There's plenty of hullabaloo surrounding the idea of creativity in the workplace. As the world grows increasingly automated, it seems natural to fear that creativity — the signature characteristic of human intellect — will become less and less important over time. Recently, Karl Moore of the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University sat down to talk about this very subject with INSEAD's Andrew Shipilov, and his insights might surprise you.
How so? Well, for the most part, how we think about creativity as it relates to the workplace is completely wrong.
For starters, the notion of creativity existing in a vacuum of isolation doesn't even begin to make sense, if you think about it. "I would say that creativity simply cannot exist without networks, because the image of somebody, an inventor or a creator, sitting in the lab and sort of randomly picking the products and mixing them together and designing something magical does not represent the reality," Shipilov said.
In other words, there's a huge divide between how we romanticize creativity and how it actually comes to be. Thomas Edison didn't "invent" the lightbulb by tinkering in a lab by his lonesome — he employed plenty of research assistants, who undoubtedly advanced the technology by bouncing ideas off one another. Even as a writer (often viewed as a solitary profession), nothing I produce comes from isolation. For one thing, I can't be inspired if I don't get out into the world. For another, there's not an article you read on any website that wasn't the result of ample brainstorming between the editorial staff and writers.
Networking, though it would seem to result in a clumsy "hive mind," actually tends to make each mind in the hive a little sharper.
Now you begin to see the meaning behind the often-terrible "open plan" offices that so many of us find ourselves working in at one point or another. If creativity (and with it, innovation) is the result of increased networking and collaboration, then more collaboration must be better, right? That's not always the case in practice (open offices are often noisy and make it difficult to do actual concentrative work), but it's certainly an improvement over the siloed office spaces of the past.
It's also a sobering reminder that creativity and innovation are rarely as dramatic as we'd like them to be: It's very rare for something utterly and totally new to be born out of someone's Big Idea. Instead, things happen piece by piece, bit by bit, improving and evolving the platform created by our predecessors. Even Tesla Motors, often described as one of the most innovative companies in the world, owes 90% of their success to the century-plus worth of automotive research that preceded them.
Shipilov went on to address the concept of networking and creativity in another context, one that's top of mind for every employer imaginable: Employee turnover. With so many people electing to further their careers by bopping from place to place (rather than staying loyal to one employer), HR departments are scratching their heads trying to figure out a way to benefit from increased turnover or at the very least mitigate its damage. According to Shipilov, those creative networks can pay dividends, provided they remain intact.