CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A new book co-written by a University of Illinois expert offers a new approach to the creative process and explodes the myths surrounding creativity that hold people back.
Creativity isn’t a gift bestowed from on high to a select few in a flash of insight. Rather, the heart of creativity is coming to think in a new way, which inevitably takes time, said Jeffrey Loewenstein, a professor of business administration at the Gies College of Business at Illinois.
“It’s a very simple idea: Creativity is about changing your mind,” Loewenstein said. “How do you come at something from a fresh perspective? Most people still think it’s about lightning striking, which is why most brainstorming is locking people in a room and hoping inspiration strikes during a certain discrete period of time. What we’re saying is, it’s more of a process than a moment. There’s a process to helping yourself find new perspectives.”
Loewenstein and co-author Matthew A. Cronin of George Mason University wrote “The Craft of Creativity” to demystify creativity so that it can be a skill everyone can develop.
“People think that you have to have crazy hair, be an artist or the eccentric scientist to be creative. But it’s more helpful to think about creativity as a process that anyone can do,” Loewenstein said.
The authors interviewed more than 75 people, “from students to major award-winning professionals in their fields, including choreographers, newscasters, writers, accountants, plumbers and magicians,” Loewenstein said.
“We went out into any field we could think of and talked to practitioners of any level of expertise about creativity,” he said. “Basically, if you can think about something, you can think creatively about it. And what was striking is that they all told us two things. One, creativity is about changing your mind. Two, the process they described – whether it was the plumber, the choreographer or the magician – was the same. It’s all about ‘I used to think this way, I struggled, and then I slowly came to realize that I came to think about something quite differently.’
“But it was a process, not a moment of blinding insight.”
The reason why creativity is associated with epiphany is that “those are the moments that stand out the most,” Loewenstein said.
“It’s because you now see the world differently, which is the most exciting form of learning,” he said. “My job as someone who studies creativity is, how do I get you to abandon the myths and take a new perspective? If you come from the mindset that creativity is this ‘magic moment,’ then all you do is go through life and hope it happens.”
Another pernicious myth the authors investigated was the “either-you’ve-got-it-or-you-don’t” false binary.
“Most people still hold on to that myth that creative talent is inborn, and it can’t be cultivated or changed over time,” Loewenstein said. “But when we asked our subjects whether they had gotten more or less creative over the years, what’s interesting is that they felt like they had gotten more creative. Even the people who have to be creative on a day-to-day basis forget that they’ve learned and developed creatively.”
Although the book doesn’t reduce creativity to an algorithm, it explicates what the process is and gives guidance for how professionals can navigate through it.
“It’s a fitful process of adapting, adjusting and shifting your perspective,” Loewenstein said. “But if you’re struggling, don’t get depressed. The struggle is the intermediate point in the creative process. We call it ‘going into the void’ because there’s this sense that you’re lost, that you don’t know what to think, or that you don’t seem to be thinking anything. You’re in the fog, which is incredibly anxiety-provoking.”
But the creative process is just that – a process, something to move through and endure.
“There’s a driving analogy: Most of the time you want to follow the road,” Loewenstein said. “Creativity is like turns. If you just turn, you don’t get anywhere. But if you only follow that straight stretch of road, you can’t go to too many places. Creativity is what allows you to go to a different place.”
The book was published by Stanford University Press.
Editor’s notes: To contact Jeffrey Loewenstein, call 217-333-2471; email jloew@illinois.edu.
The book “The Craft of Creativity” is available online.
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