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:
- Innovation is more likely when people with different backgrounds/disciplines participate.
- Open-source innovation is relevant today and may very well be the “future of innovation.”
- 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 …