Creative Disobedience: How, When, & Why to Break the Rules

Andrea Kuszewski

@AndreaKuszewski

Creative DisobedienceHow, When, and Why to Break the Rules

April 29, 2013

Creative Disobedience

In this age of innovation, even more important than being an effective problem solver, is being a problem finder. It’s one thing to look at a prob-

lem and be able to generate a solution; it is another thing to be able to look at an ambiguous situation, and decide if there is a problem that

needs to be solved.

That’s a skill that isn’t really targeted by traditional teaching methods, and in fact, it is often discouraged. In order to teach problem finding, more cre-ative methods must be utilized. Rule-breaking , to an extent, should be tol-

erated and encouraged, and yes—even taught.

“ Andrea Kuszewski, “The Educational Value of Creative Disobedience”, Scientific American, 2011

What is Creativity?

• Thinking with BOTH sides of your brain

• Switching back and forth between conventional and unconventional thinking

• Making remote associations between concepts

• ‘Zooming in and zooming out’ of information, from convergent to divergent

• Constantly weeding out & checking for relevance and usefulness of the ideas

Creative Cognition is:

Creativity is:

An original, novel solution that is both useful and appropriate given the context, environment, and

the task at hand

By definition, creativity involves breaking rules.

This can cause problems.

By definition, creativity involves breaking rules.

This can cause problems. (because we want to live)

“Creativity: An Asset or a Burden in the Classroom?” Westby & Dawson (1995)

• Asked teachers to identify personality characteristics associated with cre-ativity

• High creativity: determined, independent, individualistic

• Low creativity: responsible, sincere, reliable, dependable, clear-thinking, tol-erant, understanding, peaceable, good-natured, steady, practical, and logical

• Asked teachers to rates students from favorite to least favorite, based on those characteristics

• The students rated as least favorite by teachers were also rated as most creative

• Teachers like the students who followed the outline and didn’t break rules

Even when people say they want creativity,

often they reject it in practice.

“The Bias Against Creativity: Why People Desire But Reject Creative Ideas” Meuller, et al (2011)

• There is a bias against creativity, fueled by uncertainty

• “...effective creative problem solving includes both generating many novel options and subsequently reducing

uncertainty by identifying the single best option from the set.” (Cropley, 2006)

• Identifying the optimal solution may prime an uncertainty reduction motive or intolerance for uncertainty, and thereby evoke the creativity bias

• People seek to avoid and diminish uncertainty: Kill the creative idea

• By requiring gate-keepers to identify the single “best” and most “accurate” idea, you are promoting that uncer-tainty, thereby creating an unacknowledged aversion to creativity.

There is always more than one good solution to a problem, but the value varies depending on context

The 8 Types of Creative Contributions

Robert Sternberg, “Handbook of Creativity”, 1999

The 8 Types of Creative Contributions 1. Replication

2. Redefinition

3. Forward incrementation

2. Redefinition

4. Advanced forward incrementation

2. Redefinition

5. Redirection

2. Redefinition

5. Redirection

6. Reconstruction/redirection

2. Redefinition

5. Redirection

7. Reinitiation

2. Redefinition

5. Redirection

7. Reinitiation

8. Integration

2. Redefinition

5. Redirection

7. Reinitiation

8. Integration

Accept current paradigms and attempt to extend them

2. Redefinition

5. Redirection

7. Reinitiation

8. Integration

Reject current paradigms and attempt to replace them

2. Redefinition

5. Redirection

7. Reinitiation

8. Integration

Merges disparate current paradigms Reject current paradigms and attempt to replace them

How to Teach and Encourage Creativity(and when not to)

TEACHING CREATIVITY : THE EARLY YEARS

Psychology researcher Allison Gopnik: Creative behavior in young children

• When children were given a problem and told to figure out how something works, they were able to generate the most intelligent solutions through experimentation.

• When they were shown a working sequence (one of many), they imitated that solution, and then stopped looking for a more intelligent solution.

Take-home points?

Encouraging critical thinking and finding more than one correct solution to a given problem helps to develop creativity

Take-home points?

Encouraging critical thinking and finding more than one correct solution to a given problem helps to develop creativity

Encouraging one to ‘follow the outline’ prevents deep understanding of the problem, and decreases ability to creativly problem-solve

TEACHING CREATIVITY : IN THE WORK ENVIRONMENT

Training Behavior Therapists for treating children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

• Teach them to ask and answer questions, not memorize outlines

• Keep the integrity of the fundamental pillars of therapeutic goals, & understand WHY

• You have room to be creative within each step of the treatment plan, given those fundamental core pillars are kept intact and met, and making progress towards overall goal

• Modifying one step may make that particular stage ‘less efficient’, but make exponentially increase progress towards later goal

• Individual workers may need to make adjustments to their own timelines, to better meet end goal

The result?

Autonomy, while consistently meeting the therapeutic goals

Training people to ask questions and think about problems before they receive a solution encourages and teaches creative

thinking, to produce better innovators, problem solvers, & problem finders.

Main message:

Does this method make progress toward the overall

About the same

More progress

Good idea to do it.

Less progress

Can this method scale up?

Will others be required to learn this?

Don’t do this.

Does this method maintain the integrity of the funda-

mental pillars of the project?

Does this method make the current step

more efficient?a how-to guide to Creative Disobedience

HOW TO ENCOURAGE A CREATIVE WORK ENVIRONMENT

HOW TO ENCOURAGE A CREATIVE WORK ENVIRONMENT Give them some spaceDeadlines are important, but hourly check-ups are not. Creativity involves linking concepts, which means holding several things in your working memory -- a balance that can be disrupted easily, so a buffer against distractions are essential.

Don’t micromanageAllow free time for employees to work on anything they want; intrinsic motivation (working on some-thing just because it’s interesting) leads to creativity.

Open your mindGetting stuck in a hyper-focused, linear thinking pattern can stall finding a creative solution. Take breaks when working, just to think about nothing.

Tolerate creativityReward creative thinking, not with financial incentives, which, alone, have been shown to decrease creativity, but by promoting the conditions that permit it. Tolerate the occasional failure and allow rules to be broken when there is a social benefit.

Thank you!

Andrea Kuszewski@AndreaKuszewski

Creative Disobedience: How, When, & Why to Break the Rules

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