Innovativeness and Creativity in Science Ronald LaPorte, Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh

Innovativeness and Creativity in

Science

Ronald LaPorte, Ph.D.

University of Pittsburgh

What is creativity?

• The problem with creativity is that we know it when we see it, but it is hard to define.

Creative stuff

Frank Lloyd WrightFrank Lloyd Wright

“There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so

he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.

Henri Matisse

• Dangers of looking at Creativity– There are many myths that grow up around

great inventions.– The significance of inventions is not

realized until much later• Stories must be told in retrospect.• People tend to dramatize the story.

• Most creative acts are rather mundane– Invention is 99% perspiration and

1% inspiration. -Thomas Alva Edison

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

Fromm

Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction. Picasso

Why is invention incremental?• How can a creative idea come about?• It must be related to existing ideas

– Otherwise, how would people think it up?– How could it be implemented?

• What does it mean for an idea to be ahead of its time?

– A creative idea must be comprehensible to others• What good is an invention that nobody wants?

• Suggests that existing ideas may constrain creativity.

New inventions• Innovative inventions are often based

on known products.

Early railroad cars were designed like stagecoaches on tracks. •Engineer and brakeman were not moved inside until later. •Stagecoaches were a good solution to initial problems •Other problems were not discovered until later.

Creativity and Concepts

• Draw an animal that does not exist.– Ward– Karmiloff-Smith

Novel animals have many properties of real animals •Often have bilateral symmery •Sense organs on head •Similar sense organs to humans.

You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.

Einstein

Where do examples come from?

• People select common concepts as examples– They seem to use specific items– When asked to create novel intelligent beings

• Animals typically walk upright• Animals typically have two arms and two legs• People seem to be using humans as a basis.

Even sci-fi authors and movies seem to have the same constraints.

What makes people more creative?

• A paradox– People access categories when being creative– Categories are retrieved on the basis of cues

during the creative process– The more cues available, the more access– More specific situations lead to less creativity.– Forcing people into strange situations can lead

to higher levels of creativity

You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star. Nietzsch

Social Factors

• Creativity is fostered by an environment– Creativity must be valued by a community– Creativity is shaped by those who evaluate it

• Creator (the individual)– Individuals must be experts

• Domain (what is being worked on)• Field (the collaborators, colleagues, and audience)

Group creativity

• Brainstorming– Are N minds better than one?– Often not

• Groups often come up with a smaller number of possible solutions than the individuals would alone

• One person’s output interferes with other people’s memories

• Growing conformity within a group

OTHER TRAITS IDENTIFIED IN CREATIVE PEOPLE

• The ability to find appropriate problems (Getzels & Csikszentmihalyi,1976).

• The ability to defer judgement (MacKinnon, 1962). • Desire for originality• Failure to conform to social pressure (self sufficiency)• Tolerance of ambiguity• Legislative (rule creating), rather than an executive (rule

following), or judicial (rule assessing),mental self-government (Sternberg, 1988).

• Deep commitment (not least because it is needed to acquire sufficient domain specific knowledge).

Creativity is the ability to see relationships where none exist.

Disch

WALLIS'S (1928) FOUR STAGE THEORY

• Based largely on autobiographic reports (e.g. Helmholtz; Poincaré)– Preparation– Incubation– Inspiration– Verification

ENVIRONMENTS FOR CREATIVITY

• Good working conditions helpful, but environment more generally is important.

• Csikszentmihalyi (1988): three main forces shape creative achievement– The creative individual– A social field - determines which new ideas are worth

retaining– A stable cultural domain - preserves ideas selected by

the field.

Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can be weird; That’s easy. What’s hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity. Mingus

ENVIRONMENTS FOR CREATIVITY (cont.)

Social field/cultural domain likened to natural selection in the theory of evolution.

• Thus, problem finding is important. Problem finding produces more, and more extreme, variations from current norms for the field to operate on.

BODEN'S IMPOSSIBILITY THEORY

• Boden (1990) suggests that an idea is creative (for a particular person) if that person could not have had that idea before.

• The “could not” is defined in terms of what the person's mental representations and processes allow.

Chapter 10: Creativity 24

Creativity across domains

• Creativity is a gift, a way of seeing the world

• Mozart, DaVinci, Keats, Ogilvy?

• Creatives are unconventional, showing total commitment to their craft

Chapter 10: Creativity 25

Creativity across domains

• Howard Gardner studied seven creatives:– Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot,

Graham, Gandhi.

• Found these common characteristics:– Self-confident, alert, unconventional,

hardworking, obsessive.

How would you rate the creativity of this ad?

How would you rate the creativity of this ad?

Creativity

• Creativity and problem solving can be taught.

• Motivation and creativity are related.• Convention and upbringing inhibit

originality.• Creativity is the act of an individual.

Problem Selection and Definition

What really makes an invention is that someone decides not to change the solution to the known problem, but to change the question. Dean Kamen

Individual Creativity

• Role of creativity for researchers

• What is creativity?– What is the need for creativity?– How to enhance individual creativity?– What is the role of teams?

Creativity

Graham, S. ,Enhancing creativity in epidemiology, Amer. J. Epid. 1988;128:249-253

Einstein: “To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science”

“Our problem is how to enhance the production of creative works in our field”


“We need to go beyond cultivating informed epidemiologists and develop creative ones.”

Intelligence and creativity?


“We feel we have an advantage over some other groups because we are not confined to conventional thinking. We think wildly. (Paul Chu)

The Critical need for being exposed to new ideas, currents of thought and new methods


Criticism

Potential value of a study


Science in general is

Risk Aversive

Only as tolerant of creativity as its most conservative member

Low-Risk, Low Gain

Epidemiology

Genetics

ComputerScience

Interdisciplinary Training

Hypothesis Generation

Hypothesis Testing

Observation

ComputerScience

Epidemiology

Genetics

Stove Pipe Training

Hypothesis T

esting

Hypothesis G

eneration

Observation

Hypothesis T

esting

Hypothesis G

eneration

Observation

Cutting across Fields of Training

NU

Yale

Pittsburgh

Interdisciplinary Training

Hypothesis Generation

Hypothesis Testing

Observation

NU

Yale

Pittsburgh

Stove Pipe Training

Hypothesis T

esting

Hypothesis G

eneration

Observation

Hypothesis T

esting

Hypothesis G

eneration

Observation

Cutting across Universities

Uni. Pittsburgh

Stanford

NU

Uni. Pittsburgh

Stanford

NU

Stove Pipe Training

Breaking DownEducational Walls

Creativity is inventing, experiment, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun. Cook

Documents

Innovativeness and Creativity in Science Ronald LaPorte, Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh