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Month December 2008

Entries 3 Total

Creativity, Organizations, and Identity

Dec 30, ’08 6:17 PM

Teresa M. Amabile & Mukti Khaire wrote an interesting article for October 2008′s HBR titled “Creativity and the Role of the Leader.”

To answer the question, “How can organizations foster a culture of creativity?” they propose 6 guidelines. One of them is open the organization to diverse perspectives. When they discuss enhancing diversity, they state three main points:

  1. Innovation is more likely when people with different backgrounds/disciplines participate.
  2. Open-source innovation is relevant today and may very well be the “future of innovation.”
  3. Diversity within an individual enhances creativity.

It’s the last point that I’m interested in. There has been a study of individuals and how their diverse identity can enhance creativity (Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks and Fiona Lee from Univ. of Michigan, and Chi-Ying Cheng of Columbia Univ.). Here is an excerpt from the HBR article:

Their reserach (Sanchez-Burks, Lee, Cheng’s) focuses on people who have multiple social identities, such as people who are both Asian and American, or who are both women and engineers. Social identities often have distinct knowledge associated with them, and to the extent an individual is comfortable integrating multiple identities, his or her knowledge sets can combine productively. Indeed, through two experiments, these researchers found that people with higher levels of “identity integration” display higher levels of creativity when problems require that they draw on their different realms of knowledge. (One experiment asked Asian Americans to invent new forms of Asian American fusion cuisine, and the other asked female engineers to imagine new features for a cell phone for women.) This research sparked a great deal of personal interest and has implications for management. If managers cause people to suppress parts of their identity, they limit potentially valuable sources of creativity. If managers can encourage identity integration – think of female engineers working in an environment where they don’t feel they have to dress like men – people may be more innovative.

It’s interesting to see that finding topics (topoi), or the places to find arguments, is not limited to things in this world as well as ideas in our minds. We can be topics, places of invention. The very nature of being an Asian and an American at the same time … or being an Asian American that can’t be broken down into more fundamental parts, is a place for finding new and interesting actions, feelings, and beliefs (For those who lack internal diversity, the article encourages seeking diverse life experiences).

Add to this a third layer, and what can that look like? For example, what would a car for Asian Americans look like? One part of my thesis deals with football + African + Korean + American (Hines Ward). Jackie Robinson is so powerful and interesting because he brought the concepts of baseball, African, and American together for the first time. Another example I can think of is R & B music which has its roots in a number of things. Even Elvis was an “innovation” or brought forth “innovation” because he was a fusion of Caucasian teen + Rock ‘n Roll.

As stated at the end of the quote above, there is a way to enhance creativity (and perhaps much more, such as culture) by simply understanding a subaltern culture – such as women engineers in an environment that understand them. A case I can think of where the people in charge took this to heart is found at the end of Malcolm Gladwell’s bestseller, Blink. For years, many orchestras conducted open auditions which resulted in an overwhelming selection of male performers. But in the 1980s, orchestras, as Gladwell writes, “started putting up screens in audition rooms, so that the committee could no longer see the person auditioning. And immediately — immediately! — orchestras started hiring women.” As in this example, organizational change does not have to be a long and strenuous process.

I think I have to think a bit more about management’s role in developing creativity.
From personal experience, I do know that it can kill creativity. There must be a way for management to enhance it or design for it …

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Notes to Self

Dec 20, ’08 9:43 PM

Just spent the afternoon reading and had a few random thoughts:

1. A THOUGHT ON GOING TO THE SOURCE

The origin or primary source of something is very important. Hence, knowing the arts (what guides one’s thinking) is just as important than trying to learn all the methodologies that one can choose from to understand a specific subject matter. It’s like having a framework.

Some examples:

  • When looking for concepts for my thesis, I came upon “assimilation/integration” as a possible process in which culture takes shape. This came from a reading of a book on Asian American cultural politics. I was also vaguely familiar with Raymond Williams. However, Dick’s suggestion to go to the source of both authors’ inspiration, Antonio Gramsci, provided a greater insight into a more fundamental concept – “hegemony,” a complex yet fascinating topic. [download thesis]
  • Donald Schon’s “designerly ways of knowing, thinking, and acting” = repackaging of John Dewey’s thoughts on “Having an Experience.”
  • Herb Simon’s thoughts on the artificial echo Aristotle’s thoughts on poetics.
  • Thoughts around “service design” started over a hundred years ago (ex. Kodak’s “You press the button, we do the rest“).

2. A THOUGHT ON DESIGNING PRACTICE & DESIGNING MANAGEMENT

Forlizzi writes that “Participatory Design” and “Experience Prototyping” are attitudinal rather than procedural/prescriptive methods [by Forlizzi]. Is this the same way “attitude” is used by Boland & Collopy when they describe design attitude v. decision attitude in Managing as Designing? [see previous post]

Forlizzi writes, “… the Product Ecology approach involves doing fieldwork over an extended period of time” in her article to show that a comprehensive understanding of people takes time. This is an important point about design research.

However in the context of the professional world, this is not as easy to implement. Due to constraints, such as budget issues, there’s a disconnect in taking our thoughts towards action. Perhaps designing management, with a similar attitude, may help in bridging the gap between what we would like to have done to what we can get done in our organizations.

3. A THOUGHT ON USER NEEDS

A lot of people talk about being obsessed with finding and identifying user needs. When new products create new habits (ex. we need toothpaste to support the activity of brushing our teeth but this is a 20th century product that didn’t exist in, say, the 15th century), have we created a new “need” or is this something that’s been a latent need in individuals all along? If this is an example of a latent need, is there an infinite amount of needs we can design for? Probably not. Or maybe there are certain core needs that can be addressed differently with the changing times. Hmm. [see previous post on habits]

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What is an American?

Dec 9, ’08 12:48 AM

I sketched a diagram several months ago but never got to revisit it. It was after hearing a discussion on the radio of what it is to be an American. I think it was a discussion on whether Barack Obama or John McCain was the more “American” of the two. That got me thinking about the general question of who/what is an American? So I made the following diagram:

An American can be thought of in one of the following 4 buckets:

1. ENERGY

An American is someone who contributes to the United States through his/her energy. It’s a view that is all about production. A good example of this view is Rosie the Riveter. Henry Ford and Fredrick Taylor’s ability to harness human energy may be one of the reasons why Americans are who they are today.

2. POWER/CONTROL/WILL

An American is someone who is able to align the masses. One of my favorite historical moments is when Jesse Owens participated in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Albert Speer (Hitler’s designer gone awry) once said:

“Each of the German victories and there were a surprising number of these made him (Hitler) happy, but he was highly annoyed by the series of triumphs by the marvelous colored American runner, Jesse Owens.”

In this bucket, the experiences of men (the way people think and feel) are given much weight. This is the place in the “Cross of Pain” where various views are contested (i.e. liberal v. conservative), where one contemplates about what the American Dream might mean (i.e. “Is anyone/anything hindering me from achieving the American Dream?”), and where recognizable leaders become possessions to the American who finds personal meaning in various cultural/societal/political agents.

3. ACTION

An American is someone who acts with the right/proper character in his/her environment. Have you ever heard the phrase, “he acts like an American”? This might not mean much to some people, but I remember my grandparents telling me that when they were in the Korean War, some of their fondest recollections are of American G.I.’s giving them candy bars or some U.N. sponsored cornbread. In some ways, an American is the character in Norman Rockwell’s vignettes of America.

What does it mean to act American? Although many people complain about the rest of the world not liking Americans, some of the noblest and kindest people in history have been Americans. From “Southern hospitality” to American volunteers helping out in third-world countries, it is this spirit of service that I’m pointing out in this bucket. The firemen, law enforcement, military, as well as the neighbor who is willing to let you borrow an egg when they’re out of the house are all American. 9/11 saw many Americans come together through their actions.

4. IDEA

Another kind of American is captured by Edward Everett Hale in his short story, The Man Without a Country. It’s a fiction story about a man who hates America and is sentenced to never set foot on U.S. soil ever again. He is to be transported from one Navy ship to another and is never to have any updates about the U.S. Although unrepentant at first, as the years go by, he falls in love with America only to utter the words, “here you see, I have a country!” on his deathbed.

In this bucket, America is an idea that is inseparable from the American. Physical distance does not deteriorate that spirit. Think of Nelson Mandela on Robben Island for all those years – he never stopped being a South African. Or of Jesus in the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights – he never stopped thinking about his fellow man. An American is someone who hopes and believes in America, the idea.

Afterthoughts

It’s not easy to define an American. And I think that’s constantly changing. For example, it took African Americans over a century to be considered an American. The same with women.

The places seem to constantly shift from one bucket to the other. What does that mean? Do we keep on expanding until we reach a threshold where anyone can become an American? Or as some of the buckets show, sometimes, being an American does not necessarily mean that it is about the passports and legal documents (by no means is this a reference the the latest controversy surrounding Barack Obama). For example, Edward Hale’s short story came out during the Civil War when people didn’t even know if there was going to be an official United States of America after the smoke from the artillary finally cleared. These are hard questions. Hard questions, indeed.

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