Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

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September 15, 2008

Can Social Media Produce World-Changing Creativity?

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 11:44 am

Creativity with a Capital C

Creativity at Work

Every two or three years, I return to the book, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the author of the book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Creativity is based on a rigorous study of 91 internationally recognized creative people as part of his “effort to make more understandable the mysterious process by which men and women come up with new ideas and new things.” He called it Creativity with a capital C, because their contributions had world changing impact.

The study included writers, astronomers, Nobel Prize winners, actors, Historians, paleontologists, scultors, painters, architects, scientists, biologists, musicians, photographers, economists, philosophers, inventors, composers, physicians, chemists, psychologists, politicians.

According to Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, three things must come together for culture changing Creativity to occur.

  1. a domain that contains symbolic rules
  2. people who bring novelty into that domain
  3. a field of experts who recognize and validate the innovation

All three are necessary for a creative idea, product, or discovery to take place.

Can the Social Media Produce World-Changing Creativity?

Every morning, we wake up to the challenge of being creative in our lives. As Lateral Action points out this morning, Creativity is Economic Priority Number One. Some cynically don’t see value in thinking beyond the fundamentals, but that doesn’t change the challenge continues to grow. The present shift moving programmable and scripted jobs offshore requires a high concept, creative and human response.

I see us with the toys of social media communication. Some days, I wonder how many of us are caught up in the playing. What’s the value Plurking on Plurk about Plurking? How much of that is really necessary to understanding the humans think? What problems does it help us solve?

Conversation without a clear purpose is still conversation that doesn’t go anywhere. Collecting friends isn’t a noble goal in itself.

How are we to put these virtual applications toward getting the world to work?

  1. Is social media a domain that contains symbolic rules?
  2. Are there people who bring to it novel ideas?
  3. Has it established a field of experts who can recognize and validate an innovation?

Can social media produce world-changing Creativity with a Capital C?

I wonder.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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29 Comments to “Can Social Media Produce World-Changing Creativity?”

  1. September 15th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
    Mark McGuinness said

    Hi Liz, good question and great reference point - Csikszentmihalyi is one of my favourite writers on creativity.

    To answer your question: I don’t think social media can ‘produce’ world changing creativity, any more than the proverbial writers’ cafe can be said to produce great literature. But like the cafe it can act as a very effective catalyst for creativity, by facilitating conversation, collaboraton and exchange of ideas between innovators and experts from different domains.

    I agree with you that if we just plurk about plurk, blog about blogging etc then we’re just spinning our wheels. But hopefully we’re getting to the point where the tools are invisible and we don’t think about them any more than we think about pens or keyboards when we’re writing.

  2. September 15th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
    Brian Clark said

    Liz, smart questions with tough answers. But frankly, if social media *doesn’t* provide advanced opportunities for creativity and innovation, then it’s mostly a waste of time.

  3. September 15th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
    ME Liz Strauss said

    Hi Brian,
    It’s the same conclusion I’m arriving at myself. The tools are great, but the conversation is going on and on and on.

  4. September 15th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
    Daniel said

    Liz - I definitely look forward to talking with you about this at BlogWorld, if you’re not mobbed by adoring fans. :-)

  5. September 15th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
    ME Liz Strauss said

    Hi Dan,
    Adoring fans — too funny. It’s worth talking about. Brian put it forward in correct terms. Creativity without productivity isn’t much. Conversation with action makes only noise.

    We need rigor in order to pull out the value.

  6. September 15th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
    lainie liberti said

    Excellent questions, however the paradigm of creativity itself has shifted as the social framework has changed. In other words, yes and yes!

  7. September 15th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
    Matthew T. Grant said

    Quickly responding to the three questions:

    1. yes (though, I’m not sure exactly how they would be defined or if “social media” constitutes a domain or what the symbolic rules of philosophy or economics might look like, etc.)

    2. yes - there are undeniably novel things being brought to various social media both in terms of extending them via apps/widgets and deploying them in ever-new contexts.

    3. not yet - there are, however, people who are fairly well-known with strong opinions. however, the question may not be appropriate to social media. in a sense, the participant community constitutes this field and “validates” via adoption and propagation.

  8. September 15th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
    Schizo said

    Isn’t it already changing the world, at personal levels?
    aren’t conversations the creative/symbolic part of social media?

  9. September 15th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
    GeekMommy said

    You totally have adoring fans! (I number myself amongst them!)

    That said, I think social media has the power to bring great change and surges of creativity, but like any arena, there will also always be a lot of ’static noise’.

    For every life-changing phone call, there are millions of ‘what are you doing? yeah, nothing here too’ calls floating about on the same bandwidth.
    For every life-changing revolutionary surgery, there are thousands of face-lifts and nose jobs.

    It is what we do with a medium that defines what use the medium can provide, is it not?

    I’ve seen some amazing creativity in SM - so I don’t mind the ‘plurking about plurk’ phenomena so much as it’s just the milk from which the cream separates.

  10. September 15th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
    Fernanda Ibarra said

    I am playing now with http://www.theshiftmovie.com a movie produced by the movement of human emergence. We definetely think social media can contribute to change the world by connecting the change agents to each other, providing them with already existing platforms and sites for their individual and collective change, making the movement visible and inspiring people. Social media can be the artist toolkit for expressing how they are doing change in the world. Energy flows to create wealth. What we observe is people doing very creative actions to produce shifts. Go see what I mean:

    http://www.theshiftmovie.com

    Our recent twitter is theshiftmovie this will be one of our outlets to publish conscious media, online and offline events and inviting for play.

  11. September 15th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
    ME Liz Strauss said

    Hi Schizo,
    Is that so? Or is that just personal creativity, like redecorating a house? Are we just telling ourselves how clever we are?

    You are making a difference as doctor in a town that needs you. Can a social media conversation compare to what you might do as a doctor?

  12. September 15th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
    Schizo said

    true, we are telling each oterh how clever we all are. i guess too much f that is bad

    but does social media conversation need to compare to my being a doctor?

  13. September 15th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
    Cath Lawson said

    Hi Liz - I definitely think social media inspires creativity. You’ve said lots of things that have made me think, or inspired ideas. And the best ideas usually come from several minds not one.

    I’ll definitely be checking out that book.

  14. September 15th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
    Richard Reeve said

    Second time in a week this author’s been brought to my attention (so thanks for the nudge on both books). These tools are releasing a great deal of psychic energy and the huge data bloom unfolding is not just about having nothing better to do. While we can look at how social structures are changing, (thinking Paul Gillin’s newspaper death watch) the creative challenge demands that more practitioners take creative risks using these tools…#2 in your list my greatest concern.

  15. September 15th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
    Frank Reed said

    Liz-

    Looks like social media is another avenue for capital C creativity but the medium itself is not usually what inspires, if that makes sense. Social media will help those who are “wired” for the ind of interaction that social media creates. Will the next great novel be birthed from social media? More likely it would be about social media. You know what though? It still all remains to be seen. There is SO much to follow and learn and the innovations will likely be fast and furious. Maybe we will define creativity differently in the future (like who can say the most with 140 characters etc). Thanks for the post.

  16. September 15th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
    Alexis said

    Interesting post, but not everyone will be online to be creative. True, the audience can be more participatory but a great portion of the audience is just an audience. I saw a graphic, I think on Duct Tape Marketing blog, that explained something like: for every 100 social media participants - 1 is a creator, 10 will take action and the other 89 will just observe. You make a lot of great posts on social media. Do you think we could get you to guest post on the topic at our blog?

  17. September 15th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
    Amy Derby said

    I’m with Cath. Liz, I’ve only been stalking you on twitter for a little while but already you’ve inspired me into several projects, none of which I’ve actually made the time to do because I spend too much time twittering [sarcasticgrin].

    One thing I like about twitter is that I can throw out a question to many people at once and get feedback instantly, often from complete strangers after a message is retweeted. I think twitter is pretty creative, as far as the way it works. Maybe we don’t all use it very creatively all the time, but I do think it has the potential. Of course, so does anything if we use it that way.

    Can it produce world-changing Creativity with a Capital C? I don’t know. I’ll have to read the book. And the mailman is already mad at me for having to make three trips with the amazon.com order I got in today. I’ll get back to you in a month or so. :-)

  18. September 15th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
    ME Liz Strauss said

    Hi Cath!
    I know we inspire each other, but we’re not at the level of a culture yet. I’m ready to get going.

    You really should get the book. Yeah!

  19. September 15th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
    Karen Swim said

    Liz, I have not read the book but you have piqued my interest. Will have to add it to my library list. I absolutely think the tools can be a waste of time. For me they have been door openers that lead to offline discussions and connections; mindless chatter that provides diversion and entertainment; a source of real time infomation and sometimes a vehicle that provides a snapshot into what people care about. I find myself taking week long breaks from the tools more frequently than before. I don’t rely on them or any other single method for conducting life and business. In the end for me they’re tools but not the silver bullet.

  20. September 15th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
    Greg Verdino said

    Hi Liz -

    Thought provoking post and I can’t help but think that the answer to all three questions is “not yet.” Of course there are isolated cases of social media having real impact (the social causes that benefit from the Frozen Pea Fund or Age of Conversation, the business-changing impact of DELL HELL leading to leading edge social media initiatives like IdeaStorm, etc) but I think that we’d be fooling ourselves if we said that social media creativity has attained Capital C status just yet.

    In your post, you hit on one of my pet peeves - Plurking about Plurk, Tweeting about Twitter, blogging about blogging, etc. Sure, these things are educational and important but they’re not necessarily going to change the world.

    I don’t mean to sound overly negative - and I do believe that we *can* get to the Capital C with lots and lots of concerted effort (and lots less navel gazing), but I just don’t think we’re at that level yet.

    G

  21. September 15th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
    isabella mori said

    long time no commenting here, even though pretty much every one of your posts is comment-worthy!

    i wouldn’t say that social media per se is a domain. it’s not even a sub domain of the strange animal called internet. i’d say it’s one process that takes place in the interwebs (love that word).

    of course people bring novel ideas to the interwebs, and more and more of it crops up in social media.

    in my experience, creativity needs a lot of compost to grow on. who knows whether all these seemingly useless time wasters aren’t exactly THAT compost? or perhaps we need to wade through tons of fillers to find the occasional seed that sparks something truly remarkable (that is IF creativity needs to be remarkable, which is something that is not clear to me; and then there would still be the question: what’s remarkable?).

    “has it established a field of experts who can recognize and validate an innovation?” that is a very interesting question. good ol’ mr. C wrote this book way before wikipedia and other types of crowd sourcing. WE ARE the field of experts.

    can social media change the world? yes, i think it has that potential. has it done it yet? no. but we might just be on the way. we won’t know until we can look back. i don’t think da vinci knew what the future would bring when he painted the mona lisa :)

  22. September 15th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
    David Taboada said

    About 30 years ago universities in my hometown were teaching FORTRAN programming as “Computer Science”, regardless of your major. I guess they taught programming because there wasn’t a mainstream software market.

    Can social media produce world-changing Creativity with a Capital C? I think it is on the threshold of producing it. But not much of this is happening beyond its own realm, just like “Computer Science” was basically programming in the early years. Ask anyone that went through those courses, at some point they had to solve a problem that involved students, classrooms and teachers. That’s like Plurking on Plurk about Plurking.

    My point is that Social Media needs to go find and solve problems in the Real World.

    Then in the early 80’s the software industry exploded with the personal computer. Software for mainframes was very expensive but the vast market for PC software made possible the under $1,000 software license. We can now enjoy open source software for free.

    Social Media, on the other hand, has the advantage of commanding much less money (and friction) than software and that should be a catalyst for adoption.

    One last thought: Relevance has been touted as the essential characteristic of email marketing campaigns if they are to be successful. Social Media, in general, must go beyond relevance into significance to produce world-changing Creativity with a Capital C.

  23. September 15th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
    ME Liz Strauss said

    I thought of answering every comment, but that’s not the way of this discussion, is it? These are ideas, individual, starting, forming. We’re just figuring out, becoming. My thoughts are just one more comment . . . Creativity with a Capital C . . . we’re reaching for it.

    I wonder whether anyone will come back to read this one day.

    Are we the fodder?

  24. September 16th, 2008 at 9:27 am
    Blog Action Day - 2008 Poverty « Beyond JEMS said

    [...] have read many posts lately about changing the world and the ability of social media to help change our reality. Well, [...]

  25. September 16th, 2008 at 11:17 am
    Paul Schumann said

    Two thoughts:

    Remember what McLuhan said “The medium is message.” It’s already changed the world in the way we perceive and act.

    Without focus, interaction leads nowhere. It’s actually in the box conversations that can lead somewhere, not out of the box. And, it’s conversation, not networking that is productive.

  26. September 16th, 2008 at 11:59 am
    isabella mori said

    paul, that is very insightful.

    yes, of course change is not linear, it’s a spiral. what you say about mcluhan’s quote makes me think, for example, of the changing connotations the word “friend” has today.

    regarding focus. i have had many interactions that spontaneously led somewhere very important. i guess it depends what you mean by focus. that would be an interesting conversation.

    which leads to the question: how and when does networking turn into conversation? what exactly is a conversation? is there one here right now?

  27. September 16th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
    Jim Farrell said

    Great question Liz. Everyday,I see Social Media becoming more of a preferred method of communication.

    I just wrote a post on “Social Media For Health Care” I would love to know your opinion on it.

    http://blog.business-bits.com/?p=12

    Keep up the great work.

    Jim

  28. September 22nd, 2008 at 6:16 pm
    Paul Schumann said

    Isabella,
    To me a conversation is different than just exchanging information. The word has the implication of turning around together. So a conversation results in the construction of a third view position. It’s not a compromise so it’s usually a position better that the two had when they started.

  29. July 20th, 2009 at 6:19 am
    Hardingco Blog » Blog Archive » Keep them Coming #3: Ideas for Posts from Other People’s Blogs said

    [...] someone else’s post, book or article for your audience.  Liz Strauss does this in her post, Can Social Media Change the World, applying concepts from a favorite book on inovation to her [...]

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