7.1 REVOLUTION
Apple’s iPhone is an indirect result of the Industrial Revolution and tool for what I refer to as the
Creative Revolution. The technology and production methods so common in the world today are all relatives of the original Industrial Revolution that was born in Europe. Creativity and innovation are key components in successful business and needed to solve many of our world’s problems. Tools for communicating ideas are important and can encourage new innovation from those who may not have otherwise been involved.
The innovation that produced new technology two hundred years ago is still evident today in the amazing applications of technology brought to much of the planet’s population in the form of
Rummler 2 personal technology devices we take for granted. As a tool for creativity, an iPhone offers many ways for the users to express themselves. If we only consider the ability to capture both still and moving images this creates the ability for anyone, anywhere to capture something and broadcast it out to multitudes of others for viewing, commenting and sharing. This outlet of personal expression offer someone who has never explored creativity an brand new understanding of their own abilities as well as a forum in which to develop them. In the past most of us did not make it out of kindergarten or first grade without feeling we were not one of the few and talented “artists” in class.
In considering the value of supporting creativity, it is common to think of being creative as a rarity in the world. It seems less so in the last few years with the increased access to technology and information that support the desire every person seems to have to express themselves as a creative being. At the same time, the expressed need for creativity as part of a skill set is evident in almost every industry on the planet. Creativity is a vital skill in today’s world. The best way for business and civic organizations to remain competitive is through real innovation.
Pablo Picasso said, “All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” (BrainyQuote.com)
My first memory, like most young children is drawing at the kitchen table. I still have one of those very early drawings of my family. It is common for most 3 or 4 year olds to draw people as a giant face with arms and legs. I was no different. Everyone in the picture looks like a jellyfish with a face. At one time, I spent most of my free hours focused on perfecting my ability to draw everything I saw by memory. I even spent my entire third-grade drawing herds and herds of horses on large sheets of paper to master the depiction of that particular animal. Judging by my early drawings, I was not anything special when it came to being creative. I believe the difference between me and anyone else has to do with the environment I grew up in, my intellectual curiosity and the sheer number of hours I spent being creative. My parents always encouraged me to continue drawing. My dad was especially encouraging. He told me very early in my life that it was possible for me to make a living doing something I loved. I believed him. As a result I probably spent close to 12 hours a week doing nothing but drawing from the time I was 6. I’m sure that there were times in my life when I spent many more.
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Throughout my twelve years of public education I always had at least one thing I could do well and I believe it gave me confidence in my ability to learn. I have always loved learning new things and enjoy knowing how things work.
Why does it seem that the world of business, largely due to the added, competitive pressures of a sluggish economy, has decided that they need leaders and workers who can solve problems creatively to generate new solutions? These same civic, government and business leaders have decided that funding should be reduced for most of the course work in public schools that encourage growth of the very attributes they are spending time and resources to find. To be fair, most parents of school-aged children feel that the arts are very good but when pushed to prioritize when it comes to budget cuts, will also sacrifice the programs that foster creativity. I used to be one of those parents. The obvious irony there is I knew batter but didn’t really think it through at the time.
Sir Ken Robinson, PhD is recognized internationally as a leader in the development of education, creativity and innovation and views our public education system in a very unique way. In a video presentation produced and uploaded to YouTube in October, 2010 by the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) Sir Ken talks about something called
Divergent Thinking. He defines it as an essential capacity for creativity. This is not a synonym for creativity. His definition for creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value. Divergent thinking is the ability to see lots of different answers to a question, the ability to see multiple answers, seeing lots of interpretations of a question or some would think of this as the ability to think “laterally”.
In this same presentation Sir Ken references a study that was published in a book called Break Point and
Beyond. The longitudinal study was done to measure how good 1500 people were at divergent thinking. A typical kind of question would be: how many uses can you think of for a paper clip? He says an average person might think of ten to fifteen. Someone who is really good at it might think of two hundred. In the test if you scored above a certain level you would be considered a genius at divergent thinking. An important thing to know about the people tested is that they were all in kindergarten. The percentage of these children that scored at genius level was ninety eight percent. The same children were tested again in five years and the percentage went down to about fifty. They were tested again
Rummler 4 five years after that and it went down significantly again. They continued with the same testing after another five years and the decreasing trend in results continued. (YouTube.com) Most would expect that we get better as we get older. We become more “educated” and experienced and better able to do “things” or in other words, be successful. This study illustrates a very interesting idea. We all start out with something of a genius-level ability to solve problems and as we become more and more educated we loose this ability for whatever reason. The crazy thing is that the world really would like us to hang on to that valuable ability but at the same time prominent hegemony does not support the kinds of systems that best foster it. The public education system is not structured to allow for much creativity. When asked if creativity should be supported, fostered and taught in public schools, retired school superintendant Dr. Roy Rummler said, “Yes, in real life. Today’s world progresses so rapidly, creativity is required”. In today’s economy of global competition the importance of changing perception can help overcome challenges. Rummler went on to add “The Chinese have vowed that in the future products coming from their country will not say “made in China” but they will say something like “designed in China.” (Rummler)
Even the culture within schools labels those who are creative as socially different. This was confirmed when I asked a sophomore at Boise High School how he and his friends talk about the students in school who are known as the artists, musicians and drama kids. He said that they refer to them as being part of some other group. They are a little misunderstood or have a lot of interests that are different from the rest of the kids at school. (Hess) The need for a more creative environment in public schools would have it’s challenges for teachers and administrators alike. The original system was set up before the Revolutionary War by some of our Founding Fathers. At that time education was meant for white, wealthy males only to ensure the replication of that original American set of ideals focused mostly on the importance of religion. Even after the introduction of the first laboratory school at the University of Chicago by John Dewey in 1896 where the principals of “progressive education” were used the majority of public schools systems are still very rigid and structured (Your Introduction to
Education). Not the best environment the support of creativity and innovation. It seems the biggest
Rummler 5 challenge in changing the public school system so that a supportive environment can be achieved is
“for management is to get out of the way, to be a catalyst, and to reward creativity”. (Rummler)
An example of what is possible when creativity is allowed to flourish in education can be seen at a school in Chicago. It is referred to as the “video-game charter school”. The curriculum is based on game theory, design principles, digital media and “challenge-based learning” as described by Institute of Play executive director and DePaul University professor, Katie Salen. (Metropolis Magazine)
In Massachusetts, California and Oklahoma, state organizations are discussing the possibility of developing a creative index for schools based on what they are hearing is needed by the business sectors. "We're tapping into a very clear need, as expressed particularly by employers, to reincorporate into the curriculum and school experience many opportunities for young people to develop creativityoriented skills," said Massachusetts Sen. Stan Rosenberg, a Democrat and the lead sponsor of his chamber's 2010 bill calling for the index. The legislation calls for an index that would "rate every public school on teaching, encouraging, and fostering creativity in students" and be based "in part on the creative opportunities in each school." (Education Week)
In 2009 a book was reviewed by Inc. Business Book Review and praised as “…mandatory reading for marketers and engineers who can't understand why a product as cool as the Segway wasn't a breakout hit.” (Inc.com/magazine) The book is Change by Design written by the CEO of a multidisciplinary design firm called IDEO. The book talks about several case studies from successful work done at IDEO while posing very interesting questions about how different situations and sources can help innovate. This book was an instant hit with the business management and marketing communities and is still very popular. In some cases it is used as required reading on certain campuses of higher learning. The ironic thing is that the main idea of the book is focused on something called
“design thinking”. This is nothing new to those who are part of any creative industry. It is a process of evaluation and problem solving that is exactly what Sir Ken Robinson calls “divergent thinking”. I have been using this process to figure out which color combination makes the most sense for a new logo, vehicle graphics, business cards, website and t-shirt design to be used promoting my buddies new food truck business. It’s the same process a whole nation of kindergarteners across the United Sates decide
Rummler 6 which crayon to use next in the creation of their latest portrait of their family. Will their teacher tell them it’s the wrong color because everyone knows “your mom’s skin isn’t green”. And, to a great degree it is the same process that may be employed by an on-site construction manager to schedule a journeyman electrician that he can start wiring for the fifth floor of a building after one O-clock on the following Tuesday. Being creative in every-day situations or managing time and people is definitely valuable. It is not usually seen as being an obviously creative thing. Usually when someone is talking about people who are creative it’s common for words like artist, designer or writer to come up. Even in the world of creativity the definition can be unclear.
There are very strong opinions as to the value of creativity. There are also varying opinions about what the word “design” means in certain contexts and who is a “designer”. The opinions and questions as well as the need to have a clear definition of this subject come from both external and internal sources of design industries. Inside design industries it is understood and communicated that design/creativity is subjective. There is no right or wrong answer. While this ideal is held, the reality is that design has a “job” to do and the level of success of that design is not so subjective. There are certain qualities a chair needs in order for it to meet basic criteria to be a chair. Much of this is subject to cultural, industry, language and global ideals or definitions. Context is also a major factor of how the idea of design or creativity is defined or applied. This kind of commonly held understanding of what something like a poster’s “job” is much less back and white. Although an argument could be made as to what a chair’s purpose could be and weather that purpose has multiple definitions that are valid.
The question of esthetics comes into the mix as a qualifier of way to gage the visual quality or value of something that is creative or has been designed. Ultimately most testing to measure the value of design and creativity or to quantify what is considered “good” focuses on the generalization of many individual reactions to how something looks, feels, works or fulfills it’s prescribed use or “job”. The complication with this process has to do with what kind of person is doing the evaluation. It could be argued that a more “creative” person will react much more positively to something more creative. This raises all kinds of additional questions and challenges. There have been attempts to create blind tests to gage the value of design in consumer products based on the idea that something that is more
Rummler 7 successfully designed will be easier and more enjoyable to use and so people will choose to use a more esthetically pleasing object in a side-by-side comparison. There can also be an argument made to support the idea that not everyone can make a valuable judgment as to the success or failure of an object, communication, tool, structure or product. A truly innovative design may produce something entirely new that people may not see as having any value. An example of this would be something like the iPod or the wheel.
It seems anything that is produced to have a purpose must work well or at some level, be accepted as having value. Let the word “product” refer to any process, item, idea, system or useful thing for the purposes of this discussion. The evaluation of a product requires creativity in itself. The best or most valuable evaluation will ask new questions and consider the product in contexts that may look at the product in ways that were not the intent of whomever created it. So in theory, there could be the world’s most valuable product sitting on a table somewhere and the person evaluating it’s value or quality may not have the ability to judge it. Of course this opens up all kinds of new, possible questions we don’t have time to consider at the moment.
Like any industry, design has the need to validate itself to justify what it does and how much it’s members should be paid. Since the advent of personal computers there was a new challenge questioning who is a designer. It is still common for people who consider themselves to be creative and to have “good” ideas to seek jobs as designers. This is most common in the field of Graphic Design and can now be seen in Industrial Design with access to 3D printers. It is true that there are those who learn how to use certain kinds of software and discover that they have the ability to make money designing. I have seen many of these self-taught designers that are better than trained designers. Some of the worlds most valuable inventions came from the “untrained”.
There are some serious questions that should be asked of those who still have the ability to influence what is being taught in our public schools. Or I guess the other way of looking at it is, how can we who have the ability to vote for those who make decisions ensure things will improve. After all, I think it should be fair to ask those who preach innovation and improved whatever to actually poses the skills to innovate.
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An essential component of creativity or to being able to think divergently is the willingness to fail. This one element of the creative process makes the difference between success and failure. I think this is why kindergarteners are so creative and why we stop drawing and pretending and playing as we get older. We are told in many forms that it is wrong. The pressure of not making mistakes is huge in the adult world. The civic and business world is built on the idea that mistakes cost money. The argument could easily be made that creativity costs too much or does not pay for itself. According to BusinessWeek.com’s Bruce Nussbaum, “By one measure, from innovation consultant Doblin Inc., nearly 96% of all innovation attempts fail to beat targets for return on investment”. This was a poll taken of “940 senior executives from around the world who said in a recent Boston Consulting Group Inc. survey that increasing top-line revenues through innovation has become essential to success in their industry”. (Businessweek.com) The big question is… does our currently conservative approach to education and business and those who are “running things” support the kind of creativity being asked for? It is clear that innovation is required in all cases and changes are needed to support the creativity to innovate.
Technology like the iPhone has played a part in helping those who are curious about the world and who have the potential to solve problems recognize new ways to express their solutions or questions in a format that is engaging and accessible by others. If an iPhone is nothing more than a way to share ideas with more people then that alone may be just enough to continued increase of creativity and innovation. I think Dieter Rams offers a way to sum up in Objectified were he states “The value, and especially the legitimization of design will be, in the future, measured more in terms of how it can enable us to survive on this planet”.
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Work Sited
Brown, Tim. Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation
HarperBusiness; October 2009. Print
Buchanan, Liegh. Review: Change By Design. Inc.com/magazine. October. 2009. Digital. February 22,
2012
Hallz, Peter. Game Changers: Extaordinary People Transforming Design in Bold New Ways, Katie Salen,
Metropolis Magazine. January. 2012. 57-59 print
Hess, Tristan. Interview. March 19, 2013
Nussbaum, Bruce. Get Creative! How to Build Innovative Companies. Bloomberg Businessweek. www.businessweek.com. August 1, 2005. Digital. March 19, 2013
Lustwit, Gary. Objectified 2009
Picasso, Pablo. BrainyQuote.com. Xplore Inc, 2012. February. 2013.
Powell, Sara Davis. Your Introduction to Education, 2nd Edition. Pearson Education, Inc. 2012. Print.
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“RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms” YouTube.com, October. 2010. Digital. March 15,
2013
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Rummler, Roy. Interview. March 20, 2013
W. Robelen, Erik. States Mulling Creativity Indexes for Schools. Education Week, February, 2012 .
Digital. March 10, 2013