Technical versus Entrepreneurial Creativity

When I think about creativity, I tend to imagine new inventions or ideas coupled with out-of-the-box approaches. In Exceptional Creativity in Science and Technology, two of the book’s contributors attempt to narrow and distinguish different types of creativity.

Chapter 7 by Susan Hackwood, a former engineer of the famed creative Bell Labs, has a chapter on “Technically Creative Environments”. To probe this idea, she first defines what is meant by technical creativity. Her operational definition: “Creativity is the ability to bring about the new and valuable [where] the distinguishing characteristic… is that the ‘valuable’ part brought about by technical creativity is not the true, good or beautiful, but rather the ‘useful’… Moral neutrality is a second characteristic specific to technical creativity… The key driver… is to achieve power over nature, and [the reasons] can be either Promethean or compassionate.”

Hackwood argues that technical creativity also requires “basically high IQ with a high quantitative and spatial component” as a necessary, but not a sufficient condition. She doesn’t cover how one acquires those skills or whether they are innate, instead she focuses on how a group of such individuals can “work together to achieve higher creativity”. What makes creative achievement possible? Hackwood argues for four elements: two abilities and two traits.

(1) Ability #1: Master the knowledge and skills to accomplish the (creative) task.

(2) Ability #2: Sustain an intense focused effort toward a specific goal.

(3) Trait #1: Be prolific in generating ideas beyond the scope of one ‘type’.

(4) Trait #2: Be guided by an internal (autonomous) vision, and not by external values.

While “blocking any one of these four elements stunts creativity”, Hackwood focuses on the two traits as key to creative thought. (The two abilities are necessary, but not sufficient.) In a statement that will undoubtedly raise the hackles of non-scientists, she argues that “broadly speaking, the presence of the humanities and social sciences departments in the university is not necessarily an asset to technical creativity… [Her] view is that they currently, rather than broadening the mind, often produce individuals inhibited by political correctness, who are discouraged from relying on their autonomous vision by relativism… Paradoxically, the very disciplines meant to provide breath can actually foster limits and inhibitions.” This allows Hackwood to focus on the technical-research parts.

With the history of Bell Labs in mind (I recommend Jon Gertner’s fantastic The Idea Factory), both in its intellectual heyday, and its eventual decay, Hackwood takes aim at what she calls “technological leadership”. I take this to mean anyone who is in a position of authority and holds the purse-strings over people and programs in science-engineering research and technological advancement. Hackwood defines a type: IBNC, Intelligent But Not Creative. Such individuals have Abilities #1 and #2, and possibly bits of Trait #1 (being prolific, but not necessarily wide in scope). The result is that “IBNCs are fundamentally incapable of moving against the accepted vision/opinion of the group in relation to which they define themselves.” (I’m cutting out details in her argument here.)

Here’s the crux, and Hackwood does not mince her words. “The successful creative research environment is characterized by its power to prevent IBNCs from becoming leaders or from dominating the group by intimidation and other social means. This is not easy for the simple reason that the filters (notably schools) that select for abilities [#1 and #2] tend to select many IBNCs, who therefore are inevitably found within any potential creative research environment. The task is to isolate, restrict, and if possible remove IBNCs from the [leadership] group… Once power passes to the IBNCs, the process is irreversible, and the creative group ceases to be such. The decay into mediocrity may be delayed but it is almost inevitable.” I suspect Hackwood was personally there to observe the decay of Bell Labs.

But it gets worse, and she continues: “In practice, leadership by creative people is very difficult to achieve because technically creative people generally are not attracted to management, which is a social task… [thus leadership] is forever threatened with takeover by IBNCs, especially in a time of scarce resources… They end up controlling much of the research activity by inevitably fostering group projects (always in culturally sanctioned areas) and megaprojects (always in interdisciplinary and sanctioned areas). Such control kills the autonomy of the creative person’s vision and inhibits ideational fluency [Trait #1].” And even if you have technically creative leaders, it’s still very challenging to ‘organize’ a creative group of autonomous individuals.

Hackwood has five principles to sustain a technically creative environment. (She makes an argument for each in her chapter. This is just the summary list.)

·      Hire the best and let them free.

·      Do not let IBNCs become managers, leaders, or even dominant in the group.

·      Provide the best research tools.

·      Do not make access to basic research resources depend on constant, fierce competition where noncreative agents pick winners.

·      Move the group to a location where the quality of personal life is high.

Whether or not you agree with Hackwood, I can see how each one of these can be problematic once resources get scarce. It’s challenging to have an ‘ideal’ environment. Patronage or independent wealth seem like the way to go. It’s difficult for government or industry to provide the goods.

In contrast to Hackwood, the next chapter on “Entrepreneurial Creativity” by Timothy Bresnahan, an economics professor at Stanford, shifts the focus away from technical creativity. The social sciences become much more important in this domain. He writes that “no matter how brilliant and creative [a technical invention]… entrepreneurial creativity is also needed [because it] creatively locates and exploits overlaps between what is technically feasible and what will create value for society. This is the key step in the founding of new technology-based industries.” Bresnahan uses of the story of the Integrated Circuit to bring home this point and highlight various aspects of entrepreneurial creativity.

Setting the stage is in order. Finding those overlaps (“between technical opportunity and value creation”) turns out to be very difficult because “knowledge is dispersed widely in the economy… [For example] understanding computer technology deeply does not endow computer specialists with deep knowledge of markets, entertainment, or the delicate arts of social communication. That knowledge is, typically, held by others. More generally, when markets and industries do not yet exist, there is no good reason for the same person to have knowledge of both technical feasibility and value creation.”

Bresnahan continues: “Entrepreneurial implementation lies in building the firms, markets, or industries that exploit a technological opportunity to create value. In many ways, this market focus distinguishes entrepreneurial creativity. The new product or process innovation that serves an important need may appear quite mundane, but if it was not foreseen, it is creative. Indeed, a good working definition of practical creativity ought to emphasize the transition from a state in which something was unforeseen to a state in which it is compelling. Many innovations seem obvious with hindsight because they are compelling to their users.”

Three definitions that Bresnahan uses are helpful here.

·      Invention: The conception of new scientific or engineering ideas.

·      Innovation: The development of new marketable products or new usable processes.

·      Diffusion: The adoption of new products or processes widely in the market.

While Invention very much mirrors technical creativity, Innovation and Diffusion that are the hallmarks of entrepreneurial creativity. Interestingly, from Innovation’s point of view, Invention is counted as a cost rather than a benefit; a necessary one perhaps, but a cost nevertheless.

Diffusion is what I found hardest to grasp. It is clearly important for a new industry to be successful and prove its value, but how it can transform millions of lives is exceedingly difficult to foresee. Bresnahan traces the history of the integrated circuit to the development and widespread use of the personal computer, weaving in stories of high-tech firms rising and falling in Silicon Valley.

Four points that I gleaned from this story: First, there was a certain ‘generalness’ in the design and diffusion of the integrated circuit, that led to the blooming of a wide range of other high-tech industries. Second, the many brilliant scientists learned how to be creative leaders on-the-fly by experience. Ironically, many of those lessons came from learning how not to lead from William Shockley’s example. Third, no one knows everything, and so having a knowledge network is crucial. This allows different firms to work within their constraints and resource limitations, in a sort of competitive-collaborative partnership with their peers. Fourth, recombination shows up a lot. Take inventions and ideas that already exist, but combine them in novel ways while keeping an eye on what will overlap with market value.

Comparing Hackwood and Bresnahan’s back-to-back chapters, it seems that both technical and entrepreneurial creativity are important although they are increasingly rarely found in the same individual. The heyday of the creative polymaths has passed. It’s simply too time-consuming to be an expert in multiple areas, therefore collaboration is crucial. Not just between individuals, but between corporations, between institutions, between governments. Hackwood’s five principles for fostering creativity are ideal, but increasingly difficult to endow. Neither author delves into what makes someone creative, but I increasingly suspect that being in the right place at the right time with the right complementary knowledge is key. Chance favors the prepared mind, perhaps. Predicting the future has never been easy.

For my review of Chapter 1 of this book, click here.