The Pinker Opinion

by Brian Clegg

In his excellent, bestselling book How the Mind Works, pop science-of-the-mind writer Steven Pinker is scathing about the work of creativity consultants. He rightly comments 'All of us are creative', but then takes on a negative tone as he describes how we regard geniuses. According to popular legend, he says, 'They put a problem aside and let it incubate in the subconscious; then, without warning, a bulb lights up and a fully formed solution presents itself.' And this, Pinker implies, leads to the opportunity for evil creativity consultants to confuse poor business people out of their hard earned cash:

The image came out of the Romantic movement two hundred years ago and is now firmly entrenched. Creativity consultants take millions of dollars from corporations for Dilbertesque workshops on brainstorming, lateral thinking and flow from the right side of the brain, guaranteed to turn every manager into an Edison.

Frankly, this is unworthy of Professor Pinker, who certainly knows his stuff when it comes to the workings of the brain. There are no doubt bad creativity consultants out there to rip off corporations, just as there are bad scientists, as we have been made all too aware by the string of admissions of faked data and other scientific blundering over the last few years. But most of us (and I include myself as a consultant as well as a writer) are not setting out to rip off our clients, nor to mislead them into thinking that we are going to turn everyone into Edison.

Starting with Pinker's original premise 'all of us are creative' - here's a first opportunity for good creativity consultants to make a difference. The fact is the majority of people think that they are not particularly creative. They might be good at their job, but they aren't ideas persons. And that's a self-fulfilling prophesy. The more convinced you are that your ideas are no good, the less likely you are to share them. So part of the work of the creativity consultant involves making everyone aware of their own creative ability.

Secondly, something he doesn't mention is the fact is that everyone can improve on their creativity. Not be turned into Edisons, Einsteins, Mozarts or Manets, but become better at using the creativity they have. And this is anything but a matter of expecting 'a fully formed solution to present itself. Good creativity consultants can help everyone be aware of the environmental impact on creativity, can explore the cultural suppression of creativity, and can teach simple techniques that help make it easier to kick off the creative process, and to refine those anything-but-fully-formed ideas into something useful.

In the most famous Dilbert cartoon about creativity, he is introduced to a 'humourless blob' who turns out to be the new creative director. When Dilbert says he has some ideas, the blob's reaction is 'Whoa, loose cannon.' If that's what Professor Pinker had in mind when he called creativity consultancy Dilbertesque, he was wildly far from the truth. More likely he was thinking of expensive experts who don't deliver anything, yet once again, he would be simply wrong.

Creativity consultancy does not claim to turn everyone into Edison. But done effectively, it can make a huge difference to the way an individual or a team can use its creative capability. Time to take the off the blinker, Professor Pinker.

For more on creativity consultancy, see our consultancy section.

Brian Clegg is a director of Creativity Unleashed Limited and an author of over 20 books on business, creativity and science.

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