The creative person: is it born, and/or is it made?

 

Con este post se inicia en el blog una nueva sección que se denomina “Creative and innovative action” a cargo del Ph. D. Osvaldo Retondaro. Los comentarios, consultas y demás mensajes dirígelos al correo electrónico: osvaldojretondaro@gmail.com  

With this post, a new section called "Creative and innovative action" begins in the blog, in charge of Ph. D. Osvaldo Retondaro. Comments, questions and other messages send them to the email: osvaldojretondaro@gmail.com

 

We live in societies with continually accelerating speeds of change. More and more innovative companies want to incorporate professionals with high creative performance. Therefore, the creative capacity of people is a value on the rise.

Facing this challenge, one question is: are creative people born or made?

During brainstorming excercises for the development of new products it often happens that some participants constantly contribute proposals, and the laggards think...why can she/he...? and…why not me? Is it possible that creativity is a gift that only people "touched" by a "magic wand" receive?

What are the main answers to this question?

First, I consider creativity as a potential capacity that, to varying degrees, is possessed by all human beings. An skill that other living beings also show, although with limited results.

As in other characteristics of people, the level of creativity depends first, on genetic inheritance and our psychological trajectory and the social context where we grew up. The three previously mentioned factors can place us at a starting point above or below the creativity average.

As an example of the effect of these three factors, let's see how the social context in which one person was raised can affect his or her creativity. It will be totally different the creative potentiality of one person that was born in a modern society, open to change, and that values positively the contributions of the differences towards a person that has been raised in a traditional and conservative society. Similar effects would apply to the person that comes from a high educational and incomes level vs. a person who was born within a family that needs to fight for survival, this restriction will limit her or his future development, including her or his creativity possibilities.

Starting from the strengths or weaknesses with which one is born, dedication and work will allow us to increase our creative capacity.

For the standard people, who have an average creativity potential, there are many techniques to improve their performance. The specialist Teresa Amabile identifies three basic components necessary to be creative: (1) Knowledge in our specialty; (2) knowing how to use creativity techniques and (3) the degree of internal motivation.

It is interesting to expand on the first of the aforementioned elements: knowledge of our specialty, a necessary but not sufficient condition for creative work. The English scientist Isaac Newton, who revolutionized from the physical sciences to mathematics, recognized that his achievements derived from the knowledge accumulated by poring over the research of scientists who preceded him. As he expressed it in his sentence: " "if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

 At the base of the creative processes, there is the body of knowledge, theoretical and/or empirical, that is held on the subject to be treated. Novel contributions to a domain essentially arise from people who are specialized in that issue. It is the well-known rule of ten thousand hours. This "challenge" suggests that specialized work and study time is needed in a subject, as a requirement to generate novelties in it. And it is considered that at least another ten thousand more hours are needed to contribute creations in that specific field with relevant characteristics.

To exemplify the need for years of specialization in order to be creative, three cases will be cited, one in the scientific field, another in the artistic field and the third in the invention of machinery;

Charles Darwin began collecting data for his research during the trip made with the Beagle expedition between 1831 and 1836. Upon his return, he began working on the development of his hypotheses on evolutionism. As Darwin acknowledges, reading the book "An Essay on the Principle of Population'' (1838) by the economist Thomas Malthus was of particular relevance for the formalization of his proposal. From this starting point, Darwin spent more than two decades writing the book: "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life" which he published towards the end of 1859. This book inaugurated the evolutionary theory, one of the most disruptive scientific developments of the last centuries.

In the following paragraphs of Darwin's Autobiography, characteristics of creative personalities can be appreciated: the levels of knowledge, the independence of criteria and the degree of internal motivation.: “… I think that I am superior to the common run of men in noticing things which easily escape attention, and in observing them carefully. My industry has been nearly as great as it could have been in the observation and collection of  facts. What is far more important, my love of natural science has been steady and ardent…. From my early youth I have had the strongest desire to understand or explain whatever  I observed, -that is, to group all facts under general laws-. These causes combined have given me the patience to reflect or ponder for any number of years over any unexplained problem.

As far as I can judge, I am not apt to follow blindly the lead of other men. I have steadily endeavoured to keep my mind free, so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved (and I cannot resist forming one on every subject), as soon as facts are shown to be opposed to it.

…Therefore , my success as a man of science, whatever this may have amounted to, has been determined, as far as I can judge, by complex and diversified mental qualities and conditions. Of these the  most important have been – the love of science – unbounded patience in long reflecting over any subject – industry in observing and collecting facts – and a fair share of invention as well as of common-sense.  With such moderate abilities as I possess, it is truly surprising that thus I should have influenced to a considerable extent the beliefs of scientific…”

- In the artistic field, Pablo Picasso started cubism with his painting "Las Demoiselles d'Avignon". This definitive break with respect to tradition occurred when he was only 26 years old. But we must remember that Picasso began in art at the age of 8 at the hands of his father, a drawing teacher at the San Telmo Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Like Newton, he also stood on the shoulders of giants, this painting reflects the influence of the painter Paul Cézanne whose work he knew in detail.

- However, not only scientists and artists have the possibility to be creative. Anyone who is intensely dedicated to a subject can achieve it. This was already described by Adam Smith in his 1776 book, The Wealth of Nations, when he stated that  : “…Men are much more likely to discover easier and readier methods of attaining any object when the whole attention of their minds is directed towards that single object than when it is dissipated among a great variety of things…. A great part of the machines made use of in those manufactures in which labour is most subdivided, were originally the inventions of common workmen, who, being each of them employed in some very simple operation, naturally turned their thoughts towards finding out easier and readier methods of performing it. Whoever has been much accustomed to visit such manufactures must frequently have been shown very pretty machines, which were the inventions of such workmen in order to facilitate and quicken their particular part of the work…”

Creativity is not magic, one of its bases is effort and dedication. This is how Thomas Alva Edison expressed it, “…I never did anything by chance, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came for work,... It is the result of one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration..."