Measuring creativity

Measuring creativity is not easy.

First, it's really hard to agree on what is creative and what is not: “Creativity is often misjudged. History is replete with examples of misjudged, overlooked, and ignored creative persons and works. Creative work is often misjudged in its own time and only later receives credit. Are contemporaries the best judges of creativity, or is a historical perspective the most accurate? (…) Misjudgment works both ways. Sometimes inventions and insights are overlooked, and sometimes their creativity and value are exaggerated. The possibility of misjudgment implies that consensual assessments should be used very judiciously.” Runco, M., Misjudgment, in Runco and Pritzker (1999)

Then of course is the problem of tests: “The criterion problem: what are the criteria by which creativity should be measured? A closely related question is whether tests commonly used to measure creativity in a person actually predict creative production. This problem encapsulates an essential operational definition for the field, because the research questions of empirical studies are based on issues of definitions.” O’Quin and Besemer, Creative Products, in Runco and Pritzker (1999)

Now, having acknowledged the previous two issues, how do we measure our (potential for) creativity? Divergent thinking is a widely used approach, motivation, personality, adaptability, and a dozen other features can be measured, even things like schizophrenia...

Here is the CREAX Creativity Self-Assessment Scan, announced as "a unique personal creativity profiling tool that offers you a free scan of your level of creativity in 8 different areas" Try it and see if the questions are relevant and the results tell you something about yourself: http://www.creax.com/csa

The infancy of social indicators...

Still very limited, but the social dimension of sustainability is gradually being included in product ratings, such as these by GoodGuide:

http://www.goodguide.com/about/ratings

Our Social score characterizes the social impact associated with the manufacture and sale of a product. GoodGuide uses a common assessment framework, pictured here, to organize the various indicators that are available to score products or companies on social performance.  There are four broad classes of indicators: Corporate Governanceindicators evaluate corporate ethics and reporting on environmental and social issues. Consumer indicators include company-level product quality and safety criteria, as well as information about customer satisfaction policies and programs.  Society indicators encompass company philanthropic programs, community engagement activities, community-related controversies, and involvement in countries with oppressive regimes. Worker indicators track company performance on diversity, working conditions and labor rights.  

Because the availability of product-level social data is limited and varies by product category, GoodGuide's Social scores are primarily based on company-level data.  The relative contribution of product- vs company-level data to Social scores varies by product category:

• Social scores are based solely on company-level data for personal care, household chemicals, food, drinks, toys and paper.  
• Product-level data contributes 50% of Social scores for bulk coffees and teas. 

At the early stage, how can one tell if an idea is any good?

This, I think, is one of the hardest questions, probably one impossible to respond.Time is the key.

Here is Scott Belsky's recent response:

"Here’s the simple litmus test: Does your community care? Everyone has a “community” of constituents—customers, users, readers, clients, etc. Share your ideas liberally. If your community engages with them (either for or against them), then you know you’re onto something. If they don’t look twice you know that you either need to reconsider the idea or rethink how you communicate it."

From this interview:

http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/the-world/article/how-to-make-ideas-happen-guy-kawasaki

It's a shame that the interviewer doesn't dig deeper. I'd agree that community is important, but one cannot trust committees. How many ideas would have been dismissed because of short-sighted constituents. Surely community is an element, but there are other details to be considered.

Real-life inventors

The ABC has been running this show for a number of years: "The New Inventors". It's refreshing to see these initiatives (above other stupid reality shows) that actually promote invention, entrepreneurship and design.

Here is an interesting episode of the Aussie show: "321 Water: a re-usable drink bottle that filters tap water": link

Other similar shows include:
- American Inventor (ABC)
- BBC - Dragons' Den (BBC)

- Everyday Edisons (PBS)
- Entrepreneur 2
- Shark Tank
- Canadian Dragon's Den (CBC)

May sound simple, but these I think that these shows do serve an important role in promoting creativity and innovation.

Task: analysis of 2009 IDEA product designs

NewScientist features the 2009 IDEA award winners here:
http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/dn17541-idea-competition

Interesting diversity of products, stakeholders and value levels.

Todo: Analyse and classify the 10 winners using a design framework (FBS, Cagan&Vogel, etc)

Measuring innovation

Great.

Some guys claim to measure innovation and have determined that Mexico, India and Brazil are the three least-innovative countries of the study.

I don't know, but I've been to these three countries (I live in one of them) and it's quite clear to me that anyone is likely to get what they want out of measuring stuff the way they choose.

Really can anyone believe that ancient cultures like India, Brazil and Mexico are not innovative?

Mmmm, let's see who are behind this study: European-American Business Council (surprise surprise!)

Surely, if the chosen parameters are patents granted or something like that, of course you'd get such results. But, really, anyone reckons that innovation is credibly measurable by patents?

A real-world "idea lab"

The trend of opening up small retail spaces to new products would be great as an "idea lab" for incubators:

http://springwise.com/retail/oaklandmall/
http://springwise.com/retail/co-operative_retail_for_indepe/


What are the likely trade-offs?

"Ideas are ten a penny"

In this post I'll keep adding websites that cluster "new ideas". It's a great resource when we talk about the evaluation / assessment of creativity:

1. http://es.ideas4all.com/world
2. http://www.globalideasbank.org/site/home/
3. http://namethis.com/name_this/
4. http://www.creativitypool.com/
5. http://www.halfbakery.com/
6. http://www.idea-a-day.com/

Current ideas

An interesting source of recent design ideas is the top-50 entries of the "green gadgets" competition hosted by core77: http://www.core77.com/greenergadgets/.

A few issues to analyse:

1. The huge differences between countries/cultures that are represented in the selection
2. The degree of novelty in the selected ideas
3. The criteria to define the judging panel
4. The (vast) differences between ideas selected by experts and the voting by the general public
5. The range of qualitative variation amongst all entries
6. Foreseable feasibility of selected ideas
7. Presentation materials, choice of representation, language & code of communication
8. Evaluation of selected ideas from a patent or IP viewpoint
9. Classification of selected entries considering the three areas of sustainability: social, economic & environmental
10. Systemic view of selected entries: range of stakeholders, consequences, etc

I reckon such design competitions make an interesting source for masters/honours thesis projects

$5,000 euro: "unpublished" and "in progress" criteria to evaluate novelty

Beyond any armchair discussion of intellectual interest, this is an interesting real-life case of how criteria are defined to evaluate the novelty of ideas.

The Prize "Juan Rulfo" is organised by several institutions in Paris and awards 5,000 euro to the winner: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/ultimas/2008/12/24/retiran-premio-juan-rulfo-a-escritor-cubanoestadunidense-jorge-davila

The author was accused of submitting a story previously 'published' in a local and obscure magazine in Madrid. First, it'd be interesting to analyse the relevance of such a criteria in relation to its merit. However, if the rule was set beforehand, there is no room for discussion here.

Second, and more interestingly, the author claims that the original published version of his own work was changed significantly: "un trabajo en progreso que sufrió desde entonces cambios de lenguaje, sintaxis y estructurales"... which makes me wonder whether the jury should have taken this into account instead of literally applying a rule when defining something as slippery as novelty.

In this case the matter was easily settled by the jury (top-down), but in a bottom-up self-organising assessment it'd be interesting to find out how a social group would take this type of criteria to ascribe novelty.