The Bias Against Creativity: Why People Desire but Reject Creative Ideas (2010) [pdf]
digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu
digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu
For me, that says it all about the bias against creativity.
Creativity requires a tolerance for uncertainty and risk. Don't ask for creativity unless you are willing to accept that.
From the short-term, economic perspective, watching someone hammer away at something when "tried-and-true" solutions exist (with some 'creative' twists ofc) can even seem irrational and wasteful. One famous Modernist architect, Phillip Johnson, even quipped that,"Architecture is the art of how to waste space."
People who can't handle the waste in design probably would never shell out for proper R&D or scientific developments either. Hardly anyone gets it right on their first try, even in research.
It's funny because when creative endeavors finally pay off, they can pay off big and then they themselves become the "tried-and-true" trend that people follow.
In the end I think desensitizing yourself to the idea of erasing work is a good practice. I have projects full of code that has been commented out for over a month, simply because I'm afraid I'll have to go back and see it again... Recalling this story, I may just as well delete it and rewrite it if needed. Chances are the rewrite will be cleaner.
My purview in education is broad and the sentiment is always "what will go wrong" and never "what could go right." In higher education it's this mentality amplified.
You might say HN is my safe space.
It feels like people are constantly in competition with others on their team and creativity suffers as a result. Lately, I have found myself giving people room to collaborate on (or do) things I would typically do myself. They can get satisfaction out of being a contributing part of the creative process. I also don't feel as though them being creative or succeeding is a failure on my part or a negative reflection on me.
TL;DR: They propose two traits of an effective team. First, long term everyone speaks about the same amount even if the meeting to meeting amounts differ. Second, there is a general awareness among team members that if they take interpersonal risk (i.e. say something that may turn out to be wrong) they wont be embarrassed, rejected or punished.
And I think this paper's results fall in line with that train of thought. If "risky"/creative ideas are shot down on sight your sense of psychological safety and probably your average amount of talking is going to take a big hit over time.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-lear... (If you decide to read it the second half is the meat/results, the first is background info)
"Film producers, like NIH scientists, have to evaluate hundreds of ideas a year, but can only accept a tiny percentage. To grab their attention, writers often frame original ideas as a fresh combination of existing ideas. 'It’s Groundhog Day meets War of the Worlds!' Or 'It’s Transformers on the ocean!' In Silicon Valley, where venture capitalists also shift through a surfeit of proposals, the culture of the high-concept pitch is vibrant (Airbnb was once eBay for homes; Uber, Lyft, and Zipcar were all once considered Airbnb for cars; now, people want Uber for everything)."
Paul Graham gets credit for the 'x for y' format.
[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/why-new...
Translated: When people actually try something new and it gets tough, they get scared, give up and go back to the same old way of doing things.
I disagree. I have been working on a self-evidently great idea for over 5 years. Even now, with millions joyfully invested by a collaborator, incredibly good PR optics, and success on all fronts, a significant group of internal leadership hates it.
For a non-trivial set of great ideas, it's not even jealousy of the idea. It's jealousy of the subordinate's time and position. Who the hell let that pion have an idea and then let them work on it?
Successful creativity is always political. If you suck at politics, it's hard to be creative.
Come to thing of it we have only a partial understanding of the role of present technologies. In evolutionary terms, things persist for multiple reasons and we can't identify all of them. Small wonder we can't predict the future of technology and remain sceptical of implied claims to the contrary.
> Research, smesearch; fear is a product of ego. And so is crawling on your knees for authorities to tell you how the world works...
Your second comment seems like almost an illustration of the attitude you (seem to) decry in your first.
Why you would assume I was talking about government is beyond me. This article is literally discussing creative ideas being shot down by committees, and committees conduct votes.
Are there any services or browser addons that will convert pdfs to web pages? Then I could apply my own style sheet and correct some of that.
It’s in my experience just as easy to write notes and corrections on documents which are written in smaller type with standard amounts of leading in a reasonable-width text block, with generous margins. And it’s much easier to read such documents.
Unfortunately, since the typewriter format was standard at the time when computers started to be used for manuscripts (and school assignments, and theses, and legal documents, etc.), it just got copied over for computer-prepared documents, so we ended up with a standard of a 7.5" wide single column of 12 point type, double spaced. Microsoft enshrined the 12 point size, 1 inch margins, half-inch tab stops, Times New Roman typeface, etc. as defaults in Word, and now all kinds of document specifications are stuck limping along with forced ugly semi-legible formatting.