I have decided to jump around, now that I am no longer reading an anthology. Also, I need to write my Leading Change Philosophy Statement and exposing myself to a variety of ideas seems to be the way to get started. So this time around, I'm reading Johansson's Medici Effect.
Basically, Johansson says that in order to innovate, we must find the Intersection. This is the place where ideas from different fields converge and combine. In this place, creative, innovative ideas are born. The author begins by defining creativity and innovation, which I thought was very helpful. These words get thrown around a lot. Here in China, "innovation" is such a special word. It is kind of a Holy Grail for Chinese students, but it's been my observation that there's a lot of talk about how important it is and not much understanding of how to foster it.
Johansson also describes the difference between directional innovation and intersectional innovation. He points out that directional innovation is the more common kind. It is incremental and requires some mastery of a field in order to achieve. Beyond that, there is a lot of competition in that kind of innovation. By contrast, intersectional innovation does not require as much mastery in a field and it tends to happen in leaps and jumps, opening new fields to be explored, with a kind of serendipity.
Johansson writes with the kind of energy and optimism that I associate with a certain type of people--the kind of people who ignore obstacles and irritate people with other personalities in the process. I myself am cautiously optimistic. I feel like what he is describing is a very real phenomenon and that it is something that can be strategically pursued, but I don't think it is as straightforward as he is implying that it is in this first chapter. I may be judging him too quickly.
Here's the thing: I've always been one for the interdisciplinary approach. I changed my major seven times as an undergraduate because there were so many interesting things to learn and specializing made me bored. Despite this predilection to the Intersection, as Johansson describes it, I have not had any truly innovative breakthroughs in the way that he describes. I live at Sias because it is such a place, though, for the record.
I think his own explanation perfectly accounts for my own lack of innovation. He states that creativity is a matter of coming up with a new idea that others find valuable--and value is socially determined. I think I've come up with new ideas that others found valuable, but then they just co-opted them without necessarily acknowledging me as the source. My ideas may become "memes" (Have you ever encountered an idea that you came up with on your own spouted back to you a month or a year later by someone you never told it to? Who is to say whether it is my idea or someone else thought of it at the same time, but that happens to me all the time), but I certainly haven't created a new field or developed a following. That requires a certain kind of proprietary knowledge that I have not been able to lay claim to. Secondly, I've never been in much of a position to realize my ideas in a way that would count as "innovation." I think my classroom is the first of such opportunities, and my innovations are small and not recognized or copied by many people.
...So, I think there is more to really game-changing ideas than just "staying in the Intersection." I think there has to be some level of social capital, or one's ideas never really become a force of their own. They kind drip into the local culture and diffuse outward, creating small ripples of change, but nothing that could actually be measured. So, allowing that innovation is socially organized, I think it ought also to be acknowledged that the people who are fond of directional innovation just tend to be more socially organized, on the whole, than those who like to innovate intersectionally, and that gives them a huge advantage. It may seem like intersectional innovation has less competition, but it's merely a very different and more insidious kind of competition. It is the competition for attention and the competition for legitimacy, that intersectional innovation tends to lose.
Social Justice
And... that is where the social justice piece comes in. Having intersectional innovation that other people take seriously (and therefore counts as "creativity" by Johnasson's definition) is a privilege that not everyone has. That is a big part of my struggle. If you are not educated, if you are not an adult, if you are not a man, if you don't have money, if you don't have charm, if you don't speak the right language, no one listens to you, and it doesn't matter how wonderfully unique or useful your ideas might potentially be, you are a mad man shouting in the desert. Lots of books are written in the effort to make people who are not naturally creative, but who have money to buy books, be more creative. The sad part of it is that there are some many potentially creative people out there who no one will listen to because we've all been so thoroughly brainwashed by the system.
Ah well.
I also think there is a spiritual aspect to all of this. Maybe I will delve more into that another time.
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