Embracing Creativity 

In his popular TED talk, Ken Robinson points out that young children are not frightened of being wrong: If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original.   Children are natural artists, while many adults seem to have lost that capacity. 

The creative process is inherently subject to newness. And in newness we should expect to explore rather than reject multiple possibilities - nothing is wasted, and our exploration is part of the creative process. 

There’s a well known team-building design thinking workshop exercise called the “Marshmallow Challenge”, which tasks teams to build the tallest marshmallow topped tower possible in less than 20 minutes --  using only 20 sticks of spaghetti, one meter of tape, one meter of string, and of course one marshmallow. 

Kindergartners typically outperform executives groups, because they constantly experiment - they expect to creatively discover the best structure, not to divine the “right” answer, as adult teams do.  Again, willingness to explore and fail is the key. 

But Csikszentmihalyi’s flow theory adds skill to the equation. He asserts that creative flow comes from both challenge and ability.  In his view, challenge without skill simply leads to anxiety.  And while children outperform executives in the marshmallow challenge, architects outperform children.  

Does this burst the bubble set by Tom and David Kelley that we all have creative potential? 

In considering this question, I  thought of the comedian Chris Rock. who will go to small comedy clubs to test out and fine tune stacks of jokes, in search of those that work. His willingness - even desire - and confidence to be imperfect removes his anxiety.  Charles Limb referred to this as turning off the self-monitoring or executive function of the brain.  

I  saw parallels to this in the story of Japanese emperor Hideyoshi - whose modest upbringing made him skeptical of Riyku’s embrace of Wabi Sabi. This emperor wasn’t able to be wrong or imperfect. 

That Rikyu was ordered to die for his creativity should not dissuade us - but rather provide a lesson about giving agency to others over our creative process. 

Now that’s magic.