Creativity and Innovation in the Workplace

Two sessions I attended towards the end of the NSBA conference dealt with the importance of creativity and innovation in the 21st century workplace, and the implications this has for education.

In just a couple of centuries, we have moved from an agrarian economy, through the industrial to the information age, and now we’re beginning to transition into what Daniel Pink calls the "imagination" economy. That is, the "value added" of the best jobs will not be in “what one knows”, but in how one uses that knowledge in creative ways to solve problems.

As Einstein said, "imagination is more important than knowledge."

In the "World is Flat", Tom Freidman noted that we still possess a competitive advantage in our ability "to integrate art, music and literature with the hard sciences." Even China – a key driver in the changing world economy - has acknowledged that "it is an economic imperative to teach our next generation to think creatively and be more innovative."

In its research, 21st Century Skills.org discovered that business executives consider creativity an essential skill for the next generation workforce - comparable to critical-thinking skills. (As an aside, these executives also believe that the greatest impediment to creativity is office politics. I suspect this says something about the importance of organizational culture.)

Pink told the following anecdote: years ago, a typical parental admonishment might have gone something like: "get your law degree, so you'll have something to fall back on". This was pretty good advice at the time, but Pink suggested it might not be as true for the generation entering the modern economy. Consider how much medical and legal work has become routine, and can be done ourselves or outsourced (examples: drawing up a standard will, analyzing an x-ray, etc.) Consider how much medical - and now, legal - information is accessible on-line, mitigating the need to call a doctor or lawyer.

Said another way, analytical intelligence (the subject of most standardized testing), while still important, is no longer enough to guarantee a successful career. Just as the last generation witnessed the demise of routine "blue-collar" work, the next generation will likely see the loss of a significant number of routine white-collar jobs.

A major implication for how education is "delivered" is that the role of the educator will continue to evolve from lecturer (the imparter of knowledge) to that of team coach, facilitator and mentor. 

But one of his most powerful and important ideas was that – contrary to popular assumption - creativity can be learned, and that this often happens incrementally. An example of the value of incremental creativity is the fact that few patents are given for revolutionary “new” ideas; most patents are currently issued for modest – incremental - improvements.

In the future, "successful intelligence" will involve the interaction of the practical, the analytical, and the creative.