Creativity Studies
I'm a student of creativity. Posts on this work are here, here, here and here.
Creativity is the act of sharing something novel and meaningful with others. These new ideas advance our world - everything good, and bad, that has come from human progress started with an person making a connection between disparate ideas to bring forth something novel and meaningful.
My foundational beliefs are:
- Everyone is creative. Creativity is not limited to the arts. A creative act can be as small as a personal story or warm conversation that connects with another person, and as long term as a distinct professional career spanning decades.
- Creativity is a skill. Creativity is learned over time. There is a process to developing new ideas, steeling yourself when sharing them with the world, and incorporating feedback and lessons learned along the way.
- Developing creativity is positive. Improving your ability share new ideas improves your personal and professional life, and moves the human project forward.
If these are right, it follows that improving the tools and processes for building creative capacity in young adults has value for learners, and for the world at large.
Developing A Theory of Creativity
Teresa Amabile's Theory of Creativity provides the foundation for building creative potential. Her work identifies four components for creativity:
There is ample academic research on the creative process. I'm focused on using what we know from that work, and more popular media from creators themselves, to build tools that help us all understand and improve our creative potential.
I'm not sure what this will be yet. It could just be this site. Or, it could end up as a company, a non-profit, a book, or something else. I believe software tools can help reach more people, but also whatever comes forward needs to be built with safety, education and humanity. My aim is to produce work that connects with young creators: to know their potential, to increase their ambition, and to share their work.
More to come. What else is missing? I'm sure a lot. If this is interesting to you, let's connect. I'm at rory@earthrise.dev
Also, I'm teaching on Outschool if there is a young learner in your life that is interested in creativity.
Additional Reading / Resources on Creativity
Works on creativity that have inspired me, helped me, or been recommended to me
“Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightening to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.” - Chuck Close
Academic Work
Teresa Amabile's work at Harvard Business School
In Pursuit of Creativity by Teresa Amabile
Componential Theory of Creativity by Teresa Amabile
Growing Up Creative by Teresa Amabile
Investment Theory of Creativity by Robert Sternberg
Handbook of Creativity edited Robert Sternberg
Popular Audience
The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. Practical guide with exercises and great commentary on the creative process. Morning pages are helpful for me still.
Zig Zag by Keith Sawyer. Fun read summarizing much academic work for a broader audience, with exercises and tools along the way.
How to Change by Katy Milkman, fun read in general, related to this work specifically around processes and tools that enable creative growth
Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson
How Innovation Works by Matt Ridley
Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
War of Art by Steven Pressfield. Terrific, short read, exploring Resistance in its many forms, and how to combat it to produce creative work.
Competing Against Luck by Clay Christensen - a useful framework for innovation, focusing on Christensen's Jobs to Be Done theory
Born Standing Up by Steve Martin. A great account of what is means to do the work. Context and stories for how to become so good they can't ignore you.
Personal History by Katherine Graham - personal and inspiring autobiography that traces a creative career path, linking to many of the themes from work on creativity
Creativity Inc by Ed Catmull
Other Media
The Moment with Brian Koppelman - so many great interviews with creatives exploring their process, the 'moment' when careers and art hinged and how they do what they do.
Running Down A Dream -How to Succeed and Thrive in a Career You Love - (video) Bill Gurley. Practical and insightful way to guide a creative career path, with many connections to the academic work on developing creativity
How to Overcome Self-Sabotage - Steven Pressfield on Tim Ferris podcast
Ta-Nehisi Coates on the sometimes painful process of creating (video)
Value of Deep Work - Cal Newport on Hidden Brain with Shankar Vendantam (podcast)
Get Back - video, on Disney+. Terrific study of group dynamics in the creative process. Also fun to hear music from four young artists still developing their craft.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on Flow - A leading researcher in the field on what happens to the mind in the creative process.
4 Lessons in Creativity - Julie Burstein, TED talk on research into creative process