Sternberg, et al', Creativity as an Investment

1
Sternberg, et al., Creativity as an Investment

• Six resources needed for creative enterprise
• Knowledge
• Intellectual abilities
• Thinking styles
• Motivation
• Personality
• Environment

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Knowledge

• Basic knowledge of the field beyond status quo.
  Creativity is domain specific. But sometimes
  there can be too much knowledge restricting
  recombinations.
• Encouragement
• Adopt a long-term perspective
• Do not overweigh the opinions of the most senior
  people

3
Intellectual Abilities

• Synthetic ability seeing connections and
  redefining problems
• Analytic ability judging the value/potential of
  ideas
• Practical ability selling the idea
  (presentation)
• Encouragement
• Change the mix and weight of the abilities over
  the life-cycle of the idea/product
• Synthetic Analytical
  Practical

4
Thinking Style Preferences

• Inventing style do things your own way
• Implementing style follow procedures
• Evaluating style observe, analyze, criticize
• Style is not ability it is how one uses that
  ability
• Encouragement
• Understand when each style is important and
  reward
• Remember, those with implementing styles are
  usually promoted, but the inventing style is
  needed to successfully run companies

5
Motivation

• The amount of motivation needed to buy low can
  be miniscule compared with the motivation and
  persistence needed to get to the point where one
  can sell high.
• Fun Work
• Encouragement
• Make it fun to work on a specific project/problem
• Playfulness recombinations intrinsic
  motivation

Concept vs Execution
20 80
80 20
6
Personality

• Creativity involves risk-takingsomeone who can
  take a stand and be a contrarian.
• Someone easily dismayed by criticism wont
  (eventually) be creative.
• Encouragement
• Diversity and diversity of experiences
• Outcasts provide the channels we are missing

7
Environment

• The environment determines how large the risks
  appear to a creative person.
• People fear changepeople like the familiar.
  Creativity is uncomfortable.
• Negativity bias toward creative people
• Encouragement
• Spread the risklet messiness exist
• Creativity doe not derive from order, but from
  the attempt to impose order where it does not
  exist, to make new connections.