Creative Places

Three ways that a field can be thought of as affecting creativity are via the general contributions and resources available to individuals within the field, through the special effects a particular field may have on its domain and the nature of the creative expressions that result, and by containing specific characteristics that either promote or inhibit creativity.

Wealth an audience's attention, educational and employment opportunities, background knowledge, styles and paradigms, cues for insights, roles, norms, and precedents, and good teachers have all been cited as contributions relevant to the creativity expressed in particular domains, individuals, and processes. Further, fields provide peers to evaluate and confirm creativity in their domains while also protecting and freeing the development of creative products and individuals from the less congenial evaluations that may come from members of the general public. Stimulation and sustenance of creative processes, as well as preservation and selection of ideas have also been proposed as necessary components of any field in which creative endeavour occurs. According to Hennessey and Amabile, fields also affect the motivation of individuals working within them.

Csikszentinitalyi makes two claims that address a small part of the question regarding features of creativity‑inducing fields, provided that evaluation of products is seen as important in creative expression. First, he suggests that a field's internal organization is one factor that attracts interested neophytes to a particular field rather than others. Second, he claims that the ease of evaluation in various domains, and hence agreement among experts as to who and what are going to be defined as creative, is determined by the precision of notational systems within the domains. Other ways that a field can improve its likelihood of creativity, as suggested by Torrance, are by using sound effects to stimulate creative images and by providing warm‑up exercises that are designed to free the imagination, although these techniques probably are more relevant to some types of creativity than to others.

Now look at the differences between the creative individual and creative organizations, see Table 5.1.

The Creative Individual

The Creative Organization

Conceptual fluency… is able to produce a large number of ideas quickly.

Originality… generates unusual ideas

Separates source from content in evaluating information… is motivated by interest in problem… follows wherever it leads

Suspends judgment… avoids early commitment… spends more time in analysis, exploration.

Less authoritarian… has relativistic view of life

Accepts own impulses… playful, undisciplined exploration

Independence of judgment, less conformity Deviant, sees self as different

Rich, “bizarre” fantasy life and superior reality orientation; controls.

Has idea men

Open channels of communication

Adhoe devices:

Suggestion systems

Brain-storming

Idea units absolved of other responsibilities

Encourages contact with outside sources

Heterogeneous personnel policy

Includes marginal, unusual types

Assigns non-specialists to problems

Allows eccentricity

Has an objective, fact-founded approach

Ideas evaluated on their merits, not status of originator

Adhoe approaches:

Anonymous communications

Blind votes.

Selects and promotes on merit only

Lack of financial, material commitment to products, policies

Invests in basic research; flexible, long-range planning

Experiments with new ideas rather than prejudging on “rational” grounds; everything gets a chance

More decentralized; diversified

Administrative slack; time and resources to absorb errors.

Risk-taking ethos… tolerates and expects taking chances.

Not run as “tight ship”

Employees have fun

Allows freedom to choose and pursue problems

Freedom to discuss ideas

Organizationally autonomous

Original and different objectives, not trying to be another “X”

Security of routine… allows innovation

“Philistines” provide stable, secure environment that allows “creators” to roam.

Have separate units or occasions for generating vs. evaluating ideas… separates creative from productive functions.