Creativity

Excerpts from "The Myths of Creativity" by David Burkus

Chapter 11 - The Mousetrap Myth

Creative ideas make people uncomfortable. It turns out that, at least subconsciously, we can have a hard time recognizing ideas as both new and useful at the same time. This cognitive dissonance between creativity and practicality may actually create a subtle bias against creative ideas. This bias was empirically proven in 2012 by a single team of researchers from Cornell, Penn, and the University of North Carolina.12 The research team, led by Jennifer Mueller, assistant professor of management at Penn's Wharton School of Finance, conducted two studies that examined our perceptions of creative ideas when we're faced with even the smallest amount of uncertainty. In the first study, the team divided participants into two groups and created a small level of uncertainty in one group by telling them they would be eligible for additional payment based on a random lottery of participants. The researchers didn't give many specifics around how their chance for additional payment would work, just that they would find out once the study was completed. It was hardly an earth-shattering proposition, but it was still enough to yield some feelings of uncertainty within the group. The participants were then given a series of tests. In the first test, participants were presented with word pairings on a computer and asked to select their preferred pairing. The pairings always included one word that was either creative or practical (words such as “novel,” “original,” “functional,” or “useful”) and one word that was either good or bad (words such as “sunshine,” “peace,” “ugly,” or “war”). So in each round, participants would choose their preference between pairs like “useful war” or “novel sunshine.” The test, known as an implicit associations test, uses the speed of participants' reaction time to measure the strength of their mental associations. The more quickly and more often participants tended toward certain combinations of words (such as good practical phrases or good creative ones), the higher their level of positive association with the concept. The second test was more overt; it measured participants' perceptions about creativity by asking them to rate their attitudes toward creativity and practicality on a seven-point scale. It's a straightforward method known as an explicit associations test. Both groups were given the same tests, but when the researchers calculated the results, they found that the group given no chance at extra compensation held both implicitly and explicitly positive associations between creativity and practicality. They said they desired creative ideas in the explicit tests, and, in the implicit tests, they didn't significantly favor creative phrases over practical ones. The uncertainty group, however, was a little different. This group held an explicitly positive association between the two, but implicitly their mind separated creative from practical. They had an implicit bias against creativity relative to practicality. While they said they valued creative ideas, when faced with a choice between a creative or a practical phrase on the implicit test, they tended to favor the practical. Participants in this group claimed to desire new, creative ideas, but when exposed to even the slightest bit of uncertainty, they significantly favored phrases that seemed less creative and more practical.

If this bias is present in everyone during periods of uncertainty, then it might explain why society has a history of rejecting notable innovations. To test this thesis, the research team returned to the lab and this time studied the ability of a new group of participants to judge a creative product idea. The participants were again divided into two groups. This time, the researchers would attempt to develop a high tolerance for uncertainty in one group and low tolerance in the other. Both groups were asked to prepare something in advance of the test in order to create this high or low tolerance for uncertainty. The high-tolerance group was asked to write an essay supporting the idea that multiple solutions existed for every problem. The intent of this was to “prime” the group by creating favoritism toward new ideas in the minds of the participants. To prime the low-tolerance group, the researchers asked those individuals to write an essay arguing the opposite—that most problems had only one right solution. The two groups were given the same implicit and explicit association tests as the first study and then asked to rate a creative idea for a new product, a running shoe that automatically adjusted its fabric thickness to keep the foot cool in changing temperature conditions. As anticipated by the first study, the low-tolerance group showed the same implicit bias against creativity and was also more likely to rate the running shoe idea poorly.

These results have some interesting implications for our views on creativity. Regardless of how open-minded people are or claim to be, they experience a subtle bias against creativity in uncertain situations. This isn't merely a preference for the familiar or a desire to maintain the status quo. It's an outright rejection of new, innovative ideas. Even when we want positive change, this bias affects our ability to recognize the creative ideas we claim to desire. Within organizations, recognizing creativity becomes even more complicated, as most ideas travel through an approval process involving multiple people in multiple levels of the organization. At each level, managers or teams have to decide whether the idea is viable and, perhaps more important to them, whether the idea has the potential to harm their own business units or careers. If it does, then it's just too risky to pursue. This effect is what David Owens, Vanderbilt professor for the practice of management and innovation, calls the “hierarchy of no.”13 These organizations extol the benefits of creativity and innovation, but those benefits are rejected because of the biases present in the same people who make up these organizations. Many organizations that consider themselves innovative might allow ideas time to develop, but they eventually force those ideas through hurdles intended to identify the best ideas for implementation. The problems occur when those hurdles are too high and when the bias against creativity filters out the ideas that would prove useful but are too novel to win approval. Mueller and her team even suggest that perhaps these organizations don't need more creative ideas; they may just need to develop a better system for identifying innovations and accepting creativity.14 One company, founded by two friends and fellow refugees from traditional bureaucracy, has developed such a system.

Rite-Solutions is a software company based in Newport, Rhode Island.15 The company makes a diverse range of software programs, from submarine command systems for the Navy to electronic gambling systems for casinos. It was started in 2000 by longtime friends Jim Lavoie and Joe Marino. The two had worked together at a leading defense contractor, and both had gone quite far within the company. But during their tenure, they'd grown increasingly frustrated with the way their company handled innovative ideas. “If you had a great idea, we would tell you, ‘Okay, we'll make an appointment for you to address the murder board,’” Lavoie says. “The murder board's job was to make sure the company took no risk. Their job was to shoot down ideas.”16 These murder boards, Marino recalls, would assault the idea person with questions about market size, cost projections, or estimated return on investment. Against such an assault, it wasn't necessarily the best ideas or the best people who got a green light; it was the best presenters. “I made it to executive VP not by being bright, but by being theatrical,” Lavoie says.17

Lavoie and Marino wanted to establish a different kind of company, one where new ideas would be welcomed and cultivated, instead of shut down upon their initial hearing. Although the company was founded with this goal in mind, it wasn't until 2004 that they knew how to develop such a system.18 Lavoie was listening to the financial news and thinking about the stock market when he began to wonder if markets could be a tool for judging innovation. In a market, anyone can invest in whatever company he or she feels has promise. Individuals study their potential investments and, when they feel they know enough, chose to get involved by buying stock. There is no murder board that hears the business plans of each stock and decides how many people are allowed to invest. Lavoie thought that he could build a similar system inside their company for managing the innovative ideas of his people. The “Mutual Fun” was born.

The Mutual Fun was a market-like system set up on Rite-Solutions' internal website. They divided this market into three exchanges for classifying ideas. The “Spazdaq” features ideas with considerable risk, usually entirely new businesses or technologies. The “Bow Jones” is for potential extensions on existing products, and the “Savings Bonds” is for small-scale operational innovations. Anyone in the company can place his or her idea on any of these three markets. No one needs to get approval from management before listing an idea. For every idea listed, the idea's champion creates an “ExpectUs” (a pun on “prospectus”) that describes the idea and its potential. Each stock also has a “Budge-It” that outlines the steps the idea's champion believes must be taken to move (budge) the idea forward. The new stock is given a starting price of $10 and even assigned a ticker symbol. Each employee is also given $10,000 in virtual currency to invest in whatever ideas intrigue him or her. In addition to receiving investment money, each stock listing also has a comments thread so that the merits of the idea and any next steps that need to be considered can be discussed.

Just like in a real market, investment money flows unevenly to the ideas that investors favor and that they feel have the best chance of becoming viable projects. But employees don't just invest money; they also volunteer their time and expertise to help potential projects. Once a week, a “market maker” logs into the system and revalues each stock based on the money invested and the time committed. Ideas that fail to attract enough interest are eventually removed. Ideas that gain momentum are given actual funding to help them develop into real projects. When a stock moves from an idea to a moneymaking project, those who have invested their time get to share in the proceeds through bonuses or stock options in the actual company. Anyone who lists an idea, even if it generates no investment, is given credit for doing so on his or her annual performance evaluation.

Even though it's been only a few years since its launch in 2005, the system has already become a huge success. The $10,000 given to each employee might be virtual currency, but the return on investment pays in real dollars. “It lets us harvest the collective brilliance of everyone,” Lavoie says. In one instance, the company's core technology of pattern-recognizing algorithms was given a huge boost when it was applied to a new market because of an idea that started on the Mutual Fun. The algorithms were being used for various military applications and casino gaming programs. Then a member of the administrative staff, someone with no technical knowledge about how these algorithms worked, wondered if they could be used to create educational games as well.19 She listed the idea on the Mutual Fun, where it received a rush of investments from engineers eager to see it work. The idea was developed, and it led to a major contract with a leading toy company. In its first year alone, the Mutual Fun accounted for 50 percent of the company's new business growth.20

What Rite-Solutions has created is a way to manage the ideas of its people while undermining the bias against creativity found in most organizations. Instead of having to run through an assembled murder board or a hierarchy of no, each idea is presented before the entire company within a system designed to allow the best ideas to float upward. The decision to pursue an idea isn't left to a few people holding all the power and hence taking all the risk of uncertainty. Instead of forcing a yes-or-no answer from someone in management, this approach spreads the weight of these large decisions throughout the company. If you're intrigued by the idea but not enthralled by it, you invest some money but not your time. According to Marino, the program has another benefit for him as chief decision maker: “This system removes the terrible burden of always having to be right.”21 The weight of uncertainty produced when evaluating an idea's potential is reduced. What Rite-Solutions hasn't done is to try overtly to make its people more creative. Lavoie and Marino believe that potential already exists inside each of their employees. They believe that instead of trying to enhance the creative output of the organization, they just had to get out of their own way and develop a better system for recognizing creative ideas.