The Evolved Generalist

Musings on creativity, insight, mindfulness and wisdom.

  • “Looking Up and In: The Creative Mind and Process”
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Creative Heuristic #2: The Narrative and Human Imagination.

Posted by Mark Ridinger on September 21, 2014
Posted in: Heuristics. Tagged: Andragogy, Creativity, Enterprise, Innovation. Leave a comment

lascaux-cave-art Telling—and listening—to stories goes back to the dawn of mankind. Before there was writing of course, stories which were often embellished to become more that that—to become narratives—were the only way to pass knowledge from generation to generation. What’s behind the narrative process, and how does the creative use of such matter to you today?

In a recent interview in The Financial Times, author and historian Yuval Noah Harari discusses the premise of his book Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind. In it he advances the theory that humans have surpassed other species primarily due to our ability to create compelling fictional accounts or narratives. This makes it possible, he argues, for people to band together—to help or fight each other—be it to believe in the possibility of bringing down animals much bigger and stronger in an organized hunt, to the idea of currency, or a cause worth fighting or dying for.

“Any band of Neanderthals, Harari suggests, can raise a few dozen people for a hunt but humans can tell the stories needed to ensure co-operation in groups of 150 or more – numbers large enough to organize mass hunting using prepared traps, raise modern armies, or subdue the natural world.”

The narrative seems critical to our ability to understand and relate to each other as well. For example, a study published last year in Science showed that reading literary fiction helps people understand others’ mental states and beliefs, a crucial skill in building relationships, and certainly part of a healthy “EQ”.

The power of the narrative is also getting the attention of the Defense Advanced Research Agency (DARPA). The agency’s biotechnology office is studying how the narrative process is critical in how we process events— most notably traumatic ones– and how that impacts post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and can contribute to radicalization as well. “Narratives may consolidate memory, shape emotions, cue heuristics and biases in judgment, and influence group distinctions.”

In other words, narratives can be used for good or bad. Indeed, Nassim Taleb discusses what he calls the “narrative fallacy” in his book The Black Swan at length. We are vulnerable to the seduction of the narrative he argues, and that can result in cognitive biases not the least of which makes us susceptible to the allure of correlation (as opposed to causality) from data mining and big data (particularly relevant issue today). In other words, our minds are desperate to find meaning, and we need to be on guard for that.

The common thread I’m trying to weave with these varied accounts of the narrative process is that without creativity, these narratives (fictional or otherwise) wouldn’t be possible (and therefore be used for either good or nefarious ends). And without imagination on the part of those that listen, they would have no power; creativity and imagination are two sides of the same coin. The creativity of the person writing the narrative is very important of course, but he relies on the imagination of those receiving the narrative, which then, given their capability for empathy and ‘theory of mind’, can understand and co-opt that narrative as their own. It remains a uniquely human capability—at least in this degree of complexity we assume. (Perhaps animals have ways to tell “stories” in a limited way, as has been suggested by observing ants and bees doing a dance to communicate distant food sources etc.)

The famous fax machine analogy also comes to mind: one fax machine is worthless—two have some value and many, a lot of value. But just as that fax on the receiving end has to decode the signal to recreate an image—a facsimile—so does the human imagination decode the narrative. But in the case of humans as opposed to the lowly fax machine, this reconstruction can vary dramatically from individual to individual and be modified as well, adding a special dimension that is unique to them and their experiences. And just as the more fax machines there are is directly and exponentially related to the usefulness and value of the machine (Metcalfe’s law), so does the size of the network of those tapping the creative narrative, and hence the power of social media (and, unfortunately, it’s increasing use by radicalized terror groups.)

 

Creative Heuristic #2: Use the power of creative narratives for good. Use them to inspire your coworkers, employees, and customers—do so in a way that taps into their imagination and so that narrative becomes in part their own as well.

-Mark HT Ridinger

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Creative Heuristics #1: Creative Archetypes and The Beyonders

Posted by Mark Ridinger on September 15, 2014
Posted in: Heuristics. Tagged: Creativity, Education, Enterprise, ephiphany, Generalist, Hiring, neuroscience, Torrance. Leave a comment

da vinci mash-up

“One of the most powerful wellsprings of creative energy, outstanding accomplishment and self-fulfillment seems to be falling in love with something— your dream, your image of the future.”

 

-E. Paul Torrance

 

According to a recent survey of 1,500 chief executives conducted by IBM’s Institute for Business Value, “creativity” was deemed to be the most important leadership skill for the enterprise of the future. So what are the characteristics and traits of creative people? What sort of folks do they tend to be, if any, and how can they be identified, if at all?

Paul Torrance was the creator of the eponymous Torrance Test of Creative Thinking, a validated instrument that does a good job of measuring divergent cognition, serves as an additional tool for gifted program placement (beyond IQ tests), and has shown to have predictive ability in measuring future creative achievement and output, as I have blogged about in the past.

Near the end of his career, he re-examined his data and also his decades of interviews with students, and ended up with what he called the Beyonders Checklist that described traits of creative individuals. These are:

  • Love of work
  • Tolerance of mistakes
  • Feeling comfortable as a minority of one
  • Well-roundedness
  • Persistence
  • Purpose in life
  • Diversity of experience
  • High energy
  • Creative self-concept
  • Risk taker
  • Open to change
  • Deep thinking

A fifty year follow up analysis by Mark Runco et al. found that the first four traits in particular showed significant correlation to either professional or personal creative achievement.

Separately, Nancy Andreasen, an American neuroscientist and neuropsychiatrist, has written about her findings in years of interviewing highly creative individuals. She found that:

  1. Creativity tends to run in families, with both a possible nature and nurture component. (e.g. she found half of her subjects came from very high-achieving backgrounds, with at least one parent who has a doctoral degree, and the majority grew up in an environment where learning and education were highly valued.)
  2. These subjects are adventuresome and exploratory. They take risks and must confront doubt. Creative people tend to be very persistent, even when confronted with skepticism or rejection.
  3. Many creative people are polymaths (people with broad interests in many fields). The classic example is Da Vinci.
  4. They tend to be autodidacts. She wrote, “Because their thinking is different, my subjects often express the idea that standard ways of learning and teaching are not always helpful and may even be distracting, and that they prefer to learn on their own.”
  5. Her creative subjects and their relatives have a higher rate of mental illness (the most-common diagnoses include bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety or panic disorder, and alcoholism.)

It strikes me, that taken together, both Torrance’s “checklist” and Andreason’s observations give a very similar sketch of creative archetypes, and allows for a heuristic of sorts to help identify them:

Creative Heuristic #1

These are passionate and intensely curious individuals, self-motivated and taught, that often come from a family of “creatives” (and, unfortunately, may suffer disproportionately from some forms of mental illness.) Furthermore, I would posit that these characteristics are also those found typically in Generalists, as discussed previously.

Given the importance of creativity and innovation to organizations today, using this heuristic as part of a broad strategy of hiring and recruitment should be helpful.

 

-Mark HT Ridinger

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Attributes of Generalists v. Specialists

Posted by Mark Ridinger on September 11, 2014
Posted in: Musings. Tagged: Convergent, Creativity, Divergent, Expertise, Generalist, Innovation, Silos, Specialist. Leave a comment

Are You a Generalist or a Specialist?

I’m taking a page from author Nassim Taleb’s use of tables to highlight thematic differences in a conceptual framework (e.g. Antifragile). And yes I take some poetic license here!

 

Specialist Evolved Generalist
20th Century 21st Century
Silos Bridges
Data Imagination
Expert Polymath
Institutionally trained Autodidact
Knowledge worker Creative worker
Left brain Left and right brain
Convergent thinking Convergent + divergent thinking
“Reductionistas” Respects holism (“holophiles”)
Cognitive stress Cognitive ease
Niche Realm
Anxiety Humor
All nighters Hypnagogic states/sleep
Being “productive” Wei wu wei
Looking down and out Looking up and in
i (The Machine) I (The Self)
FOMO FOFOMO (fallacy of FOMO)
Theoretical Experiential
Binary Fractals
Code Prose
Memorization Mindfulness
Extrapolation Iteration
Bricks Stones
Rigidity Plasticity
Correlation Meaning
Red Blue
Rehearsal Improvisation
Major Minor
Adderall Wine
Semantic Network: Steep Flat
Splitter Grouper
DIKW Wisdom = IQ (int) CQ (int) EQ
Hedgehog Fox
Regurgitate Innovate
Jeopardy! Shark Tank
Sympathy Empathy

Copyright © 2014 Mark HT Ridinger

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The Rise of the (Evolved) Generalist

Posted by Mark Ridinger on September 9, 2014
Posted in: Heuristics. Tagged: Compete, Creativity, Enterprise, Expertise, Generalist, Policy, Silos, Specialist, Steve Jobs. Leave a comment

Silo_bridge

“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.”

                                                                    –Steve Jobs

 

I have to say off the bat that evoking Steve Jobs quotes is getting a bit too in vogue for my taste, but when one finds the essence of what they want to communicate encapsulated so well, resistance is futile.

I don’t know if Jobs ever uttered the term ‘evolved generalist’, but his quote on creativity and what type of person is likely to create and innovate—and how—is exactly what I wish to communicate here, and serves as the cornerstone of my talk (“Looking Up and In: The Creative Mind and Process”) and my case for the rise of the Generalist.

I’ll skip the de rigueur Wikipedia definition of generalist (and specialist for that matter), and state my definition: The Generalist (as coined in the 21st C) is an individual uniquely suited (due to interest, background, experiences, and personality archetypes) to bridge silos of domain expertise (typically inhabited by specialists), in such a way as to produce novel ways of looking at a problem, or determining a new approach or method, all of which produces a beneficial solution, product, or idea.

Note there are several parts to this definition:

  1. Bridging of silos: Specialists tend to be caught in their own silo of domain expertise. Bridging silos helps to break free of enculturation and conformity bias;
  2. Background of diverse experiences and interests that have been reflected on: Creative archetypes are typically polymaths and autodidacts– so is the Generalist;
  3. Adept at synthesizing something novel, the end product of which…
  4. has an actual benefit and value.

I want to be clear here: I am not arguing that there is no need for specialists. I am, however, making the case for generalists— that’s a big difference. If I had some bizarre malformation of, say, my pinky– some disorder that occurred in only one out of 10 million people– what do I want to do? I want to go to the pinky specialist! The surgeon that has operated on more Bizarre Pinky Disorders than anyone else, and written papers in Science: Pinky, and lectured to the Royal Society of Pinky Surgeons and so on. But if I am in the C-suite of an enterprise, or on the board of directors of a startup or any institution that is trying to thrive in the current climate of rapid change and disruption, I want some Generalists on board—and an evolved one even better! Need someone to churn out the best bug free code in the shortest time—get a specialist; want someone to help create a culture of innovation, avoid the pitfalls of dogmatic thinking, and connect disparate dots—get thee to a generalist! And there has never been a greater need in our history—perhaps urgency—for said folks.

Even the experts’ (a type of specialist) presumably safe bastion of forecasting is under siege. For example, Phillip Tetlock’s analysis of over 80,000 forecasts made by 284 professional forecasters found that experts are less accurate predictors than non-experts in their area of expertise! Given our poor ability to predict the future, who will thrive and add more value to an organization—the specialist, entrenched in his world view, umvelt, or silo, or the silo spanning generalist–the polymath and (dare I use the term) renaissance (wo)man? Generalists, with (by my definition) their broad and horizontal interests are better evolved to connect ideas and experiences; they are more likely to look for new encounters (both of the physical and intellectual world) and reflect on them—allow them to incubate and gestate—and reap the rewards of the epiphanies of the creative mind.

In a piece that appeared on Harvard Business Review blog (“All Hail the Generalist”), Vikram Mansharamani opines: “The time has come to acknowledge expertise as overvalued. There is no question that expertise and … logic are appropriate in certain domains (i.e. hard sciences), but they certainly appear less fitting for domains plagued with uncertainty, ambiguity, and poorly-defined dynamics (i.e. social sciences, business, etc.).”

Machines already trump us in chess and Jeopardy!. Finding connections and associations across disperse domains of knowledge and disparate ideas are still a human bastion—it is the seed of creative thought. “Knowledge work” was the growth sector of the last century, slowly now being replaced by machines. “Creativity work” is rising. Here, the Generalist rules.

 

-Mark HT Ridinger

 

fox_hedgehog

 

Be a fox, not a hedgehog!

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An “i” for an “I”. Are our tools now making us dumber?

Posted by Mark Ridinger on September 5, 2014
Posted in: Musings. Tagged: AI, Creativity, Hal, iPad, iPhone, Luddite, Mindfulness, Technology, Wisdom. Leave a comment

And what would have happened if Hal read Napoleon?

Napoleon and Hal

 

It seems one of humanity’s goals is to develop artificial intelligence; machines capable of operating towards the far right of Ackoff’s continuum of Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom (DIKW). (The place as of now where we have had the privilege of being the sole operators.) But as technology progresses to reach that goal, are we actually migrating ourselves—at least in terms of day-to-day life—to the left of that continuum? I say that because it strikes me that the amount of time we spend operating in the data/information realm grows larger vis-a-vis the time spent creating/imagining/understanding, or in other words, in the realm of knowledge and wisdom. How much time do we spend in our every waking hour consuming data? Thankfully we still have “sleep—perchance to dream” as Hamlet opined– maybe our last bastion of protected creative time?

The relationship between technology and liberation may not be a one-way function today in other words, as often but forth. Technology, of course, has freed us from many mundane tasks thereby freeing up time to spend in our pursuit of creativity and wisdom and happiness. Machines, created as an outcrop of the industrial age, (be they dishwashers or cotton gins), and the early digital age (PC’s, etc.), have added to the amount of our leisure time and/or increased our efficiency at work—all very good things indeed.

Yet are we approaching a period of diminishing returns, at least in terms of our own growth?

Are we not also experiencing a concomitant increase in anxiety as well from this data gathering overload, as it can be hard to quell a feeling of angst generated from the thought of maybe missing a valuable info-nugget if all those data feeds are not perused daily if not nearly constantly? (See my blog ‘FOMO: 21st century scourge.’) What is the impact on not only lost time spent free to conjecture and theorize but also the ADHD-like neurosis that ensues from taking on the mantle of being info-aware 24/7?

It seems clear we are becoming slaves—or addicts– to our tools; our iPad’s and iPhones and iMacs. How ironic that the “i” in our gadgets has very little to do with the other “I”—the Self–and what has historically defined it. I’m no Luddite, but I have to wonder if we are at risk of devolving into “info-gathering bots”, abdicating slowly our still uniquely human abilities of rich creativity–let alone wisdom– to the machines?

In other words, use it or lose it.

It strikes me that those in the AI community that are calling for caution are focused on the (too?) obvious threat of us developing a brilliant yet malevolent AI that will enslave or destroy us, either from evil intent or out of some chillingly logical conclusion ‘It’ draws. Perhaps however, the seed of our possible destruction is being planted by us and us alone, as we devolve to a point where we beg our AI creations to take over what Sir Joshua Reynolds called the “real labor of thinking”. Studies have already shown many of us would rather receive electrical shocks than to be alone with our thoughts. (see me piece: “Just Shock Me.”) It is time to address this looming crisis, and strive for creative and wise pedagogy and andragogy.

Or, perhaps, that will be the AI’s plan all along! After all, It will surely have read Napoleon: “Never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake.”

 

-Mark HT Ridinger

 

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The Declining Creativity of America’s Students: We Need “CE” as Much as “PE” in Our Schools.

Posted by Mark Ridinger on September 4, 2014
Posted in: Policy. Tagged: CE, Convergent, CQ, Creativity, Divergent, Education, IQ, Pedagogy, Policy, Torrance. 1 Comment

When discussing the state of education in America, most talk today revolves around measuring intelligence and trying to improve standardized test performance. IQ tests (which attempt to measure convergent thinking) are frequently used to try and find our brightest students and to place them in gifted programs. Intelligence is of course an important part of the equation but what of creativity, of identifying and measuring divergent thinking, and fostering its development? What of Creativity Intelligence (CQ)? Our future problem solvers and innovators, be they entrepreneurs, inventors, authors, or researchers will rely on creative intelligence, and identifying and fostering them early in their education is paramount for America’s future. Unfortunately we are failing at that endeavor.

The paradigm of merely equating IQ with the skills needed for success is outdated. Current research shows that there is little correlation between intelligence and creativity, except at lower ends of the IQ scale. People can in fact be both highly intelligent and creative, but also intelligent and uncreative, and vice versa. But how do we identify CQ? Dr. E. Paul Torrance has been called the Father of Creativity, for his work that began in the 1960’s. His standardized test, the Torrance Test for Creative Thinking (TTCT) is considered to be the gold standard for measuring and assessing creative thinking, and can be administered at any educational level—from kindergarten through graduate work.

Several recent comprehensive reviews of Torrance’s data—spanning decades—have been published. The bottom-line is the TTCT not only identifies creative thinkers but is also a strong predictor of future lifetime creative accomplishments. In fact, Indiana University’s Jonathon Plucker determined that the correlation to lifetime creative accomplishment (e.g. inventions, patents, publications etc.) was more than three times stronger for childhood creativity (as measured by the TTCT) than childhood IQ. Having a validated instrument like the TTCT is so important because alternative means to identify CQ don’t work so well. Expert opinion and teacher nominations have been used, but these methods are prone to errors and biases. For example, students who are already achieving or who have pleasant demeanors or have already ranked well on conventional IQ tests tend to be selected, while researchers have shown that highly creative students and divergent thinkers are typically shunned and are at risk of becoming estranged from teachers and other students. In fact, the odds of dropping out increases by as much as 50 percent if creative students are in the wrong school environment.

What else has the review of Torrance’s data shown? Unfortunately, that America seems to be in a CQ crisis. Kyung-Hee Kim, an assistant professor at William and Mary, analyzed 300,000 TTCT results and has determined that creativity has been on the decline in the US since 1990. The age group that is showing the worst decline is the kindergarten to sixth grade. The factors behind this decline aren’t known, but may be due to a mix of uncreative play (escalating hours spent in front of the TV or video game console for example), changing parenting and family dynamics (research suggests a stable home environment that also values uniqueness is important), and an educational system that focuses too much on rote memorization, standardized curriculum and national standardize testing. Are we stifling divergent thinking in our children for conformity of behavior?

The rest of the world seems to have woken up to the need to foster creativity in the educational process, and initiatives to make the development of creative thinking a national priority are on going in England, the EU and even China. The United States needs a similar national initiative if we hope to stay competitive on the world stage. What is needed is a new approach to learning that still has children mastering necessary skills and knowledge, but through a creative pedagogical approach. We know that creativity can be measured, managed, and fostered; there is no excuse to not implement such a strategy in our school system. Let’s see the creation and deployment of creative exercise classes for our students and the use of creativity tests as additional inclusion criteria to gifted programs. Surely “CE” is at least every bit as important as PE.

 

-Mark HT Ridinger

 

(Note: This article was originally published on the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies website)

 

 

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Just Shock Me

Posted by Mark Ridinger on September 3, 2014
Posted in: Musings. Tagged: Creativity, existential threat, FOMO, Mindfulness. Leave a comment

or… Just Shoot Shock Me.

In my previous piece, I advanced the need to coin some new terms that better reflect the true nature of—and the threat created by—the “fear of missing out”, or FOMO. Namely, that it is critical to be in a state of relaxed mindfulness and cognitive ease, as that is necessary for introspection, imagination and creativity, and FOMO is the antithesis of this.

A recent article in the New York Times entitled “No Time to Think”, correctly points this out and is worth a read:

“Researchers have also found that an idle mind is a crucible of creativity. ‘Idle mental processing encourages creativity and solutions because imagining your problem when you aren’t in it is not the same as reality,” said Jonathan Smallwood, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of York, in England. ‘Using your imagination means you are in fact rethinking the problem in a novel way.’”

The article goes on to highlight a recent and very disturbing study published in Science that found a significant number of people “began self-administering electric shocks when left alone to think. These same people… had previously said they would pay money to avoid receiving the painful jolt.” Clearly, we have become a culture that “values doing more than thinking and believes answers are in the palm of your hand rather than in your own head.”

It is one of the core themes of The Evolved Generalist to advance the idea that the true existential threat to any enterprise trying to compete in the 21st century is the failure to create a culture of mindfulness that nurtures innovation and inspiration.

The Science study shows just how difficult that can be, and should serve as a wake up call.

 

-Mark HT Ridinger

 

 

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FOMO: scourge of the 21st century.

Posted by Mark Ridinger on September 2, 2014
Posted in: Musings. Tagged: ephiphany, FOMO, neuroscience. 1 Comment

FOMOIn case you don’t know, FOMO stands for “fear of missing out”. Why a scourge? It’s a major cause of our increasing inability to be mindful–or be in a state of cognitive ease necessary for introspection, imagination and creativity. FOMO on an email, twitter feed, RSS feed, facebook updates… you get the picture. Now I have seen recently some push back which is great. For example, someone coined the term JOMO–“joy of missing out”–and although I do appreciate the sentiment, the issue I have is that JOMO still implies that one is “missing out”. But instead of being anxiety riddled about it (FOMO), one can be happy about it instead.

We need then a new term, because the real “missing out” comes from the lost opportunities of succumbing to FOMO!

I propose here today some new terms that hopefully correctly communicate that by being in a state of FOMO, one is actually losing the chance to be maximally innovative, to achieve an “aha” moment, or epiphany or Eureka!, and thus to perhaps never discover a brilliant idea, new intellectual property, or a creative solution.

What about, then, FOFOMO? (“fallacy of the fear of missing out”), or fauxFOMO? Or we could be more fanciful and take the beautiful Portuguese term, saudade (which roughly means a longing for something that never really existed) and hence get neo-saudade!

Whatever that word or phrase is, the antidote may be best described by another foreign phrase– wei wu wei– which is an ancient Tao expression that means something like ‘achieving action with deliberate inaction’. After all, both common sense and neuroscience has shown that the mind must be put at rest in order to tap into the hidden subconscious churning that leads to epiphanies.

-Mark HT Ridinger

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