereby to get a competitive edge in the marketplace. But such programs make no difference unless management also learns to recognize the valuable ideas among the many novel ones, and then finds ways of implementing them

creativity in the renaissance

• it was in this atmosphere of wealth and uncertainty that the urban leaders decided to invest in making Florence the most beautiful city in Christendom - in their words, "a new Athens"
• It is because of this inseparable connection that creativity must, in the last analysis, be seen not as something happening within a person, but in the relationship within a system

domains of knowledge and action

• knowledge mediated by symbols is extrasomatic: it is not transmitted through the chemical codes inscirbed in our chromosomes but must be intentionally passed on and learned. It is this extrasomatic information that makes up what we call a culture. and the knowledge conveyed by symbols is bundled up in discrete domains - geometry, music, religion, legal systems, and so on. Each domain is made up of its own symbolic elements, its own rules, and generally had its own system of notation. in many ways, each domain describes an isolated little world in which a person can think and act with clarity and concentration
• There are several ways that domains can help or hinder creativity, Three major dimensions are particularly relevant:
  • the clarity of structure
  • the centrality within the culture
  • and accessibility
• the company where knowledge is better structured, more central and more accessible is likely to be the one where - ceteris paribus (other things still being equal) - creative innovations are going to happen

fields of accomplishment

• if a symbolic domain is necessary for a person to innovate in, a field is necessary to determine whether the innovation is worth making a fuss about
• fields can affect the rate of creativity in at least three ways
  • the first way is by being either reactive or proactive. a reactive field does not solicit or stimulate novelty, while a proactive field does
  • the second way for the field to influence the rate of novelty is by choosing either a narrow or a broad filter in the selection of novelty. at the extremes, both strategies can be dangerous: It is possible to wreck a domain either by starving it of novelty or by admitting too much unassimilated novelty into it.
  • finally, fields can encourage novelty if they are well connected to the rest of the social system and are able to channel support into their own domain
• there are several ways that domains and fields can affect each other
  • sometimes domains determine to a large extent what the field can or cannot do; this is probably more usual in the sciences, where the knowledge base severely restricts what the scientific establishment can or cannot claim. In the arts, it is often the field that takes precedence: the artistic establishment decides, without firm guidelines anchored in the past, which new works of art are worthy of inclusion in the domain
  • sometimes fields that are not competent in the domain take control over it (galileo vs church). In more subtle ways, economic and political forces always influence, whether intentionally or not, the development of domains.
  • at times fields become unable to represent well a particular domain

contributions of the peron

• for though it is true that behind every new idea or product there is a person, it does not follow that such persons have a single characteristic responsible for the novelty
• it is important to point out the tenuousness of the individual contribution to creativity, becasue it is usually so often overrated. Yet one can also fall in the opposite error and deny the individual any credit
• luck, although a favorite explaination of creative individuals, is also easy to overstate. being in the right place at the right time is clearly important. but many people never realie that they are standing in a propitious space/time convergence, and even fewer know what to do when the realization hits them

internalizing the system

• a person who wants to make a creative contribution not only must work with a creative system but must also reproduce that system within his or her mind. in other words, the person must learn the rules and the content of the domain, as well as the criteria of selection, the preference of the field.
• Jacob Rabinow of domain
  • so you need three things to be an original thinker. first, you have to have a tremendous amount of information - a big database if you like to be fancy. if you're a musician, you should know a lot about music, that is, you've heard music, you remember music, you could repeat a song if you have to. In other words, if you were born on a desert island and never heard music, you're not likely to be a beethoven. you might, but it's not likely. you may imitate birds but you're not giong to write the fifth symphony. so you're brought up in an atmosphere where you store a lot of information. so you have to have the kind of memory that you need for the kind of things you want to do. and you do those things which are easy and you don't do those things which are hard, so you get better and better by doing the things you do well, and eventually you become either a great tennis player or a good inventor or whatever, because you tend to do those things which you do well and the more you do, the easier it gets, and the easier it gets, the better you do it, and eventually you become very one-sided but you're very good at it and you're lousy at everything else because you don't do it well. this is what engineers call positive feedback. so the small differences at the beginning of life become enormous differences by the time you've done it for forty, fifty, eighty years as I've done it so anyway, first you have to have the big database
• Jacob Rabinow of what the person must contribute
  • then you have to be willing to pull the ideas, because you're interested. now, some people could do it, but they don't bother. they're interested in doing something else. do if you ask them they'll, as a favor to you, say: "yeah, I can think of something." but there are people like myself who like to do it. It's fun to some up with an idea, and if nobody wants it, I don't give a damn. It's just fun to come up with something strange and different
• Jacob Rabinow of field
  • and then you must have the ability to get rid of the trash which you think of. you cannot think only of good ideas, or write only beautiful music. you must think of a lot of music, a lot of ideas, a lot of poetry, a lot of whatever. and if you're good, you must be able to throw out the junk immediately without even saying it. in other words, you get many ideas appearing and you discard them because you're well trained and you say, "that's junk". and when you see the good one, you say, "ooh, this sounds interesting. let me pursue that a little further." and you start developing it. now, people don't like this explanation. They say, "what? you think of junk?" I say, "you, must must." you cannot a priori think only of good ideas. you cannot think only of great symphonies. some people do it very rapidly. and this is a matter of training. and by the way, if you're not well trained, but you've got ideas, and you don't know if they're good or bad, then you send them to the Bureau of Standards, National Intritute of Standards, where I work, and we evaluate them. and we throw them out
• Jacob Rabinow of junk
  • it doesn't work, or it's old, or you know that it will not gel. you suddenly realize it's not good. it's too complicated. it's not what mathematicians call "elegant". you know, it's not good poetry. and this is a matter of training. if you're well trained in technology, you see an idea and say, "oh, god this is terrible" first of all, it's too complicated, secondly, it's been tried before. thirdly, he could have done it in three different easier ways. in other words, you can evalute the think. that doesn't mean that he wasn't original. but he simply didn't do enough. if he were well trained, if he had the experience I had, and had good bosses and worked with great people, he could say this is not really a good idea. It's an idea, but it's not a good idea. and you have arguments with people. and you say "look, this is not a good way. look at the number of parts you're gluing together. look at the amount of energy it'll take. this is really not good" and the guys says, "but to me it's new." I say, "yup, to you it's new, it may be new to the world, but it's still no good". to say what is beautiful you have to take a sophisticated group of people, people who know that particular art and have seen a lot of it, and say this is good art, or this is good music, or this is a good invention. and that doesn't mean everybody can vote on it; they don't know enough. But if a group of engineers who work on new stuff look at it and say, "that's pretty nice." that's because they know. they know because they've been trained in it. And a good creative person is well trained. so he has first of all an enormous amount of knowledge in that field. Secondly, he tries to combine ideas, because he enjoys writing music or enjoys inventing. and finally, he has the judgment to say, "this is good, I'll pursue this further"