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What creativity can (and can not) do (CROSBI ID 498593)

Prilog sa skupa u zborniku | stručni rad | međunarodna recenzija

Bogdanić, Grozdana ; Pašagić, Blanka ; Pašagić, Aleksandar What creativity can (and can not) do // Procedings of 2nd International Ergonomic Conference, Ergonomics 2004 ; CD-ROM of Full Texts / Mijović, B. (ur.). Zagreb: Hrvatsko ergonomijsko društvo, 2004. str. 211-214-x

Podaci o odgovornosti

Bogdanić, Grozdana ; Pašagić, Blanka ; Pašagić, Aleksandar

engleski

What creativity can (and can not) do

Creativity is a highly individualistic and therefore personal trait. It cannot be bought or forced or ordered, nor can it be measured or evaluated or organized. It is possible that creativity can be nurtured, but in order to be nurtured, it must first be ignited. Once ignited, it will result in a continuous thought process that attempts to exclude all interferences until it culminates in either success or failure. Since a long time we have become very interested in creativity and its impact on technological innovation and invention, so wish to discuss what is happening to creativity in the industrial world. We will point out the danger signs and try to suggest steps we can take to improve the situation. Although we are focusing on creativity in the industrial setting, it is instructive first to examine the term in a broader sense. It could be mentioned the definition by Jacob Bronowski1: "There exists a single creative activity, which is displayed alike in the arts and in the sciences. The scientist or the artist takes two facts or experiences which are separate ; he finds in them a likeness which had not been seen before, and he creates a unity by showing the likeness… " Bronowski1 continues, "It is wrong to think of science as a mechanical record of facts and it is wrong to think of the arts as remote and private fancies. What makes each human, what makes them universal, is the stamp of the creative mind". Whether you call creativity an insight, a gut feeling, an inspiration, or a stroke of genius is not critical. What is critical is what we are doing to provide the proper climate so that more and more people can be creative. If we examine the results of creativity we are struck by their beauty and simplicity. Unfortunately, modern society takes for granted the creative acts of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton because nowadays these acts are records of facts: cold, accepted, and ancient. We suspect, however, that in the days of these geniuses people were just as mystified by their creative acts as we are mystified by Einstein's theory of relativity. Science is not a collection of cold facts ; it is an ever-living, expanding, dynamic force. True scientific knowledge is the ability to understand science and admire its beauty, just as we appreciate a symphony or a painting by one of the masters. But if science is taught as a collection of cold facts - as it is, unfortunately, in many institutions of lower and higher learning - it tends to stifle one of the most important prerequisites for ignition of the creative spark: curiosity. The other obvious prerequisite is the development of the thinking process. In our opinion, it is never too early (but it can be too late) to educate our students in a manner that enhances their curiosity and their thought processes. A proper climate for the creative spark does not guarantee a creative act, but when the creative act comes to fruition, it appears as if all the thoughts that have been brewing for an agonizingly long time are suddenly organized into one simple conclusion. Paul Dirac, who explained the mechanics of the atom and shared the 1933 Nobel Prize with Erwin Schrodinger, said that the insight leading to his breakthrough came to him during a solitary walk in the fields near Cambridge. Elliott Dunlap Smith, who traced the steps leading to inventions, indicates that what is needed is "to release the meticulous step-by-step procedure of logical science." Are we giving creativity a chance to survive? Or are we, perhaps inadvertently, stifling creativity? Long time ago, one among us had occasion to attend the lecture of Professor Melvin Calvin from the University of California-Berkeley, who won the 1961 Nobel Prize for unravelling the mechanism of photosynthesis. One among questions to him was whether at the present time he could do what he had done some 30 years before. His reply was: "Absolutely not - now we have too much accountability." Professor Calvin could have said that, with the new analytical and tracer techniques, he could do his work in less time and even more elegantly. But he did not. What did he mean by accountability, and how does it hurt the creative process? Accountability implies financial controls as money passes either from the industrial management or from government sources in the case of academia. Often, the same people who are supposed to be creative and innovative are asked to account for how money is spent. It could be reasoned that bureaucracy and accounting go hand in hand and are most cancerous. Accounting is not just financial. It is also spiritual, and it means that you must be sure to conform with the budget and to the overall plan - whatever it is. You no longer have a sum of money to spend on a project ; you must report, sometimes with tongue in cheek, that you are 48% away from a goal. Think back to the time of Thomas Jefferson, who sent John Paul Jones to get rid of the pirates off the Barbary Coast - only one assignment and no means of reporting back to headquarters. There was trust in the man selected to do the job, and the success of the mission was obviously greatly influenced by that trust. The basic point is individual freedom of performance based on management's trust in the individual scientist. In simple terms, the continuous ability of management to contact the individual creates individuals who feel that they must contact management. They become sort of programmed not to make decisions without consulting management. We have already said that creativity is really very individual and personal in character, and thus the continuing need to conform to a plan is the most serious threat to innovation. Now we have orderliness rather than free spirit. Starting in the mid-1950s there has been a substantial increase in the percentage of new company presidents whose primary interests and expertise lie in the financial and legal areas, not in the technical and manufacturing areas. Since corporate attitudes and policies are built from the top down, it only becomes a matter of time before research managers begin to spend their working hours trying to avoid risks, to stay out of trouble, and to manage their existing assets more efficiently instead of concentrating on creating an environment where the troublesome and wavering lamp of the inventor can glow more brightly. The psychological milieu within the corporate world, the result of 20 years of adaptation to an adversarial environment, must be turned around and the missing parts must be rebuilt. Industry must devote itself once again to the nurture of the inventor. He must be recruited, motivated, and rewarded. The success of the industry in the fierce world of international competition depends more now than ever on the ability of industrial managers to do exactly that. How does one select a candidate who will bring creativity, innovation, and invention to the company? What qualifications are we really looking for? Some guidelines could be useful. You would think that what we really want in a researcher is a thorough background in the fundamentals of science, a good sense of reasoning, insatiable curiosity, the ability to make decisions, and perseverance. Let's examine each of these criteria. With respect to a thorough background in the fundamentals of science, it is undoubtedly true that most good schools do provide such a background in undergraduate training. Unfortunately, we find all too frequently that some of these fundamentals are apparently not fixed firmly enough, because four of five years of graduate work result in the loss of knowledge in the basic areas that actually are much more critical to future performance than the specific knowledge gained for a Ph.D. thesis. Furthermore, a thorough background in the fundamentals of science must entail not encyclopaedic knowledge but rather an ability to use one’ s knowledge properly as a basis for further intellectual growth and constructive performance. A good sense of reasoning may be deadly, because reasoning carried to an extreme may inhibit free thought. Time and time again it is possible to see capable research people get enthusiastic about an idea in the late afternoon and than abandon in the next morning because they reasoned that it probably would not work anyway. We are not implying the one should give every wild notion a try, nor are we suggesting complete abandonment of all blue-sky ideas when reason indicates that the chances for success are slim. The insatiable part of curiosity could be deadly too, because a person who is curious about everything never finishes a project and is forever learning. In research, most decisions must be made without the availability of all the facts, so how do you make decisions? The answer is that you gamble on the path that seems most attractive, without a firm factual basis. Thus, in research, "ability to make decisions" is really a less desirable trait than "willingness to gamble" on one's judgment and scientific intuition. Having torpedoed certain parts of these qualifications for our ideal researcher, let us consider a number of others. The very first qualification that comes to mind is optimism. If you realize that probably more than 90% of the ideas worked on by researchers do not even reach the pilot plant stage, you have to be an inherent optimist to survive the odds. However, in order to overcome the odds this optimism must not be blind. Ideally, this kind of optimism must be based on knowing when to stop a hopeless project before it becomes hopeless and somehow not minding that you must stop it. The next quality is that you must somehow not be afraid of making a fool of yourself. This is a real paradox, because our extensive educational upbringing is geared to prevent this from happening and, as scientists, we are terribly afraid of voicing what may appear to be a foolish opinion in front of other scientists. The fear of making a fool of oneself is probably related to the general fear of failure. You often observe it when the project begins to look pretty good and everybody is getting excited about it. Quite frequently, the researcher, who is primarily responsible for the original idea, will get cold feet and will start looking for alternatives or excuses to delay the project just in case things don't work out. What the researcher does not realize is that by now some very talented people have already examined the goods and joined the team. Their commitments will help prevent failure and, in any case, the original researcher will not have the sole responsibility. Industry can help by providing mentors to the creative people in an organization. Ideally, these company entrepreneurs would be technologically well-qualified and close to top management. Within each company, one new idea and one new development can lead to a host of new developments and new ideas. We've certainly seen this evolution in petrochemical industry, where for many years we have introduced a new petroleum refining or petrochemical process at the rate of one process per year. This has been possible largely because of the extensive cooperation between chemists and chemical engineers and because of support from the technologically astute management. In about 1912, 28-year-old Frederick Bergius mixed coal and oil with a catalyst and reacted the mixture with hydrogen at a high temperature and pressure. He made oil from coal, and his creative genius was recognized when he received the Nobel Prize in 1932. This is the beauty of creativity - a simple idea ; however, the road from creativity to technology to public acceptance is long and rocky. While it might be argued by some that creativity in itself hardly qualifies as a scientific quantity, it would definitely be a mistake to ignore its obvious influence on any truly significant scientific breakthrough. Regardless of the fact that it might be tempting to dismiss any effort aimed at increasing creativity, arguing that most components required to do so are largely subjective in nature, any serious long-term approach to education of future scientists will realize the value of creating an environment that inspires creativity. In the end, the implications of such an approach reach far beyond purely scientific domain. Taking that into consideration, we would like to close with a quotation of Thomas Jefferson’ s words: the basic principle to govern one country should be dedicated to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The underlying truth might just be that unless we first pursue significance through creativity, we will lose our ability to pursue happiness. References: 1. J. Bronowski, In Creativity ; discussion organized by Gustavus Adolphus College ; Fleet Academic Editions: New York, 1970.

creativity; the industrial setting; science; art

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Podaci o prilogu

211-214-x.

2004.

objavljeno

Podaci o matičnoj publikaciji

Procedings of 2nd International Ergonomic Conference, Ergonomics 2004 ; CD-ROM of Full Texts

Mijović, B.

Zagreb: Hrvatsko ergonomijsko društvo

Podaci o skupu

2nd International Ergonomic Conference 2004, ERGONOMICS 2004

predavanje

21.10.2004-22.10.2004

Stubičke Toplice, Hrvatska

Povezanost rada

Kemija