A year with a goal
Art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those willing to take risks.
- Mark Rothko
The first semester of school has been exactly what I needed. The coursework has been inspiring, challenging and rewarding. I’ve joined an incredible cohort of smart, talented and motivated people that continue to push my own work and thinking. Not to mention the incredible network of alumni and professors that have been a bounty of information, connection and feedback. It's also been fun as hell. We also go to Paris every 8 weeks…IT ROCKS.
Now it feels like the hard part really starts. Which is to say, beyond regular travel (love it!) and a challenging course load, the proper work is beginning on my Independent Study project. Its a capstone of sorts that I understand to be “the thing you, individually, want to get out of this degree.” A challenge I love and am terrified of equally.
My Focus
Getting to the actual point, my project will be researching “creativity as a skill”, specifically how individuals bring their creativity to work and how organizations can foster and direct that creativity to become more creative entities themselves.
Starting with three questions:
Is there a creativity crisis? A common thread from my experience in the workforce and through some preliminary research, is that individuals and organizations are failing to reach their full potential by failing to tap into individual and collective creativity. I’d like to validate or invalidate that hunch.
Why do creative companies seem to forget how to be creative? I feel like it’s an often told, but not as often understood story; companies rise quickly, create fast and then plateau or fail. Books on leadership, organizational design and business explore these topics at company or industry level; but what is it at a team or individual level that shuts off the initial wellspring of creativity?
What matters more, individual creativity or organizational structures that foster creativity? I believe organizations hold much of the power that stifles creativity, but I’d like to understand if there is an ideal balance to strike or if there’s a leading partner in the dance between the two.
What the research turns into at the end is a little unclear right now. It looks like a book in my head right now, but I’m open to that changing. However, I do plan on documenting this journey and what I am learning over the next year, here on this page.
Including AI
In addition, the ubiquity of AI tools being applied to creative tasks brings up really interesting questions in the world of creativity. The tools seem to be taking part in the creative act and I’m really interested in where that leaves us, as people. My current take is that our unique, inherent ability to create and be creative, especially in how we relate to each other, is the one thing that will remain and have value, even as more and more of the “work” of creativity can be automated.
As part of my research, I intend to push on the boundaries of AI’s creativity, seek to understand AI’s role in human creativity and maybe even include AI as an interview participant along the way. In the research process, I plan to clearly attribute anything produced by AI as “produced by AI” and not by me, but hopefully there’s enough of “me” in all this writing that it would be evident to anyone reading.
Join In!
If you have any questions, would like to chat more about creativity or any of the other topics discussed here, I’d love to hear it. Send an email or a note on LinkedIn and let’s start a conversation.
