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Writer Elizabeth Gilbert spoke at the 2009 TED event on the source of creativity and inspiration.  Her view is that writers and artists need to think of creativity as originating from somewhere other than themselves in order to stay sane, particularly when they become successful and then feel pressure to create equally worthy work.

Here’s the video of her talk:

Now, on the other end of the spectrum, the writers at Black Sun Journal wrote a scathing critique of Gilbert’s TED talk.  In short, their view is that creativity comes straight from the human brain and stop kidding around about divine inspiration.

If Black Sun Journal had been a tad more civil I’d find their ideas more palatable.  However, when you watch Gilbert’s talk it seems pretty clear, at least in the beginning, that she’s willing delude herself, or at least invent a psychological construct that helps her deal with the pressure to perform, especially when expectations are high.

It seems to me that the situation that she describes with writers and artists can equally apply to CEOs, priests, policemen, doctors, etc.  Isn’t this really all about controlling your thoughts and emotions to the point where they don’t mar your actions?

What do you think?

EDIT: at Lateral Action, Mark McGuinness wrote a great post that continues the conversation about this creativity topic.

EDIT: as you will see in the comments section, the writer of Black Sun Journal and I discuss the topic in more detail.  We both clarified each other’s views on the topic.

I maintain a Del.icio.us account (markdykeman) where I’m tracking blog posts, websites, etc. for long term storage.

If you’re ever looking for more ideas, you can check out anything that I’ve tagged under creativity.

Lots of other good stuff under the other tags, including blogging, writing, etc.

Feel free to join my network there!

Author Gregg Fraley, whose book Jack’s Notebook has been reviewed here at Broadcasting Brain, is organizing a very interesting project called the Peregrine Panel.  He refers to it as an “emerging social media research giant”.  Here’s a post (one of several) where he describes the Peregrine Panel in more detail.

Here’s a note from Gregg’s blog concerning The Peregrine Panel:

Regarding participating in The Peregrine Panel: If you are new to this, simply follow @greggfraley2 in Twitter. If you are one of those already following @greggfraley2 because you want to be part of the consumer-ideator panel a request: recruit more followers for the panel! The formal process, which will begin in a few weeks, includes taking a thinking styles assessment and filling out a profile form. The potential panelists will be notified using Twitter.

Why become a Peregrine Panelist? Three key reasons: 1.) panelists will participate in ground breaking research and product development efforts, it will be stimulating and fun, 2.) compensation will take the form of actual payments for some projects, “spiffs” and discounts for others, some will be “volunteer” (such as generating ideas for non-profits) and, panelists can “earn” actual shares in the company.  10% of the company shares are behind held out for panelists. This is unprecedented in consumer research and it’s a real opportunity for panelists to do well, if the company does well. Finally, 3.) Panelists will be assessed for thinking styles and will receive creativity training on various aspects of new product development and idea generation. This presents a great opportunity for younger people in particular looking for resume-building skills and experiences.

Obviously it’s very early days, but this looks like a really interesting creative endeavor.  If you’re looking for a new challenge of some kind, why not check it out?  Gregg is looking for at least 1000 partners for this initiative.  I’m quite interested to see what happens with this!

Note:  there is some talk of ownership, finances, etc. in these blog posts.  As the project is still in its infancy stages, take everything with a grain of salt – things can always change.  I think you should approach this as a creative/networking/intellectual challenge and plan to derive benefit from that – anything else is just gravy, as they say.

Hat tip to Ewan McIntosh, who has a great post to accompany this video.

I wrote a post called Where the words come from where I speculated on this topic.

Over at Lateral Action, Mark McGuinness wrote a great piece that looked at the pros and cons of brainstorming.  I thought I’d weigh in with my thoughts on the topic.

Just in case you’re not 100% certain of what brainstorming is, here’s the introduction to the brainstorming entry at Wikipedia.org:

Brainstorming is a group creativity technique designed to generate a large number of ideas for the solution of a problem. The method was first popularized in the late 1930s by Alex Faickney Osborn in a book called Applied Imagination. Osborn proposed that groups could double their creative output with brainstorming.

Although brainstorming has become a popular group technique, researchers have not found evidence of its effectiveness for enhancing either quantity or quality of ideas generated. Because of such problems as distraction, social loafing, evaluation apprehension, and production blocking, brainstorming groups are little more effective than other types of groups, and they are actually less effective than individuals working independently. In the Encyclopedia of Creativity, Tudor Rickards, in his entry on brainstorming, summarizes its controversies and indicates the dangers of conflating productivity in group work with quantity of ideas.

Although traditional brainstorming does not increase the productivity of groups, it may still provide benefits, such as boosting morale, enhancing work enjoyment, and improving team work. Thus, numerous attempts have been made to improve brainstorming or use more effective variations of the basic technique.

The Wikipedia entry seems a bit negative, doesn’t it? Continue reading ‘Does brainstorming really yield good ideas?’ »