The Gatekeepers are dead, long live the Gatekeepers!

According to the Systems Model of Creativity, for creativity to occur, enough “gatekeepers” of the appropriate domain need to anoint the resulting product as creative [1]. Traditional gatekeepers include teachers, critics, journal editors, museum curators, and grant committees among others, who are tasked with deciding what is an original and valuable contribution to a domain, and what is not. Until recently, without the approval and support of enough recognized experts on the subject, great ideas and works were condemned to wither away and be forgotten. However, technology is making gatekeepers less and less relevant to the innovation process, and there has never been a better time to be creative.

Even in the most democratic of countries, innovation remains substantially under the control of expert oligarchies that decide the scope and direction of a given domain. In the past, lucky innovators would live to see their works accepted by the gatekeepers, while the rest would die along with their ideas in obscurity. In physics, the opinion of a very small number of leading university professors was enough to certify Einstein’s ideas as creative and worth including in the field. Imagine if they had decided otherwise. Similarly, it has been said that in the US 10,000 people in Manhattan are the totality of gatekeepers in modern art [1]. In many domains, the expert process of assessing the creative worth of a product is arbitrary and often unreliable. In a few instances, works rejected by the gatekeepers of one era, were embraced by the gatekeepers of another era [2], as was the case of Monet, Van Gogh, and Cezanne. More recently, many publishers rejected Harry Potter, saying it was too long a book for children [3]. Although gatekeepers have the most influence on determining the status of potential Big-C eminent creative works [4], they exert their influence on all forms of creativity. Well-meaning teachers in the classroom, bosses on the job, and even relatives at home, feel tasked with making a judgment on the value of original works. Fortunately, in a number of domains, gatekeepers increasingly lack the power to restrict access to creative resources, or condemn good works to obscurity. Technology is making it increasingly easy for creative individuals to bypass the gatekeepers, and access the resources they need to act on their creative impulses, and make their works available to anyone who may benefit from them. Technology is democratizing the tools of creativity and innovation.

This democratization process is most evident in the publication of books and music. According to a recent study, 1300 authors who made their Kindle debut in 2013 are earning $10,000+ a year from writing [5]. More importantly, of the 140 authors that earned $100,000 or more from selling ebooks on Amazon last year, 100 are self-published, with just under 20 published by the Big Five publishers in the US. A similar transformation can be recognized in music. In a recent interview [6] Thrift Shop’s Macklemore was asked about not having a label publish his music and he said “Yeah, there’s no reason to do it. With the power of the Internet and with the real personal relationship that you can have via social media with your fans… I mean everyone talks about MTV and the music industry, and how MTV doesn’t play videos any more — YouTube has obviously completely replaced that. It doesn’t matter that MTV doesn’t play videos. It matters that we have YouTube and that has been our greatest resource in terms of connecting, having our identity, creating a brand, showing the world who we are via YouTube. That has been our label.”

Beyond the social media platforms such as YouTube that allow creatives to reach potential consumers directly, technology is also enabling crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstater [7, 8] to help them bypass the traditional gatekeepers, and access financial resources to fund their projects. Most notably, when Kickstarter started out it decided to stay away from the term ‘art’ and spelled out its mission statement as a new way to support any kind of ‘creativity’. Creativity has its own gatekeepers, and historically they have had a bias towards Art [9]. In the mind of many, creative is the opposite of practical. Kickstarter let the public decide what was important, and increasingly dollars are veering away from art towards invention. Importantly, crowdfunding is doing two things that other forms of funding struggle with, and changing our culture in the process. Firstly, it is fostering the new ‘maker’ culture with projects like Makey Makey [10, 11]. Secondly, it is a crucial method for routing around non-existent state funding or market influence that is stacked against public good in either the digital or physical realm [12].

The emerging culture of creative entrepreneurship predates the Web, and its roots go back to the 1960s. However, over the last decade technology has obliterated many of the traditional barriers. The Internet enables you to promote, sell, and deliver directly to the user, and to do so in ways that allow you to compete with corporations and institutions, which previously had a virtual monopoly on marketing and distribution [13]. You can now reach potential customers at a speed and on a scale that would have been unthinkable previously, when pretty much the only means were word of mouth, the alternative press, and stapling handbills to telephone poles. Creative entrepreneurship is spawning its own institutional structure: online marketplaces, self-publishing platforms, nonprofit incubators, and collaborative spaces. So, what will all this mean for creatives, and for the domains they seek to innovate?

For one, young designers are no longer interested in putting in their 10,000 hours to become masters of their craft. They recognize that 10,000 hours is less important now than 10,000 contacts. A new generation of creators is increasingly focused on acquiring only the knowledge they need to innovate, and favor breath over depth. It is the networks enabled by technology that mediate access to the creative resources needed to make a vision a reality, and to reach consumers that can appreciate the outcome. Traditional gatekeepers are increasingly limited in the power they can derive from their deep mastery of existing rules. When the Modern Library asked its editorial board to select the 100 best novels of the 20th century, the top choice was Ulysses. In a companion poll of readers, it was Atlas Shrugged [13]. Increasingly, the future belongs to those creatives with both the desire and courage to try to redefine the rules. In this new world, everyone’s opinion, as expressed in Amazon reviews and suchlike, carries equal weigh. The result is the democratization of taste.

The democratization of taste appears to coincide with the democratization of creativity [13]. The makers have the means to sell, but everybody has the means to make [14]. Increasingly, everybody seems to fancy himself a writer, a musician, a visual artist, scientist, and/or inventor. Moreover, the democratization of taste ensures that no one has the right (or inclination) to tell us when our work is bad. Expert gatekeepers no longer mediate the relationship between produce and consumer. On the one hand, this means freedom to pursue our dreams, but on the other, we risk suffering from a universal case of grade inflation in which we’re all swapping A-minuses all the time, or, in the language of Facebook, “likes.” [13].

Alas there is no turning back, we have come to the age of the customer, and the costumer is always right. Traditional gatekeepers are dead, and individual consumers are the new gatekeepers of creativity. Long live the gatekeepers!

REFERENCES

[1] Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1999). “Creativity”. Edited extract from R. Sternberg (Ed) Handbook of Creativity. Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/11443_01_Henry_Ch01.pdf

[2] McNee, L. (2011, October 21). “10 Famous Artists Who Had to Deal with Rejection During Their Lifetime”. The Art and Fine Art Tips of Lori McNee. Retrieved from http://www.finearttips.com/2011/10/10-famous-artists-who-died-before-their-art-was-recognized/#.

[3] Wilborn, A. (2013, February 13). “5 Hilarious Reasons Publishers Rejected Classic Best-Sellers”. Cracked.com. Retrieved from http://www.cracked.com/article_20285_5-hilarious-reasons-publishers-rejected-classic-best-sellers.html

[4] Kaufman, J.C. and Beghetto, R, A. (2009). “Beyond Big and Little: The Four C Model of Creativity”. Review of General Psychology, 13, 1-12. Retrieved from https://s3.amazonaws.com/jck_articles/Kaufman,+Beghetto+-+2009+-+Beyond+big+and+little+The+four+c+model+of+creativity.pdf

[5] Publishing Technology. (2014, July 15). “How many self-published authors are really cashing in? Analysis of Author Earnings data”. Content Forwards. Retrieved from http://www.publishingtechnology.com/2014/07/how-many-self-published-authors-are-really-cashing-in-analysis-of-author-earnings-data/

[6] Masnick, M. (2013, April 4). “Macklemore Explains Why Not Being On a A Label Helped Him Succeed”. Techdirt.com Case Studies. Retrieved from https://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20130401/03115322523/macklemore-explains-why-not-being-label-helped-him-succeed.shtml

[7] PBSoffbook. (2012, March 21). “The Impact of Kickstarter, Creative Commons & Creators Project”. PBS Digital Studios. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=024vLBBJf4I

[8] Hussey, P. (2012, August 17). “How is crowdfunding changing culture?”. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/culture-professionals-network/culture-professionals-blog/2012/aug/17/crowdfunding-changing-culture-kickstarter-projects

[9] Enayati, A. (2012, March 28). “Is there a bias against creativity?” CNN. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/28/health/enayati-uncertainty/

[10] Silver, J. (2012, May 12). “MaKey MaKey – An Invention Kit for Everyone?” Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfQqh7iCcOU

[11] Silver, J. (2012, November 9). “MaKey MaKey – An Invention Kit for Everyone?” Retrieved from https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joylabs/makey-makey-an-invention-kit-for-everyone

[12] Howell, E. (2015, January 27). “NASA Mars Plan Criticized in Kickstarter Project, ‘Fight for Space’.” Space.com. Retrieved from http://www.space.com/28381-fight-for-space-movie-kickstarter.html

[13] Deresiewicz, W. (2015). “The Death of the Artist – and the Birth of the Creative Entrepreneur”. The Atlantic January/February. Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/01/the-death-of-the-artist-and-the-birth-of-the-creative-entrepreneur/383497/

[14] Britton, L. (2014, August 18). “Democratized tools of production: New technologies spurring the maker movement”. Technology & Social Change Group. University of Washington Information School. Retrieved from http://tascha.uw.edu/2014/08/democratized-tools-of-production-new-technologies-spurring-the-maker-movement/

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Bulb Fiction

Edison did not invent the light bulb [1]. Bell did not invent the telephone [2]. Einstein did not discover Relativity [3]. Ford did not invent the automobile [4]. You get the point.

It should not be a surprise to learn that it is hard to attribute great ideas even to some of the best minds of all times. After all, many now believe that every new idea is constructed out of previously existing ideas. Therefore, allocating full credit for a new idea to a single individual is usually fiction, bulb fiction, and when it happens, it is only a matter of time before the truth is discovered.

In his web series Everything is a Remix [5, 6, 7] Kirby Ferguson argues that no inventors start from scratch. Creation requires a basic foundation of knowledge in a domain, and that foundation is acquired by copying. In particular, people learn a new domain by studying other people’s ideas. He also notes that new ideas are based on variations of existing ideas. People don’t master a field, and then completely ignore lessons embedded in existing ideas. Instead, new advances transform current concepts, and these transformations build on each other until a breakthrough emerges.

Moreover, as Medici Effect doctrine demonstrates, the most radical transformations are enabled when different ideas are combined in new ways. Most critically, for young aspiring creators, is Ferguson’s assertion that creative talent is the product of persistence much more so than genius. He encourages us to shamelessly copy great ideas, and then use them as the foundation for our own great ideas. Ferguson identifies the relentless process of transforming and combining other people’s ideas as the key to unlocking our creative potential.

In his book Borrowing Brilliance, David Kord Murray echoes Ferguson’s views on the origin of new big ideas [8, 9]. According to Murray, creative thought is not the act of waiting for a brilliant idea to pop into your head, but the active search for an idea that already exists buried in the patterns of old ideas. Whereas Ferguson only provides us with inspiration in his analyses of Lucas and Tarantino films and Bob Dylan music, Murray offers a 6-step process for building on the ideas of others to create valuable new ideas:

Define the problem. Creative ideas are novel and valuable. A good problem definition is the required foundation on which to build the new idea process. Now, this is harder than it sounds. In school we are taught to solve problems, not define them. Nevertheless, it is essential that we first identify the problem clearly, determine the root causes, and understanding its full scope.

Borrow ideas. If the problem is the foundation, the ideas you borrow are the construction materials for building your new idea. Start by borrowing existing ideas for solving the problem or similar problems. Once you have exhausted that search, go on to look for ideas in other domains. The more remote the domain, the more exotic the material, the more likely your solution will be of breakthrough quality.

Combine ideas. Murray offers metaphorical thinking as the best means to combine ideas. The premise is that by having used the definition of the problem to guide the search for ideas to borrow, there will be a high likelihood that some of these ideas will share enough elements in common to connect and combine them. You must then examine each idea attempting to see one idea in terms of the other (e.g. time is money, less is more, life is a journey). Once you find a combination that works well, then you can work to extend the metaphor as far as possible (but no further).

Allow ideas to incubate. You want to give your subconscious mind the opportunity to help you develop the idea further. Murray recommends you pause and sleep on it. You then feed your subconscious by asking yourself questions about the problem you are trying to solve, about the ideas you have borrowed to solve it, and about any promising combinations you have already assembled.

Judging. You then need to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the idea relative to the target problem. As a byproduct of this evaluation you will enhance you creative intuition, and develop a sense for the perfect solution (one with all the identified strengths and none of the weaknesses).

Enhancing. The goal of this last step is to try to address the weaknesses and build on the strengths of your best idea. Murray recommends you go back to the beginning and restart the process. In subsequent iterations each step is informed by the knowledge you gained in previous iterations. The result should be a better problem definition that leads to a better search for ideas to borrow, and in turn new and more powerful combinations.

Whether or not Edison, Bell, or Einstein would have admitted to it, the above process captures the key mechanisms that drove the development of the light bulb, the telephone and Relativity. Even Zuckerberg invented Facebook as much as Edison invented the light bulb [10]. Any other stories are simply bulb fiction. These men borrowed, and possibly stole, from other people key elements in their ideas. These other people in turn borrowed and combined the ideas of others, and so on. It is a process that has been working to move us forward since cavemen times, and it is a process that is available to you right now.

So, what are you waiting for?

REFERENCES

[1] Burger, B. (2013, March 21). “Many Minds Produced The Light That Illuminated America”. US News. Retrieved from http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2013/03/21/why-thomas-edison-isnt-the-inventor-of-the-light-bulb

[2] Carroll, R. (2002, June 17). “Bell did not invent the telephone, US rules”. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/jun/17/humanities.internationaleducationnews

[3] Moody, R. (2004). “Albert Einstein – Plagiarist of The Century”. Nexus Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/esp_einstein.htm

[4] Van Duisen, M. (2014, March 1). “Top 10 Inventions Commonly Credited to the Wrong People”. TopTenz. Retrieved from http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-inventions-commonly-credited-wrong-people.php

[5] Kaptein, S. (2014, April 9). “Copy, Transform, Combine: Where Ideas Come From”. 99u. Retrieved from http://99u.com/workbook/24805/copy-transform-and-combine-where-ideas-come-from

[6] Marine, J. (2012) “Kirby Ferguson on Creativity: Nothing is Original, Everything is a Remix. But Does it Really Matter?”. No Film School. Retrieved from http://nofilmschool.com/2012/08/kirby-ferguson-creativity-everything-is-a-remix-ted-talk

[7] Blanda, S. (2013). “Talent is Persistence: What It takes To Be An Independent Creative”. 99u. Retrieved from http://99u.com/articles/20490/talent-is-persistence-what-it-takes-to-be-an-independent-creative

[8] Murray, D.K. (2009). “Borrowing Brilliance“ . Audio-tech Business Book Summaries. Retrieved from http://www.xavier.edu/williams/centers/entrepreneurial-center/documents/books/BorrowingBrillianceSummary.pdf

[9] Burkhardt, V. (2010, November 7). “Search and Combine Ideas”. IdeaConnection. Retrieved from http://www.ideaconnection.com/open-innovation-articles/00223-Search-and-Combine-Ideas.html

[10] Manjoo, F. (2011, April 12). “Mark Zuckerberg Invented Facebook”. Slate. Retrieved from http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/04/mark_zuckerberg_invented_facebook.html

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Less Einstein more Zuckerberg

Some say that youth is wasted on the young. Well, this year we aim to prove that in the world of new ideas, youth is not wasted. In fact, for certain kinds of ideas, we believe youth may afford unique advantages that are typically lost, as we get older. Our focus last year was on exploring really big ideas from some of the greatest minds of all times. Today we embark on a new adventure focused on exploring the capacity of the young, in particular high school students, to come up with big ideas. This year we are going for less Einstein and more Zuckerberg.

Over the summer break we researched the unique challenges creative high school students face. Bottom line, US high schools currently offer an unsympathetic environment to original thinkers. Our educational system was built for an economy and a society that no longer exists [1]. Most teachers say they value creativity, yet study after study points to the sad reality that teachers much prefer less creative students [2]. Government agencies and schools recognize the problem, but have proven unable or unwilling to make the changes required to solve it [3, 4].

US Students are being “educated” out of their creative capacities. 98% of kindergarteners score at the “genius” level. Genius scores drop to less than 10% after junior high school [4].

A recent survey of Andover Big Idea Club members indicates that creative students want more frequent opportunities to exercise their pent-up creative energy. 100% of the respondents expressed a desire to increase the frequency with which they engage in purposeful creative activity. Currently, 0% of the respondents engage in it on a daily basis, and less than 30% do it on a weekly basis. About 60% say they engage in it only once a month, and almost 15% not at all.

During our research we found substantial commercial and academic work aimed at helping individuals exercise and develop their creative talents. People looking to improve their creative capacity currently have available a number of options including seminars, blogs, books, websites and software applications. Although none of the options we found were directed specifically at addressing the unique needs of high school students, we did discovered a few approaches with the potential to do so.

One such approach is Johannson’s Medici Effect [5, 6]. According to Medici doctrine, when you step into the intersection of fields, disciplines, or cultures, you can combine existing concepts into a large number of extraordinary new ideas. The doctrine argues that this intersection is the best place to generate an explosion of new breakthrough ideas (to generate the Medici Effect).

People can step into this “intersection” by associating concepts from one field with concepts in another. The term field is used to describe disciplines, cultures, and domains in which one can specialize through education, work, hobbies, traditions and other life experiences. Fields include things such as mystery writing, painting, molecular biology, cable television, and sport fishing. A “concept” is any knowledge or practice related to a field. Changing a tire is a concept, as is the tire itself, and both concepts are part of the ‘auto mechanics’ field. The more concepts you understand in a field, the deeper your expertise level in that field.

Experts often combine concepts in the same field to make directional innovations in their field of expertise. However, by combining concepts from multiple fields, a person can create opportunities to generate intersectional innovations. Directional innovations are usually evolutionary rather than revolutionary, and they tend to extend the field in almost predictable ways. In contrast, intersectional ideas often represent leaps along new unexpected directions, and are more likely to lead to breakthrough innovations. Critically, original intersectional ideas do not require as much expertise as original directional ideas. Not surprisingly, when many experts in the same field are looking in the same place, it is hard to come up with something truly original. In contrast, the people you least suspect are often the source of intersectional ideas.

Most high school students lack the deep knowledge required to make directional breakthroughs in any field, but their superior divergent thinking capabilities should make them better able to come up with a breakthrough idea of their own by stepping into Medici intersections. A goal for this year is to help our members step into intersections, by offering practical means to combine remote concepts in diverse but familiar fields, and more importantly by encouraging them to step out of the box defined by their current interests, to explore and combine concepts from new fields.

According to Medici doctrine, increasing the number of random combinations of concepts is at the core of generating intersectional ideas. Quantity of ideas leads to quality of ideas. The more random combinations one can generate, the better chances of coming up with something truly exceptional. Medici Intersection Hunting is an effective means to generate intersectional ideas. Simply put, it means to go searching for connections in unlikely places, and then see where those connections lead. For example, it is believed that when Edgar Allan Poe had to come up with a new plot for his next story, he would look up two or three words at random in a dictionary and then attempt to tie them together. If he succeeded he would start writing; if he didn’t, he would just look up three new words and try again. You can find many resources online to help you get started today on your way to generating your Medici Effect [7, 8].

Regardless of how hard you try, or how many years you study a field, there are no guarantees that you will ever come up with a big idea of your own. However, we can guarantee you that you will not unless you try. So, why not go ahead and take advantage of whatever is left of your divergent thinking genius. After all, you will not be young forever.

REFERENCES

[1] National Education Association. (2010). Preparing 21^st Century Students for a Global Society. Retrieved from http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/A-Guide-to-Four-Cs.pdf

[2] Richards, D. (2009, June 5). “Creativity Index” Legislation. Education Week. Retrieved from http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/LeaderTalk/2009/06/creativity_index_legislation_1.html

[3] RSA Animate. (2010, October 14). Changing Educational Paradigms. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

[4] Dorsam, B.F. (2011, April 13). The Evidence is Clear, Ms. Rhee: Test Scores Will Never Accurately Reflect Student’s Learning. Busy Signal. Retrieved from http://thebusysignal.com/2011/04/13/the-evidence-is-clear-ms-rhee-test-scores-will-never-accurately-reflect-students%E2%80%99-learning/

[5] Johansson, F. (2006, October 1). The Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation. Harvard Business Review Press.

[6] Johansson, F. (2010, November 22). The Future is Diverse and Unexpected. TEDxNASA. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRAkko6WZbs

[7] CreativityGames.net. Random Word Generator. http://creativitygames.net/random-word-generator

[8] Frey, C. Random Word Brainstorming: A Simple, Powerful and Effective Ideation Technique. Innovation Solutions. Retrieved from http://www.innovationmanagement.se/2012/12/26/random-word-brainstorming-a-simple-powerful-and-effective-ideation-technique/

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What’s the Big Idea?

According to Einstein, problems can not be solved with the same level of thinking that created them. The Andover Big Idea Club is dedicated to promoting out-of-the-box thinking as a means to addressing current global challenges. The club offers a home for Big Idea enthusiasts at Phillips Academy, and provides them with opportunities to explore big ideas and their origins.

Image courtesy of Pixomar / FreeDigitalPhotos.net