[SOUND] Welcome back to the second video on creativity. In the last video, we discussed what creativity is and why it is so important for companies. Today we look at something else, and that is, what makes people creative. Understanding what makes people creative is a critical first step to be able to create in the videos and teams in your company that are optimally positioned to achieve creativity. Knowing what makes people creative is a must for any manager that cares about creativity, and ultimately, innovation. I'll be your host for this video. My name is Dann Stam, and I'm an Associate Professor of Innovation Management at the Rotterdam School of Management. So let's look at some very creative people. What about Leonardo Da Vinci, the well known artist and scientist from the 15th century? He made beautiful paintings, but also nice blueprints for various kinds of innovations such as airplanes, way before they were ever built. He is seen as the greatest minds that ever lived. Or what about Thomas Edison? He invented the light bulb and the motion picture camera as two amongst many of his novel inventions and that were implemented in various products and found to be very very useful. Or what about Salvador Dali, the well known artist. He not only painted beautiful surrealistic paintings but was also known throughout the world as a sculpture and jewelry maker. Now what do these people have in common? What makes these creative geniuses so creative? Some people argue that the creative geniuses are slightly mad, that it's the madness that's necessary to make them creative. I don't think so. Let's look at what makes people creative. Already in the 80's, Harvard scientist Teresa Amabile created a model that specifies the factors that are important for people to become creative. She specified three factors. The first one is expertise, technical, procedural and intellectual knowledge about the domain that one is working in. The second is motivation, the willingness to conduct a task that one is doing. And finally, the third factor is creative thinking skills, how effectively and imaginatively people can approach problems. A Mabile arc is that all three of these factors are necessary for creativity to arise. So rather than only one of them, you need to have all three of them to a certain extent in order to become creative. Now let's look a bit more at these three elements. When people think about expertise, they often think that there is such a thing as too much knowledge. And maybe this is true in the sense that some people have been working in a job for too long and know so much that they cannot think out of the box anymore. But in all honesty, what is much more of a problem is not having enough knowledge. Why is not having enough knowledge such a problem? For instance, if you do not have enough knowledge about a certain area, you don't know what has been done before, so you might be working on something that's not novel. Also with too little expertise, you have no knowledge of where the boundaries in this area are. So you might be working on something spectacular and you wouldn't even recognize it, and quit with it because you lack to see the value of your idea. Or you don't know what is feasible. Maybe you're working on a type of solution that simply doesn't work and because you do not know that it cannot work, you continue working on it for way too long. And finally, you may not know what's useful and come up with ideas that are simply irrelevant. So unless you have enough knowledge and expertise to speak for these four elements, it is very hard to be creative. In other words, there might be something like too much knowledge, but on average it's much better to be like Lisa than to be like Ralph. Now let's look at the second component of motivation. When we talk about motivation, people often distinguish between two types of motivation, extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation is about doing a certain task, not because you like it, but because of something you get out of it. You can think of the carrot and the stick. Maybe you work because you get money or a promotion, or maybe you work in order not to lose your house due to the mortgage on it. All of that is an extrinsic motivation. You undertake an activity, but you do it because of some type of reward. There is also such a thing as intrinsic motivation, doing a certain task simply because you love doing it without getting anything out of it, other than joy and satisfaction, you would already do it. And what we know is, that intrinsic motivation really has some benefits. For instance, if you are more intrinsically motivated, you are often more willing to overcome obstacles when they arise. You have more willingness to overcome them and to put in the extra effort. You have more willingness to continue after failure, and importantly, these things are a very important part of creativity, failing, failing, failing before you can actually succeed. intrinsic motivation makes you have more willingness to work hard and continuously think about the problem, and all of these issues make intrinsic motivation such a critical element of creativity. So if you want to be creative, it certainly helps when you are intrinsically motivated. Now let's look at the final element of creativity. The final element is called creative thinking skills, and it's all about how flexibly and imaginatively you can approach problems. This is not so easy because many people go through their lives like robots, as though things are already scripted for them, and this makes sense since it is very efficient. For instance, if we say goodbye to someone, we just wave and say bye bye. We do this automatically. We don't have to think about it. And this is true for many of the things that we do. We don't think about them, we just do them. And although this is good because it's very efficient, it works against you if you want to come up with a creative solution. Being creative might be very difficult if you act like a robot. If you use automatic scripts and schema's that are in your head, you stop thinking too soon before you get the optimal solution. Also you make too many assumptions about what's going on. In a way, it's better to think like a child, to think like someone who hasn't learned all these assumptions, who hasn't learned all these automatic scripts and schemas, a person who sees a box and thinks this is not just a box. It's a castle. It's a boat. That way of thinking, outside the boundaries and borders, is really what's necessary to create and be creative. So let's summarize. What makes people creative? Is it madness? Well, maybe for some, but for others there are three elements that are important. Having enough knowledge, being intrinsically motivated and creative thinking skills, these three elements are all crucial to be creative. This is it for this video. Next time we will build on the knowledge we discussed in this video to understand how we can actually enhance your own and other's creativity through various creativity tools.
