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From a meeting last year: "We want to come up with creative ways to present this information, but we don't want to spend any time on things we won't end up usin

From a meeting last year: "We want to come up with creative ways to present this information, but we don't want to spend any time on things we won't end up using." For me, that says it all about the bias against creativity. Creativity requires a tolerance for uncertainty and risk. Don't ask for creativity unless you are willing to accept that.

heymijo 9y ago
I live this ad nauseam in education. Legislators, administrators, and boards often say they want creativity (or innovation). Yet there is almost no tolerance for (or even awareness?) of what it takes. My purview in education is broad and the sentiment is always "what will go wrong" and never "what could go right." In higher education it's this mentality amplified. You might say HN is my safe space.
cousin_it 9y ago
I'd even say that creativity requires waste, or at least a kind of attitude where wastefulness is okay.
- vtange 9y ago
  Can confirm this. In a lot of design schools (I went into architecture school) students are taught to iterate, iterate, iterate to improve and refine on their design. It's very rare to see great designs 100% complete on the first try, and often you see early models and prototypes tossed to the side after the final product is due. From the short-term, economic perspective, watching someone hammer away at something when "tried-and-true" solutions exist (with some 'creative' twists ofc) can even seem irrational and wasteful. One famous Modernist architect, Phillip Johnson, even quipped that,"Architecture is the art of how to waste space." People who can't handle the waste in design probably would never shell out for proper R&D or scientific developments either. Hardly anyone gets it right on their first try, even in research. It's funny because when creative endeavors finally pay off, they can pay off big and then they themselves become the "tried-and-true" trend that people follow.
  - hbosch 9y ago
    I went to a design school, and one of my early classes was traditional drawing. Our professor would set up a still life, have us begin, and over the course of weeks have "random" days where he would require us to erase everything on the sheet and start over, no matter how good you were doing or how far along you were. I think the lesson was heavy handed but I've always remembered it... The idea, I believe, was "get used to throwing away your work and trying new things, even when you don't want to". In the end I think desensitizing yourself to the idea of erasing work is a good practice. I have projects full of code that has been commented out for over a month, simply because I'm afraid I'll have to go back and see it again... Recalling this story, I may just as well delete it and rewrite it if needed. Chances are the rewrite will be cleaner.
- pimmen89 9y ago
  Absolutely. If you're not "wasting" time and resources, you aren't trying ideas that could be proven completely wrong, a.k.a. new ideas.

heymijo 9y ago

I live this ad nauseam in education. Legislators, administrators, and boards often say they want creativity (or innovation). Yet there is almost no tolerance for (or even awareness?) of what it takes. My purview in education is broad and the sentiment is always "what will go wrong" and never "what could go right." In higher education it's this mentality amplified. You might say HN is my safe space.

cousin_it 9y ago

I'd even say that creativity requires waste, or at least a kind of attitude where wastefulness is okay.

vtange 9y ago
Can confirm this. In a lot of design schools (I went into architecture school) students are taught to iterate, iterate, iterate to improve and refine on their design. It's very rare to see great designs 100% complete on the first try, and often you see early models and prototypes tossed to the side after the final product is due. From the short-term, economic perspective, watching someone hammer away at something when "tried-and-true" solutions exist (with some 'creative' twists ofc) can even seem irrational and wasteful. One famous Modernist architect, Phillip Johnson, even quipped that,"Architecture is the art of how to waste space." People who can't handle the waste in design probably would never shell out for proper R&D or scientific developments either. Hardly anyone gets it right on their first try, even in research. It's funny because when creative endeavors finally pay off, they can pay off big and then they themselves become the "tried-and-true" trend that people follow.
- hbosch 9y ago
  I went to a design school, and one of my early classes was traditional drawing. Our professor would set up a still life, have us begin, and over the course of weeks have "random" days where he would require us to erase everything on the sheet and start over, no matter how good you were doing or how far along you were. I think the lesson was heavy handed but I've always remembered it... The idea, I believe, was "get used to throwing away your work and trying new things, even when you don't want to". In the end I think desensitizing yourself to the idea of erasing work is a good practice. I have projects full of code that has been commented out for over a month, simply because I'm afraid I'll have to go back and see it again... Recalling this story, I may just as well delete it and rewrite it if needed. Chances are the rewrite will be cleaner.
pimmen89 9y ago
Absolutely. If you're not "wasting" time and resources, you aren't trying ideas that could be proven completely wrong, a.k.a. new ideas.