How Aha! Really Happens

Strategy+Business has published a great article by William Duggan entitled "How Aha! Really Happens"

It has two big mind-blowing insights:

One is a neurological discovery: There is no left brain; there is no right brain. There is only learning and recall throughout the entire brain. (However, the article may overstate this by implying that there is no pervasive and consistent difference between the two hemispheres of the brain: see for instance The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World by Iain McGilchrist (Yale University Press, 2009)

The other concerns the practical implication: Duggan is able to give us a more realistic explanation of how creativity actually happens.

He draws on the example of a creative military thinker: Carl von Clausewitz.

"The greatest military scholar of that period was Carl von Clausewitz, a Prussian, whose lifetime of work led to the book On War in 1832. If we read On War with a knowledge of modern neuroscience, we see that Clausewitz offers useful guidance on how to apply intelligent memory to strategy. A great general gets a strategic idea as a coup d’oeil, which means “strike of the eye.” It’s a glance that shows you what to do — a flash of insight. Two steps precede the flash: “examples from history,” when you explicitly study what others have done before you, and “presence of mind,” when you clear your brain of all expectations of solutions. In a clear mind, selected examples from history combine as insight. The last step is resolution, when the flash gives you the will to act on the idea despite the obstacles you face.

"Examples from history are a form of intelligent memory. The shelves of the brain are stocked with what you’ve seen or heard or read about what others have done before. This process takes place naturally in every human brain, but active study can accelerate and improve it, as Napoleon showed. He won his first battle at the siege of Toulon at the age of 24 without any previous military experience. But he was a thorough student of military history, and he combined elements from past battles to make up his winning strategy. The elements were not new, but his combinations were new. His thinking process exemplified the way in which intelligent memory produces creative ideas.

"The presence of mind Clausewitz describes is akin to the calm state that precedes a flash of insight, which neuroscientists can now measure. Their subjects include Buddhist monks and other masters of meditation. That explains why you get your best ideas not in formal brainstorming meetings but in the shower, or driving, or falling asleep at night — when your brain is relaxed and wandering, instead of focused on a particular problem. Incidentally, brain scans of these masters also show this presence of mind and reveal it as a mental discipline you can learn."

The four steps of creativity

Duggan argues convincingly that you can find the four steps of Clausewitz — (1) examples from history, (2) presence of mind, (3) flash of insight, and (4) resolution — in countless cases of genuine innovation in practice.

So creativity doesn’t happen by turning off your left brain and letting the right brain take flight. Instead, it happens in much more complex iterative process.

He describes in detail for instance how it applies to the discoveries made in the creation of Google.

His ideas are consistent with Steven Johnson’s book, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation , which I discussed in an earlier post here.

Practical implications

So it's a great article, but—and it’s a big but—what is the significance of this insight? I believe there are two.

One is the useful point that a lot of the standard creativity exercises, like brainstorming, are unlikely to lead to good results. So we can give lower priority to those tools and instead give more attention the four-step process that Clausewitz used: examples from history, presence of mind, flash of insight, resolution

The other point is the one I made in my article about Steven Johnson’s book and it applies equally powerfully here. The main constraint in established organizations is not creativity. It’s innovation. In any big organization, there are tons of good ideas lying around and not being implemented. The bigger problem for established organizations is rather how to take the good ideas that they already have and get those accepted and implemented. Bottom line: for established firms, innovation is a bigger constraint than creativity.

Nevertheless Duggan’s article is a must-read: here.

To learn how some organizations have reinvented management so as to create continuous innovation, read The Leader's Guide to Radical Management: Reinventing the Workplace for the 21st Century

Comments

[ImeldaMcGrattan]

I like the thinking on this, but I don't want to think about it too much as I think it will impact my thinking and stall my "AHA moments"