Charles Leadbeater offers a 20-minute perspective on creativity, our misconceptions about it, and the tensions between old ways and new ways of innovating.
Spinning out ideas he launched years ago in his monograph, the ProAm Revolution (and his new book, We-Think, available for download here), Leadbeater suggests that our traditional view of how innovations enter the market — special people in special places creating things that are pushed down the pipeline to passive and waiting consumers — is no longer true, if it ever was. Rather, the traditional, corporate approach to creativity and innovation is decreasingly able to develop radical innovation, and spends much of its time stifling the innovation of talented and networked amateurs (bloggers, software developers, user groups, and such).
While Leadbeater isn’t talking specifically about professional nonprofit cultural organizations, he might as well be. At times the parallels may make you squirm a bit in your seat.
Thank you for the post, but is this supposed to be news? For decades now, the paradigm of the ‘lone genius’ and his (yes, his) work has been up for debate. Even before online communities made a critical audience widely available for editing, testing, etc., the notion of creator/consumer as two sides of the same coin has been (caution: pun ahead!) gaining currency.
Twenty years ago I took an elective class in business management. Most of my classmates were MBA seekers, whereas I was one of just a few architecture students.
In a lesson about business creativity we were presented a problem involving a ping-pong ball stuck in a pipe of equal diameter, one end of which was embedded in concrete. We were challenged to “think outside the box” and develop solutions for removing the ping-pong ball from the pipe undamaged assuming we had at our disposal an odd collection of tools, which included a hammer, a coat hanger, etc.
While other teams presented the cliche solutions that could be found in the back of the book. My team of “creative types” came out with solutions like selling the tools and buying ping-pong balls and filling the pipe with cut flowers instead of wasting time to remove the problematic ball. In short we challenged the question and were derided for not being creative at all.
My point is that lots of people say they want creative solutions, but few are prepared to recognize and receive them.
You’re right on the money about the parallels between business and arts organizations. Many of us have lost the capacity to think creatively to address the new circumstances of our ever changing world.
Do you teach creativity at the Bolz program? What resources/readings do you use?