Report 103
A weekly newsletter on creativity, ideas, innovation and invention.
Tuesday, 7 September 2004
Issue 33
Hello and welcome to another issue of Report 103, your weekly newsletter on Creativity, ideas, innovation and invention.
As always, if you have news about creativity, idea innovation or invention please feel free to forward it to me for potential inclusion in Report103. Your comments and feedback are also always welcome.
CREATIVITY AND SCHOOL
Around much of the world, children are returning to school and parents are breathing a sigh of relief. As such, it seems an appropriate time to look at how schools can foster creativity in children.
Over the past 40 years, there has been a considerable amount of experimentation in the education system: systems designed to let children learn at their own pace, systems which teach in unusual ways, systems which focus more on learning than on correct answers and so on. Interestingly, these experiments have not lasted long. Almost inevitably, schools have come back to relatively traditional approaches to teaching basic subjects: reading, writing, maths, science, social studies and arts.
And I for one wholeheartedly support this. All creative professionals need to learn the basics of their profession before they can experiment and be creative. Painters spend years learning to draw, learning to mix paints, painting boring still lives, copying the masters and doing other repetitive and relatively uncreative work until they know the basics of paints, art history and painting. Only then do they have the knowledge and skills to become fully creative artists. Only when an artist understands the rules, can she successfully break those rules to create innovative new works.
Likewise, children need to learn the basics of everything. They need to know how to read and write. The have to be able to add, subtract, multiple, divide and otherwise do things with numbers. They need to understand where their culture came from and their rights as citizens. Such education provides children with a treasure chest of knowledge and a toolkit of skills with which they can build creative ideas.
Moreover, it is essential to understand grammatical, mathematical, and scientific rules and why they exist so you can understand when and how to break the rules effectively.
Certainly schools should continue to teach traditional subjects in tried and tested ways. But they should also provide a few additional skills which will enhance children's toolboxes and push them to be more creative on their own. Many of these skills are already taught in some school systems. But not always and often not emphasised enough.
Firstly, children need to be taught various methods of logical deduction. Consider:
If A is true then B is true
If B is true then C is true
Ask yourself:
If A is true, is C always true?
The answer, of course, is: yes. But:
If C is true, is A always true?
The answer is: no. It is amazing how many well educated people do not understand why the last question is no necessarily true. Yet, this is a basic rule of logical deduction.
Providing children with a basket of logical deduction skills helps them combine information in various ways in order to come up with creative ideas. Logic is certainly taught in many schools – but not as much as it should be.
Secondly, children need to learn from a young age how to find information. When I was in school this was all about visiting the school's and local libraries, learning to read card catalogues and interpreting the Dewey Decimal system of book ordering. I trust this is still taught today. Even though the Internet seems to have become a more popular research medium.
In addition, of course, children need to learn to find information and – more importantly – interpret information on the world wide web. The web, of course, is a whole different beast to libraries. There is more information on the web, not to mention more incorrect information and, sadly, more dangers than could be found in any library
As a result, children need not only learn how to find information on the web but, they also need to learn how to analyse the information they discover and how to deal with dangerous and disturbing information.
Moreover, children must be encouraged to use their research skills to learn more about things that interest them as well as to research the components of their creative ideas.
Lastly, and perhaps most unexpectedly, children should learn foreign languages from their first day of school. As multilingual readers will know, thinking in different languages forces you to think differently. German's highly structured grammar leads to more structured thought. Japan's hierarchical language imposes a higher level of etiquette than other languages. Thai's lack of verb tenses encourages a different approach to time. The elegance of French encourages elegant thought. And so on.
Ability to think in a variety of languages gives children the ability to think in a variety of ways. Ability to communicate in a variety of languages gives children the ability to communicate with a wider variety of people and to research information from a wider variety of sources.
If you think children are too young to learn foreign languages from their first day of school, I beg to differ. My children, at three and six years of age are perfectly trilingual (English, Dutch and Thai). They are far from unique (at least with respect to their linguistic skills; they are wonderfully unique in many other ways though!). Brussels, with so many multinational families, is thick with children who speak two, three and even four languages by the time they are five years old. Young children learn new languages with remarkable ease. Indeed, the mistake school systems in many countries make is waiting until children are in their teens before teaching a new language. By then it is too late. Language learning becomes a chore and only the motivated will achieve any level of fluency.
Finally, there is one more aspect of education that is absolutely critical in terms of developing creativity in children: encouraging children to question their teachers, their parents and others. In many cultures, this is considered unacceptable. Children are brought up to respect their elders and not to question them. Even in more “enlightened” societies, a child who constantly questions his teachers may well be branded a trouble maker.
As I grow older, I can appreciate the value of respect for elders. At the same time, it is possible to question teachers, parents and other elders in a way that does not show them disrespect. Questions can be worded to suggest that the child wants to understand an issue better rather than suggest that the child doubts her teacher.
However, this is a skill rarely taught in schools. So, it is up to us parents to teach our children how to question politely.
WHAT'S WRONG WITH INNOVATIVE SUPPLIERS?
Even though large business has come to appreciate the importance of innovation, there is one place that even the most innovative large companies fear to tread: purchasing from innovative young companies.
It is not that big companies do not want the products and services that innovative young companies can provide. Rather it is concern that young companies will not be around to service those products and complete those service contracts. (An ironic state of affairs when you consider that it is a contract with a big company that, more than anything else, can provide an innovative young company with stability and hence longevity.)
The other concern of big business is that small companies will not be able to provide products and services in the quantities the big companies need.
On one hand, this is understandable. No company, big or small, wants to spend hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Euro investing in a supplier's products and supplier relations only to find that the supplier is unable to complete the contract or, worse, goes bankrupt after six months.
On the other hand, it is a pity. Innovative young companies can often provide innovative products and services that help large companies become more innovative in their own right.
Moreover, innovative young companies – desperate to make a global company into a client – are likely to go further to serve and satisfy big companies.
The solution requires an effort from both sides. Innovative young companies must address the perceived risk they pose to large clients and find innovative means of addressing that risk. Unfortunately, small companies are all too likely to try and hide that risk under the naïve assumption that large companies might not notice. (Note to innovative young company managers: they will notice. Address it.)
Some innovative young companies, rather than selling to large companies, form partnerships with them. As a result, they lose out on the income from a sale, but benefit by having a big name behind them – thus making it far easier to sell to big companies in the future.
Alternatively, innovative young companies can develop contingency plans in the event they abruptly stop business. These plans could include granting intellectual property rights to their clients. For example, software companies could offer to make their software code and documentation available to clients in the event the software supplier goes out of business.
Another option is for a group of innovative young companies to team together and form, in effect, a virtual medium sized company. Such a partnership could be designed so that if one partner goes out of business, others could continue to offer that partner's services.
Likewise, big companies need to appreciate that innovative young suppliers can help them become more innovative. Big companies should not immediately reject a smaller company as a potential supplier. Rather they should voice their concerns from the beginning and see what kind of solutions the innovative young company can provide to overcome the risks. If the young company truly is innovative, it will devise solutions.
NEED INSPIRATION? GET AWAY FROM THAT DESK!
The East of England Development Agency has proven what most of us creative thinkers have long known: sitting at your workplace desk is one of the worst places to have ideas. A poll of about 1000 people found that only 10% had ideas while at their workplace desks, while some 30% had ideas while nodding off to sleep. The agency further found that only 6% of woman, but 17% of men, had ideas in the workplace. The Agency also found that squandering time out of doors was another time when people had ideas.
The agency provides five tips for enhancing office creativity:
- Brain priming exercises to solve problems
- Provide flowers and plants in the workplace; research has shown that this alone can help produce 15% more ideas in the workplace.
- Have a specific creativity room, ideally on the west side of your office, for brainstorming and other creative thinking exercises.
- Make food and drink available to staff.
- Consider rearranging the office lay out to enhance working relationships.
For more information about the survey, see the Agency's press release at http://www.eeda.org.uk/compdetails.asp?id=3987&sec_id=423
Happy thinking
Jeffrey Baumgartner
