Dear Organlearners,
Dick Webster <webster.1@osu.edu> writes:
>
>At de Lange asks, in LO 20036: "What is the relationship
>between creativity and learning?"
>
>A "big AHA" on this matter came for me from careful reading
>of David A. Garvin's article in HBR: "Building a learning
>organization." Harvard Business Review, July-August, 1993,
>pages 78-91.
(snip)
Greetings Dick,
Yes, it is definitely a "big AHA" to realise that learning and creativity
are so intertwined. At a certain stage I even began to wonder if learning
and creativity is not the same thing, except for viewing it from different
viewpoints. But later on I had another "big AHA" when realising that
"learning" is the first higher order emergent of "creating". If it is the
case, what would you think is responsible for this "ordered relationship"?
>My take on Garvin's writing is that "creativity, i.e. having
>and presenting ideas, depends on and results from learning."
>We have ideas when there is some need to have something
>different from what it is now (a "curiousity, an itch, a feeling
>of dissatisfaction"), and we have some information or
>knowledge that enables us to create a new set of
>arrangements -- an "idea."
Dick, observe that your description is also an "ordered relationship". In
this case "learning" is of lower order and "creating" of higher order. It
is a possibility which I always have to reckon with.
But as I see it, the order is the other way around. The reason is that I
view "human creativity" as not the only form of creativity. I have had so
many experiences in nature which compells me to think of "deep creativity"
of which "human creativity" is only one from of it.
What happens from my viewpoint when you describe that "creativity depends
on and results from learning", is what I call the "back_action" of the
higher order emergent learning on its lower order substrate creativity. In
other words, creativity emerges into learning and never vice versa, but
the back_action of learning on creativity is to make creativity more
powerful just as you have described above. This "back_action" in nature's
successive orders of self-organising systems is an intrigueing topic to
study once a person becomes aware of it. Without it the harmony (balance)
in ecology is just not posible. It provides for the feedback loop in
various orders initiated by ordinate bifurcations.
>I have found this useful for linking learning values and
>practices, which many managers see as of no special
>value (e.g "that's the training department's job") with
>ideas programs.
Yes, this this "see as of no special value" or "no seeing of special
value" is a serious problem. It happens when managers are not aware to
"ordinate bifurcations". In other words, they are not aware of the
emergence of an higher order from a lower order. Observe and you will find
that they are also invariably not aware of the immergence of higher order
to a lower order. This is because an ordinate bifurcation (forking event)
results either constructively into a higher order or destructively into a
lower order. The adjective "ordinate" indicates this forking into
different orders. Thus you may observe and will find that these managers
are also much insensitive to to the constructive/destructive dilemma.
>What is your experience with these points and relationships:
>Garvin's points linking learning and ideas (the product or
>output of creativity or innovation), others? Have you found
>other LO writers that make this useful connection between
>learning and ideas for improvement?
Dick, it often surprises me that the majority of thinkers on LOs pay so
little attention to creativity. When I do not have the time to study some
document intensively, I usely scan for some key words, creativity being
one of them. Do yourself a favour and do the same. You will be surprised
that some books on LOs do not even list creativity in their index! The
same happens on our LOlist. Before I delete all the digests every couple
of months (which I sadly have to do because of lack of disk space), I
search for "creativity" (find text option) in them just to make sure that
I did not overlook anything.
Dick, think about "learning" and also "innovation" which is usually used
in the sense of creativity. Now I want you to do something very creative
(innovative). As "innovation" has become a central feature of creativity,
let "innovation" also become an integral, central feature of learning. I
know it is not an easy thing to do, but try to do it.
The following may be of help to fellow learners. The word "innovation" is
the nominal name (lable, tag) of a "thing" in creativity. Give that
"thing" another name which will be its "seminal" (generative, descriptive)
name. Here are some possibilities: "revolution", "saltotorial
development", "emergent". Once you have seen how these posibilities fit,
you have refined your "tacit idea" of the concept "innovation". Now take
this "tacit idea" along and try to connect it with your concept of
"learning". Perhaps you will also have to refine your "tacit idea" of
learning. Making a connection between two "tacit ideas" is easier than
making a connection between a "tacit idea" and a "formal concept". Keep on
trying to make the connection as a sort of a collision while asking
yourself what will become of learning when innovation becomes intergral to
it. If a collision fail to produce the integral, try again and again,
using different questions each time.
What name will we give to the integral result? I myself will use the name
"emergent learning" which fits better into my Systems Thinking, but the
names "innovative learning", "revolutionary learning" or "saltotorial
learning" can also be used.
In emergent learning, rather than "mining" for a concept in the "world
outside me" and then "importing" it into the "world inside me", create it
self in the "world inside me". Be VERY careful not to use the regular or
normal name of the concept in the "world outside me". That "thing" which
resulted from "emergent learning" may easily be something else and even
something new. (Is that not a benefit for innovation?) Now compare the
properties of that thing with the documented (articulated) properties of
the concept in the "world outside me". Only when their properties match
sufficiently, may we use the same name.
Let us say that the emergent has indeed led to a brand new concept. What
do we do with it? Take it slowly, do not rush with it into any scheme.
Leave them in your mind. The great fun is to let them emerge yourself. You
will also never forget them because they are part of the irrversible
self-organisation of your mind. Just keep on producing concepts through
emergent learning which do match documented concepts in the "world outside
me". In other words, if you fail to produce an inner replica, try again
and again until you have produced such a replica. In the mean time you
will have produced hundreds of such "personal concepts" which may appear
to be worthless to you and the rest of humankind. If you do not produce
them on purpose, the few which will result by chance are usually known as
mental models.
These "personal concepts" are not worthless.
1 They might be "by products", but they helped you to
produce replicas of the concepts in the "world outside me"
2 They have helped to excercise your mind in emergent learning.
3 They have helped you to become more motivated for learning
in general.
4 They are your major food of thought in "digestive learning".
(I want to say nothing more except that "digestive learning"
is the complementary dual of "emergent learning".)
5 They help preventing your mental models to stagnate and
eventually to become fixed.
6 They help to raise your "power of perception" immensely.
Louis Pasteur was one of the few people to realise this.
This magnified power of perception will make it easier
for you to participate in dialogs.
7 One of them usually plays a key role in what is known as
creative innovation. It happens when you interact intensely
with an important concept in the "world outside me".
People value the emergence as an innovation because of
the concept in the "world outside me" and not because of
the "personal concept". What a pity. They usually denigrate
the "personal concept" by pointing out that it was long
known to others.
8 You gradually build up a store room of "personal concepts"
just like an advance institute for chemistry builds up a store
room of tens of thousands of chemical compounds.
Someday some chemist suddenly (in a matter of weeks)
will need hundreds of different compounds to make a total
synthesis of a very complex compound. Then there is no time
for searching, ordering and delivering them. Every minute
counts. The same will happen to you when you have become
mature enough to formulate your own systems thinking.
Do not worry when it will happen. Some butterfly flapping
its wings will surely trigger this fantastic event.
>Thank you for sharing your learning,
Thank you Dick for your kind words. Thank you even more responding to my
question "What is the relationship between creativity and learning?"
I am not finished yet. I have a riddle for you and all fellow learners to
solve. It will test your "power of perception".
In my recent reply (yesterday) to John Gunkler's contribution on the
subject: "Changing Another Person LO20040" I have said that I will try
never to partcipate in a non-spontanous change of any other person. But I
have also made it clear (see also the Primer on Entropy) that a
non-spontaneous change in any system will never happen unless more than
enough work is done on that system by some external system (agent). You
will all realise that I put an unusual amount of work in my contrinutions.
Since I am me and not one of you, I am an external agent. Since I am an
external agent doing an unusual amount of work, it is possible that I am
actually enforcing a non-spontaneous changes in other members of this
list. In other words, I talk "never to participate in non-spontaneous
changes in other people" while it appears that I walk "non-spontaneous
changes in other people by excessive work". What a damning contradiction!
But perhaps it is not. If not, why?
Dick, the reason why I challenge you in the first place with the riddle,
is because you end your contribution with
>Richard S. Webster, Ph.D. - President
>Personal Resources Management Institute
>709 Wesley Court - Worthington OH 43085-3558
>e-mail <webster.1@osu.edu>, fax 614-433-71-88, tel 614-433-7144
***
>PRMI is a 501(c)3 non-profit research, development and
>consulting company founded in 1978. The Institute's R&D
>projects address the paradigm shift from "training, instruction,
>and teaching" to "learning" -- a key change for creating
>outstanding companies (and other organizations) with
>improved leadership, use of information and knowledge,
>ideas, processes, and quality; improved capabilities,
>performance, and productivity of company members and their
>teams; with improvements in the "bottom-line" and other
>desired results.
Believe me, the answer to the riddle has something very important to with
both creativity and learning. There is only one other fellow learner
(Winfired Dressler) who might solve the riddle easily because of some
private dialog between us, but I beg him not to tell the answer if he
manages to spot it trhough his own emergent learning.
Best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>