Left-brain Creativity has more Economic Value

In last year’s Food for Thought entitled Mind those Qs, I acknowledged creativity as an intentional omission in the suggested Qs, and left that discussion for another article. Since then I have been thinking about creativity and have gained enough conviction to provocatively posit that left-brain creativity has more economic value.

What is left-brain creativity and how does it differ from right-brain creativity? What is creativity anyway?

Let’s take some examples. Most people think of the arts and literature as creative activities. An artist is considered creative. A beautiful painting or sculpture, a touching poem and a striking arrangement of flowers are considered creative expressions. Then would you consider the street portrait painter who whips up a remarkable resemblance of you in twenty minutes creative? Or would you consider that person technically skilled with a formulaic process for the task, and call it “producing” rather than “creating” a portrait? Would you consider the commercial graphic designer, who day in and day out designs brochures on demand, engaged in a creative activity?

Is that any more creative than the tax accountant who, with a quick study of your accounts, can tell you the legal tax breaks and deductions that can benefit you? Is the hedge-fund manager, who develops an unusual derivative from myriad of investment vehicles that provides a high return with low risk, not a creative individual? After all, nobody else had thought of that derivative and there was no existing formula for it. Is the scientist, who thinks of mixing a unique combination of chemicals to produce a polymer with attractive properties, not a creative individual? Are these accountants, bankers and scientists not creative? What is creativity?

Creativity is the process of extracting an intriguing expression from an unstructured space of infinite possibilities.

Let’s illustrate this definition with both traditional and non-traditional examples. Leonardo da Vinci extracted an intriguing expression, the Mona Lisa, out of a plain canvas. Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone with the Wind and David Selznick’s screen adaptation are both intriguing expressions, one written on a blank piece of paper and the other imprinted on celluloid. Andy Warhol’s questioning of, “What is art?” led him to the intriguing expression of his Campbell’s soup can paintings. Famous advertising slogans such as “pop, pop, fizz, fizz,” “don’t leave home without it” and “reach out and touch someone” are all intriguing expressions, each with significant impact and each drawn from a blank slate.

Likewise, Isaac Newton, by asking, “Did the apple fall to the earth or did the earth move to the apple?” created an intriguing expression, the gravitational law, to conclude that both the apple and the earth moved toward each other. Magic Johnson, arguably the all-time best point guard in the NBA, was a master in finding within the opposing defense that sliver of a hole that allowed him to make that intriguing expression, the bounce pass, resulting in baskets. Karl Marx, in abstracting the struggles of societies, created an intriguing expression, the struggle between the source of production and the means of production. Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violent passive resistance was an intriguing expression (strategy) to fight the British. In all these cases was there not an intriguing expression extracted from an unstructured space of infinite possibilities? That is creativity.

The italicized phrases in the definition above are significant. There’s a common assumption that, when it comes to creative activities, you can tell a good outcome when you see it, but there’s no real test for a good outcome.

In other words: the goodness of the outcome is usually undefined, vague and often in the eyes of the beholder.

My use of the word “intriguing” is a placeholder for this vague concept of goodness. In fact, in some situations (like the tax accountant, the hedge-fund manager and the scientist) it can be more quantified than others (like the artist, poet, portrait painter and the graphic designer).

The second key phrase is “unstructured space.” If the space of possibilities – even infinite possibilities – can be structured in an orderly fashion, then a mechanical search can be launched, assisted by computers, and the resulting solution is unlikely to be considered creative. When a painter starts with a blank piece of canvas, the painter’s space of possibilities is infinite and totally unstructured. The same is true of a poet with a blank piece of paper. But the same is also true of the scientist trying to find a new polymer, or the hedge-fund manager trying to find a new derivative. All of them acknowledge that the space of possibilities is infinite and unstructured, and out-of-the-blue they dream up a potentially intriguing solution, refining it with their technical skills to make it remarkable.

So, it is the unstructured nature of the space of possibilities that makes the task creative. If the space of possibilities were structured, it would be mechanical.

To illustrate that, let’s use a math example (Warning: Math-phobic readers are advised to skip this paragraph). A perfect number is one whose proper divisors sum to the number. For example, the proper divisors of 6 are 1, 2 and 3, and the proper divisors of 28 are 1, 2, 4, 7 and 14. In both cases the proper divisors sum to the number. They are the first two perfect numbers. The ancient Greeks identified and named them and knew of four perfect numbers (496 and 8128). The Greeks thought the gods had made them perfect. Today we only know of 49 perfect numbers, the 49th of which has almost 35 million digits. Why are they important? Perfect numbers are related to Mersenne primes, which play a role in cryptography, including the RSA cryptosystem used in encrypting your credit card information over the internet. So finding the 50th perfect number would be of value. In fact, there is a globally distributed computing effort underway in search for the 50th. Would finding it be viewed a result of creativity or industry? Since the space of possible solutions (the numbers) is very structured, such a find would be viewed as the result of exhaustive work. Yet, if somebody came up with a formula for perfect numbers, that would be creative!

If creativity is a search in an unstructured space, can we limit creativity by structuring the space? Yes, indeed!

For example, the street portrait painter might have an established process for measuring the size of your face and the relative positions of your eyes and nose to quickly zone in on a realistic image. The painter has used a process to limit the space of possibilities and brought structure to that space. The commercial graphic designer might be asked to bring structure to her process to get the task done on schedule. When the ad-man is searching for that right idea, he often brings structure to his thoughts by segmenting his audience, prioritizing the important segments and looking at their trends. That is, the ad-man brings structure to his space of possibilities; and, with it, limitations to his creativity.

Acknowledging that the theory of lateralization of brain functions (left-brain, right-brain) is not founded on scientific evidence with recent neuroscience more definitively debunking the ideas of left-brain and right-brain thinking, we adopt those terms as a commonly used placeholder. So, we refer to math, science and analytical activities as left-brain, and art, music and subjective activities as right-brain.

Both types of activities can be creative. The myth that left-brain activities are not creative might actually be harming us.

Do you ever ask your accountant to be creative – I don’t mean illegal, but legally creative? If you do, she might find you opportunities for savings or economies of scale. Do you look for a creative way to segment your market, as opposed to the traditional segmentations along industry, products, applications, channels, customers, etc.? A creative segmentation might provide more insight than a traditional segmentation. Do you look for creativity in your investment strategy? We call this left-brain creativity.

Left-brain creativity often has a more objective definition for the term “intriguing expression” above.

In other words, when a creative accountant suggests that we combine the data processing of sales and service to increase the leads for service opportunities, the result of that creativity is more objective. When you come up with an investment strategy that correlates the currency of the investment with countries where you do business, the resulting hedge is clearly seen. The goodness of the results is objective and not just in the eyes of the beholder.

In contrast, right-brain creativity is often subjective. Although conceptual artists, Damien Hirst and Andres Serrano, might be well known artists for their controversial work and the art community would certainly consider their art creative, it is unlikely that most who see it will appreciate their work. And, certainly, young emerging artists working in that genre are unlikely to be a commercial success or even eke out a living as that of the less creative street portrait painter.

In other words, the subjective nature of the goodness of right-brain creativity puts its economic value in question. (Of course this is not a commentary on its social value.)

Hence our conclusion that left-brain creativity has more economic value. In business we should encourage left-brain creativity in functions and activities that are otherwise considered not creative. How can you promote creativity – particularly left-brain creativity – in your company?

Food for Thought is our way of sharing interesting concepts on corporate leadership and management with others who might find it useful. The thoughts offered are intended to be controversial and thought-provoking. They are intended to help our readers intentionally realize their potential, what we call Potentionality.