Creative Leadership Observatory: Reconceptualizing Creativity

Hello readers, this is blog post 4 on the Creative Leadership Observatory! For this week, we dove into a pretty good read, The Cult of Creativity, by Samuel W. Franklin. At this point, I am nearly through the book, as I can’t seem to put it down. This book has caused me to rethink everything I thought I knew about the notion of “creativity”. Which has been a head spinner, because I view myself as a “creative” person, working in a “creative” industry. But it got me to really think deeply about what that could mean. For this week, I will share my thoughts just on the introduction and the first chapter.

Franklin starts off this book by first, bringing to the reader’s attention, that the word “creativity” actually was not used until the mid 20th century. If you are like me, you probably thought, “what? Surely that’s not correct”. Well my friends, it is. Franklin proves his findings by evaluating the idea of creativity. What is it? That seems obvious to many of us, but really if we are to think about it, how does it differentiate between, imagination, genius, or originality? Those are the words that were previously used in place of creativity. What Franklin says separates the idea of creativity from those other example words is that, “creativity is the ability to produce something new AND useful” [emphasis added]. The key here, is that the usefulness factory was important during this post war era of America where there was a heavy emphasis placed on capitalist production and growth.

During the post war economy boom, there was heavy financial backing into the research of the “creative person”. This was because it was believed the creative person could be integral to the development of military progress during the cold war. New ways of fighting the communist required “creative” thinking. Not only was there heavy funding in the creative man for fighting the communist, but also in the efforts to grow our new booming economy. Additionally, to differentiate the rank and file worker in a capitalist model from the communist model, our workers were encouraged to be “creative thinkers” in the workplace. Franklin gives us a vision of this new workplace by reminding us of the characters of Mad Men, and thinking how “creative thinking” in the workplace meant how to encourage the modern consumer to buy into products that they really do not need or even want.

Franklin goes on to address the debate around, what is a creative person? We often view creativity akin to genius, and often discuss it as a trait that some are just born with. While at the same time, creativity is also discussed as a teachable skill. There are so many books out there that describe, “how to become more creative”. And there’s something that feels warm and fuzzy about thinking this is a skill that is attainable by all. And in fact, he even goes as far as to share that many psychologist in the research of the “creative person” feel to be creative and exercise your creativity, is what it means to be truly human.

Franklin also aptly points out, that our perception as to who is a creative person is often tied to an association with their occupation. For instance, he states, “the difference between a highly effective person or a highly creative person seems to come down to occupation”. Such as an account versus an architect. As we know today, creativity thinking can be tied to any occupation. There are certainly “creative accountants” out in the world today (maybe some of them in prison, but who’s to say).

In the end, I mostly liked Franklin’s definition of a creative person as somehow who has a “high tolerance for ambiguity”. I think that resonates well in today’s modern, fast paced world. In addition to reading these chapters, this week we listed to a podcast from Franklin where he discusses his book. At the end of the podcast, Franklin tasked the listen to not use the word “creative” for a week. I thought to myself, “that sounds hard but I think I can do it”. Unfortunately, as a fashion designer currently interviewing for jobs, I didn’t even last two hours without using the word!