David H. Cropley

The dark side of creativity

Malevolent creativity has been established as a distinct area of interest in the wider field of creativity research. The construct builds on earlier concepts of negative creativity that sought to acknowledge the possibility of harmful outcomes in the production of novelty. With a particular focus on the intentional production of harmful, novel outputs, malevolent creativity has particular relevance to fields such as criminal justice, policing and counter-terrorism. There is a growing theoretical foundation for malevolent creativity, and an expanding body of empirical work that continues to develop an understanding of the relevant variables and the relationships between them. Most recently, empirical work is beginning to shift towards cause-and-effect, and practical work is focusing more and more on the application of the concept to practical policing and security applications.

Malevolent Creativity: A Functional Model of Creativity in Terrorism and Crime

Although creativity is often seen as an aspect of self-fulfillment, it is important to recognize its social effects. The traditional view is that these should be beneficial, creativity thus being benevolent. However, those who wish to do deliberate harm to others can also display creativity, in this case malevolent creativity. This is governed by the same principles as benevolent creativity, differing only in its intended purpose. Like any creativity, malevolent creativity can be examined through its products. Concepts from research on creative products provide important insights into the activities of terrorists and criminals, especially the idea of competing solutions. The key ideas in malevolent creativity are summarized in 11 principles; recognizing these helps in developing more effective means for counteracting terrorism.

Measuring Creativity for Innovation Management

Identifying the extent and nature of the creativity of new products is a key for innovation management. The revised Creative Solution Diagnosis Scale (CSDS) is a 27-item scale based on a theoretical model of functional creativity, consisting of five main criteria: Relevance & Effectiveness, Problematization, Propulsion, Elegance and Genesis. The CSDS offers potential for differentiated assessments of product creativity as part of the larger process of innovation. Non-expert judges rated a series of mousetrap designs using a 30-item version of the CSDS. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed a simple structure that corresponded closely to the a priori theoretical model of functional creativity. The untrained judges were able to use the scale with a high degree of reliability and internal consistency. The scale offers a tool for managing innovation, especially for stimulating creativity and diagnosing the creativity of products.

Elements of a Universal Aesthetic of Creativity

Creativity is in the eye of the beholder, that is, it involves an aesthetic judgment. However, there is no agreement on the categories in the mind of observers that enable them to recognize it, especially in widely differing domains such as fine art versus natural science. Concentration on socially useful products offers promise of a set of indicators that could be applied across domains: These include diagnosis, generation, germinality, and similar properties. Such indicators can be recognized with a substantial level of agreement by different observers, and can be used to judge both amount and kind of creativity. A universal aesthetic would offer perspectives on assessment of creativity, but would also improve communication among creative individuals and people such as critics, sponsors, clients, and the general public, as well as suggesting guidelines for teaching and learning activities and for better understanding of how to deal with misuse of creativity.

Resolving the paradoxes of creativity: an extended phase model

Many teachers are interested in fostering creativity, and there are good reasons for doing so. However, the question of how to do it is made difficult by the paradoxes of creativity: mutually contradictory findings that are, nonetheless, simultaneously true (e.g. convergent thinking hampers creativity but is also necessary for it). These paradoxes can be resolved by dividing the process of creativity into seven phases that depend upon different cognitive processes (e.g. divergent versus convergent thinking) and personal properties (e.g. openness versus compulsiveness), are facilitated by different environmental conditions (e.g. tolerance of errors versus demands for accuracy) and lead to different kinds of product (e.g. something radically new versus novelty that nonetheless fits into the conventional framework). Mapping the four Ps of creativity (person, process, product and press) onto the phases provides a system for analysing both teaching methods and learning activities of individual students.

A Psychological Taxonomy of Organizational Innovation: Resolving the Paradoxes

The process of innovation involves numerous contradictions not adequately addressed by business-oriented approaches, in particular the problem that what seem to be mutually antagonistic factors are involved. Psychological research on creativity, especially the 4 Ps (process, person, product, and press) and the paradoxes of creativity offers a framework which can be drawn upon in order to resolve these contradictions. When the Ps and the paradoxes are mapped onto a phase model of creativity expanded to go beyond generation of effective novelty to encompass implementation of the novelty, they yield a differentiated taxonomy of innovation. This offers a framework for goal-directed research, as well as insights into how to assess the strengths and weaknesses of a particular organization and into how managers can direct the innovation process in an optimal way.

Creativity in Engineering

Creativity is a fundamental element of Engineering. Creativity is concerned with the generation of effective, novel solutions to problems, while Engineering, and Engineering Design has a similar goal, focused on technological solutions. It was the Sputnik Shock of October 1957 that prompted, for the first time, research into the people who generate creative solutions, the cognitive Process es they employ, the environment in which they undertake these activities, and the characteristics of the Product s they create. This chapter summarises the psychological framework that guides efforts to understand how Creativity is fostered so that Engineering organisations can maximise their capacity for Innovation. Of special importance is embedding Creativity in Engineering Education.

Diagnosing Organizational Innovation: Measuring the Capacity for Innovation

Organizational innovation involves reconciling many contradictions or paradoxes. Dividing the process of innovation into phases ranging from Activation to Validation and examining each phase in terms of the six Ps of creativity offers a framework for making sense of these contradictions. The Innovation Phase Assessment Instrument (IPAI) was designed to assess organizations according to such an approach. The scale was administered to 454 student volunteers and an analysis of their responses indicated that the IPAI is highly reliable and has substantial construct validity. At a practical level, it can be used for assessing the strengths/weaknesses of organizations in a differentiated way and for making recommendations for improving their capacity for innovation. It is also a source of research questions for examining creativity and innovation in an organizational context.

Creativity and Lawbreaking

Lawbreaking and creativity are often conceptualized as alternative, almost competing, expressions of the general psychological disposition of deviance. Where the 2 occur together, they are mainly discussed in terms of lawbreaking by acknowledged creative people that is irrelevant to their creativity or is a byproduct of outspoken, reckless, or unbridled creativity. The deliberate application of creativity in the direct service of intentional lawbreaking is rarely discussed, possibly because of the positive connotations associated with creativity. In fact, although psychological studies mainly conceptualize it in terms of deficits, some lawbreaking involves generation of highly effective—even admirable—novelty, and some lawbreakers display psychological characteristics typically associated with creative individuals, so that a deficit model is inappropriate. Creative lawbreakers and law enforcers can be conceptualized as competitors in much the same way as businesses are competitors, and this suggests a fresh way of looking at law enforcement.

The ethics of creativity.

For quite some time it has been widely acknowledged that more work needs to be done on the axiological implications of the process metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead. In a completely different quarter it has also been widely acknowledged that there is a tension in environmental ethics between the rights claimed on behalf of sentient individuals (whether human or nonhuman) and the attention that must be paid to what is, to the naked eye, nonsentient nature. The great merit of Henning’s book is that by responding insightfully to the first problem mentioned above, he does so as well to the second. His book is thus essential reading for both process thinkers/ American pragmatists as well as environmental ethicists. The key to the book consists in Henning’s rejection of axiological dualism, wherein the more familiar ontological dualism of early modern thinkers like Descartes dictates the aesthetic and ethical terms found in Kant and other late modern thinkers. Henning is very much in the tradition of Peirce, James, and Dewey in his rejection of the hegemony dualism and materialism have had on contemporary philosophic debates. The rapprochement he forges between the pragmatists and Whitehead (specifically, an “ecstatic” interpretation of Whitehead) enables him to defend a view of reality in general as organic. On this view there is a continuum of value in nature, contra axiological dualism. The practical implications of this continuum of value in nature for contemporary debates in environmental ethics become readily apparent toward the end of the book, where Henning lays out, in Jamesian fashion, his view of a genuinely ethical universe. This view both borrows from virtue ethics, utilitarianism, and deontology and also improves on them. No small accomplishment!