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TAPE # and
time code
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Audio
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B5
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Gerard
J. Puccio
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05:01:08:20
05:01:22:24
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[Would you start by
telling us a little about yourself?]
Yes, my name is Gerard Puccio, Center for Studies in
Creativity, which is a unique academic program founded in 1967 at Buffalo
State College and I am the Director at that center.
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05:01:45:16
05:02:30:25
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[What
are the fundamental concepts of creativity?]
The fundamental concepts of creativity revolve around
the four Ps which was created by a gentleman named Mel Rhodes in 1961, and
the four Ps refer to the creative person, the creative process, the
creative product and the creative press.
Press, which is an interesting word because people often comment on
about, ‘how did press come about?’…what creativity is all about.
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05:02:35:05
05:02:56:00
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[Define
creative person]
The creative person focuses in on such things as what
are the personality characteristics or qualities that predispose someone
to achieve great levels of creativity.
One could also look at various styles of creativity that people may
show as they are creative.
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05:03:02:10
05:03:35:25
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The creative person, some of the attributes of the
creative person have been pointed out by research over the years include
such things as mental thinking skills, simply put, ideational fluency.
When posed with a problem how many ideas are you able to generate in a
given unit of time. And
research has shown that people who are able to engage in highly creative
behavior when posed with a problem do generate many potential solutions to
those problems.
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05:03:40:25
05:04:18:02
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[Tell us
about the styles of creativity…]
Style creativity focuses in on the notion that there
is more than one way to be creative.
In much of the early research and examination of the creative
person there was the false assumption that there was only one way to be
creative. In fact in some of
the literature you see comments like ‘the creative person is dot, dot,
dot. Well, it’s not that
simple. In some more
recent investigation and a lot of it has taken has taken place in an
organizational context, looks at the fact that there is more than one way
to be creative, that there are different styles of creativity
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05:04:19:00
05:05:50:17
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[Can you give
examples of these styles?]
One of the most popular measures or theories of
creative style was put forth by a gentleman name Michael Curtain.
And it looks at a continuum that ranges from an adaptive style of
creativity to an innovative style of creativity. The work that that theory
came out of was his experiences in organizations were he looked at
managers, and he followed managers around and looked at the kind of
change, large initiatives, that were proposed by these managers. What he
found was, some managers created change that improved the current
situation, maintained things as they were, perhaps made things run more
smoothly, run more efficiently. While there were other managers who had a
proclivity to introduce change that threatened the current system. The way
they approached problems, was to say, the problem with the system is the
system itself, get rid of it. A more broad reaching kind of change. That
he referred to as innovative creativity. Now organizations need both, one
of the things that Michael found was that successful organizations were
open to both the adaptive style of creativity and the innovative style of
creativity. The challenge is the that since the innovative style requires
more broad sweeping change it is more threatening to the organization and
sometimes more difficult to get accepted.
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05:05:58:14
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[Do
you have suggestions as to how businesses can adapt to this type of
thinking?]
In terms of adapting various styles
of creativity it comes down to one of the P’s I mentioned earlier in
regard to what I mentioned earlier about the four basic constructs of
creativity: the creative press. And
in terms of taking on board, if you will, different styles of creativity,
it really comes down to how open the environment is.
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05:06:25:05
05:06:45:02
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In organizations, when you begin to look at the
environment, one of the big buzzwords in organizations is “diversity.”
And we tend to think of diversity, from my perspective, we tend to
think of diversity as what you see on the surface…ethnicity, race,
gender.
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05:06:45:02
05:07:07:21
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I think it’s also important to begin to look at
diversity in terms of personality diversity – such as creativity style -
is the climate, is the organizational environment open to and supportive
of both the adaptive style of thinking and the innovative style of
thinking. Because when you go
into organizations, the reality is that you are more than likely going to
find people of all types.
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05:07:14:18
05:08:06:10
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[Do
you have a suggestion as to dealing with the two different types?]
In terms of dealing with adapters and innovators one
of the things that occurs because they have such a different approach, and
I hate to create dichotomies but it is easier to talk in those terms.
The reality is that you are not all of one or all of the other, it
just depends on how strong your preference is.
One of the first steps is awareness.
As you deal with any type of diversity, it’s awareness that these
differences do exist. Because often what happens is because your style is not my
style and I observe you taking on a particular task I may fall into the
trap of judging what you are doing as being wrong because that is not the
way I would do it. It is easy
to jump to those kinds of erroneous conclusions.
So one of the first steps is awareness that these differences do
exist.
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05:08:10:13
05:08:32:03
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[Another P is
process, could you define that?]
The creative process is one of those areas of
fascination for quite a while for psychologists.
The basic question is, ‘How does one come up with novel and
useful ideas?’ Where does
that emerge from, what is the thinking process one has gone through in
order to arrive at those novel insights?
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05:08:32:03
05:09:30:03
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In terms of my approach to creative process, at least
the process that I have adopted, creative problem solving, which has been
around for almost 50 years now, it really boils down to three areas of
operation, three things you need to do to successfully come up with
creative, what I mean by creative is new, and useful solutions to complex
problems. Those three areas
of operation are understanding the problem: you’ve got to have the
problem right first before you can get to the novel insight.
Another way of putting is you can never get the right answer if you
do not have the right question. Sometimes
we jump over that. Another
area of operation within the creative process is idea production.
That is being able to come up with novel approaches, potential
solutions to problems. And
then the third area is transforming those ideas into workable solutions
and getting those successfully implemented into the broader organizational
system.
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05:09:41:09
05:10:30:16
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[Could
you define the P of product?]
The creative product refers to the
outcome of the process. What
was the result? And that can
be both tangible and intangible: tangible in the terms of a manufactured
product and intangible in terms of a service.
The basic qualities of the creative process according to some of my
colleagues such as Susan Bessemer really embodies three things: must be
novel, in other words it must be original, be useful, serve some value,
serve some purpose and in that sense it has to solve the problem it was
intended to solve. The third
area is referred to as elaboration and synthesis, which is really about
the aesthetic features. Is it
a complete whole, are there any missing pieces, is the thinking still
rough?
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05:10:38:20
05:11:36:19
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[Could you talk about
the differences between idea production and brainstorming?]
The
distinction between idea production and brainstorming is that
brainstorming is a tool. One
of the wonderful things about brainstorming is it’s been widely
diffused. When I work with
audiences and businesses I’ll ask them ‘how many of you have heard of
brain storming before?’ Inevitably 100% of the hands go up.
Then when we begin to talk about what are the rules behind
brainstorming, the problem with it being so widely diffused is everyone
has heard of it, but few people understand that there are four rules
behind the tool brainstorming. It’s
become a generic word and it’s often confused with the term ‘idea
production.’ Idea
production is simply generating many varied unusual possibilities to solve
the problem. And there are many tools to do that; brainstorming is one
of those tools. And happens
to be one of the most popular tools for idea production.
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05:11:38:15
05:12:24:22
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[What are some of the other
tools?]
Other
tools for idea production includes such tools as brain writing, which is a
non-verbal form of generating ideas, it is very similar to brain storming
only that you write the ideas down on a sheet of paper three at a time and
then to get the cross
you swap the sheets of paper with other members in a group. A very useful tool if you have members in that group who
happen to be more introverted, or very useful when, say the boss is in the
group and there is some concern about how the idea might be perceived.
So rather than saying it out loud as you would in a brain storming
session, when you do brain writing, since it’s nonverbal it removes some
of that potential social judgment.
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05:12:28:11
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[Do you have other
examples?]
Another tool for idea production is a tool called
forced fit or forced relationship, which it’s been called also, which is
essentially taking advantage of the fact that as human beings our minds
are so powerful that we naturally make connection between things that may
not seem on the surface to be connected.
For example, when the steam engine was created the gentleman Watts
who was working on the problem of creating an engine that could be driven
by some other source of power happened to be sitting at the kitchen table
and happened to glance on a tea kettle, which happened to be boiling and
the tea kettle was creating some power,
it was flipping up the lid of the tea kettle and noticed that and
made a connection to the problem that he was working on in terms of coming
up with an machine that could be driven by an alternative source of power.
Forced fit, forced relationship what that tool is all about is
taking random objects into an idea generation session with a group and
saying right here is a banana, here is an orange, a pen, an eraser, a
marker: what ideas might this
object give us in regard to the problem we’re working on.
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05:13:55:07
05:15:07:04
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[Can you
talk more about creative styles?]
In terms of creative styles I think this is very
important discovery in the field of creativity.
It has many organizational implications primarily in that in order
for teams to be successful the team needs to be made up of a mix of
styles. Which is the
essential goal of diversity in general is to get different forms of
thinking and different perspectives as one tackles a problem.
So in terms of creativity style organizations are going to face
with the complexity of the business world and competition lots of
different tasks that require many different forms of thinking and
organizations must create an environment that allows those various forms
of thinking to come to the fore. Some
tasks will require more adaptive let’s work within the system because
there’s still a lot of good left in the system, still a lot of miles
that we can get out of it, and there are a lot of tasks that’ll require
broader sweeping change and organizations need to recognize when to employ
which approach.
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