It's interesting that he brings up Feynman, because (if you believe his version of events, anyway;) at one point after the Manhattan Project, he was feeling particularly uninspired, because he wasn't playing. So he's sitting in the cafeteria watching someone throw a plate in the air. He starts wondering about the relationship between wobbling of the plate and the rotation. He works it out, has some fun, and then starts thinking about how this might relate to particle physics. This plate-wobbling play led to insights for which he received the Nobel Prize.
Play is where insight happens, to borrow a phrase from another professor. That's why I don't get annoyed when I see "not deeply interesting" projects on HN. You could ask, like Hans Bethe did in the Feynman story, "yes, but what's the importance of it?" and the answer in many cases will be nil. In the long run though, I suspect that play results in those important, unforeseen changes and transformations. It might not even be some change you yourself do - sometimes it's enough to spark the mind that will.
Ultimately, though, I would like to see creativity defended as an end in itself. What about play for play's sake? Our society has reached this unparalleled ability to let people engage themselves creatively, why can't that be the end-goal?
Part of the problem is that competition is fairly level these days, thanks in-part to the Internet, easier global communication, changes in production capabilities, etc.
So, to the massive corporations that have been around for centuries now, any time spent playing is time the competition is jumping ahead.
Of course newer, smaller, and more agile businesses see it the other way; play is crucial to innovation and bounding in front of competition.
Creativity and true innovation are a balance, more than anything, between play and nitty-gritty work.
As technology progresses businesses -- and even individuals -- will have to ultimately decide for themselves if the risk of play and remarkable innovation outweighs straight-forward conformity to the status quo and the guaranteed slow wins of steady (albeit non-innovative) production.
As much as play and experiment helps foster growth and not to take away from the point of the article, let's not forget the value of discipline and conformity in developing creative expression and, ultimately, freedom. The most creative pianist played countless scales, likely more than less creative ones, despite scales being mechanical. Same with dancers and footwork, athletes with sprints, and so on.
I am influenced by Martha Graham -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Graham -- often called the Picasso of dance, who said about discipline, conformity, and freedom:
The dancer is realistic. His craft teaches him to be. Either the foot is pointed or it is not. No amount of dreaming will point it for you. This requires discipline, not drill, not something imposed from without, but discipline imposed by you yourself upon yourself. … Your goal is freedom. But freedom may only be achieved through discipline. In the studio you learn to conform, to submit yourself to the demands of your craft, so that you may finally be free.
Few people matched her creative output and development.
(Edit: to jahaja's question "Do I misunderstand you when I feel that you are equating creativeness with success?", I don't know a perfect definition of creativity, but as I use it, I include some sense of problems solving. Creating something useless doesn't feel "creative" to me, so in the sense of solving a problem, as I use the term, creativity has some element of success.)
Reflex and intuition can be at odds with creativity. They embody things we already know. There is often a natural, organic-feeling quality to the "spark of genius," but the process leading up to that point (considering problems from other angles, reasoning abstractly) is itself more a "System 2" thing.
Or at least that's one idea. Certainly we should separate the claims that "creativity requires discipline" and "executing on creative ideas requires discipline". The latter is certainly uncontroversial, but I haven't thought long enough about the former to know whether I agree with it.
Mastery of a well known is one thing. That isn't to say that a mastery of something lends to the allowance for creatively expanding upon the foundation either. Are they mutually exclusive? Definitely not. But it is dependent on many variables, and perception and interpretation, I personally feel, go a long way.
In a way, HN is a way to learn about interesting developments in fields that we might never ever. Sometimes by people who know that they are really talking about. It's kind of like eavesdropping on really interesting conversations at a bar.
For example, this recent thread [1] is clearly being discussed by people who have enough of an interest and ability in mathematical theorems that they can critique and criticize it.
Not everything passes the community filter, however, - for more serendipity - I recommend checking out the 'new' page. Occasionally, you will find a diamond or two (if not broad interest, you personal interest) in the coal of no upvotes.
The kindness shown at Pret a Manger, while exceptional is not completely surprising to me. While at their Chicago location, I walked in and ordered food one day, running on particularly little sleep. At the register, the clerk insisted that I take the lunch on the house, probably because I looked like death. I grew uncomfortable and insisted on paying, at which point he introduced himself as the CEO, on a quick US tour of their facilities. He said it would be their pleasure and was totally sincere. Love that eatery and their people.
Personally, I've always defined it as the ability to take two separate ideas and create a third one.
The more creative people are, the more they have the ability to make a connection between two less related items.
I've often noticed the main difference between creative people and not so creative people isn't skill or intelligence or anything. Its the ability to not get phased by when you can't get an idea to work, you just keep plugging on like a small form of insanity even though you fail and fail. A biochemistry driven insanity I would say, I feed off the process of failing, and get massive elation when something that shouldn't work does work. To me failing is as important as succeeding, but the reward of succeeding is so much better.
And like most things, people rarely see the long chain of failures, so assume a brilliance to what might be better classed as a madness ;)
Creativity is the process of having original thought.
The oft debated aspect of that definition is whether original thought is valuable from a social standpoint, or that it's enough for original thought to merely have value for the individual.
But that's the most concise definition of creativity you'll ever get IMO.
I think creativity (humor/play/music) involves a context switch.
Like with comedy: the comedian sets up an expectation, then surprises the audience with a punchline which forces them to reinterpret the setup. And with music: the composer sets up a theme, and then repeats it slightly differently to keep the song interesting. The textbook example is Beethoven's 5th.
I think pg believes similarly. He said "creativity comes from functions applying to arguments of the wrong type" [1]. He also said "good design is slightly funny" [2].
Presses are prohibitive to most, though in cities you're likely to find at least one shop where you can buy press time, usually that comes with all supplies other than paper.
The issue is that the stakes, at work, are just too damn high for all that.
When Silicon Valley became the center of innovation (1950s to 1970s) there were so many "cushy" government jobs that people didn't fear getting fired-- it was like being in Maryland today with a TS clearance-- and housing was incredibly cheap. (It wasn't the government contractors themselves that made SV shine. It was competition with them on autonomy. Companies had to provide extremely interesting work, and that made for better companies. That's why Silicon Valley made so much of itself.) People in Northern California in 1970 could take a playful attitude to work because they knew nothing bad would happen to them.
I think the Boomers are taking that easy work life to them with the grave. You could be on acid at Woodstock in August 1969, protege to the CEO of a major company in January 1970, and a CEO yourself by 1978. If you worked 50 hours per week, you were considered extremely dedicated and would climb the ladder rapidly. When there was tolerance for that kind of slack-- you wouldn't become unhireable if not Director-level by 40-- there was more room for creativity. That's gone now. Silicon Valley, with the mean-spirited and psychotic age-discrimination culture that the VCs brought in, is probably the worst.
You can't fix this problem just by fixing single companies' work environments. No matter how "creative" the work environment is, people are naturally cliquish (i.e. there's always a threat of social rejection, no matter how open and unstructured the environment, and too little structure can make cliquishness worse) and the only way people can be at ease is in the context of a larger environment where losing one job doesn't ruin one's life. In the Valley, thanks to absurd housing prices and the good-ole-boy reputation economy the VCs have set up, it often does.
As you can tell, I'm pretty horrified by the transformation of the Valley. It used to embrace genuine weirdness and true disruption. Now it's just so fucking conventional. It has the conformity and image-management needs of traditional finance, but 1/10 of the upside. At least banks pay well and promote internally.
I won't argue too much with this except the last part. I think working for the majority of startups is still head and shoulders above conditions working in finance. Sure you make less money, and if you're naive they'll make you work 80 hours for a pittance of a salary and a bundle of useless options, but if you are reasonably good and stand up for yourself you can still get a pretty good deal.
I think working for the majority of startups is still head and shoulders above conditions working in finance.
Working in finance is not as bad as it's made out to be. Analyst programs at investment banks are pretty awful, but developer jobs aren't any worse at banks than at startups. People argue that developers/engineers aren't rock stars at banks (traders and quants get the glory) but that's also true at most VC-funded startups (investors, executives, and product people get the glory).
Play is where insight happens, to borrow a phrase from another professor. That's why I don't get annoyed when I see "not deeply interesting" projects on HN. You could ask, like Hans Bethe did in the Feynman story, "yes, but what's the importance of it?" and the answer in many cases will be nil. In the long run though, I suspect that play results in those important, unforeseen changes and transformations. It might not even be some change you yourself do - sometimes it's enough to spark the mind that will.
Ultimately, though, I would like to see creativity defended as an end in itself. What about play for play's sake? Our society has reached this unparalleled ability to let people engage themselves creatively, why can't that be the end-goal?
http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~kilcup/262/feynman.html