Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative

Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative by Ken Robinson

Creativity is important. Business and education has focussed on teaching towards the test to "improve" the education experience. This often comes at the expense of arts and other outlets for creativity. This has had negative impacts on business where creativity is an important. The book makes this point, then rambles on for a while with examples and rehashing of the same points. The point is good. The delivery is perhaps a little too "creative".

Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid

Chokepoints in the economy have had a devastating impact on various creating occupations. The internet has caused changes in the chokepoints, but have often just moved the money from one rich corporation to another, with little real benefit to the actual creators.

Music is a key case study. Major labels have had a control on getting artists notists. However, they often require them to sign difficult contracts that leave little to the artist. The industry has further consolidated with companies owning venues and ticketing, and others owning publishing and distribution. There is little competition, and the companies are notoriously bad at their accounting. Digital music lead to additional chokepoints. Apple was able to dominate in digital downloads in part due to the lock in with digital rights. (The DMCIA law did not allow anybody to strip copy protection.) By the time Apple opened DRM-free downloads, the world was moving towards streaming. In streaming, the streamers need the major labels, and thus negotiate deals, which often do not provide much benefit to artists. (Artists still get old, low royalties, even though distribution costs are now much lower. Labels also user accounting tricks to limit those royalties.)

Book publishing repeated the same problem by letting Amazon dominate the book market with DRM books. Amazon also has audiobooks with DRM. Publishers thought that the protections of DRM would help them prevent copying of books. But all it has really done is allow the big vendors to control the market. At least the big publishers negotiate from a position of relative strength. The small publishers are even more worse off.

In both cases, there was unintended consequences of laws to protect content producers. Copyright is another case where the law provides extremely long terms and protection, with the result being more power to big companies and less cultural benefit.

The authors propose some solutions, such as a cultural guardian that seeks royalties and payments for orphaned works. This seems a little too dreamy. There will be some way for big companies to milk it also. Perhaps we just need to limit the copyright terms altogether. Perhaps we should just have things drift into the public domain if they are no longer publicly available. Alas, with digital distribution, a company could just put it out for a day and say it is in "limited release". It makes things difficult. Copyright as it exists is much too long to provide society benefit, and servers more to enrich big companies. Getting the proper incentives to help the "little guy" is a huge challenge, with risks of continuing to empower bigger companies. The more we depend on big business to provide revenue and "benefits" for us, the more we risk being held hostage.

The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life (Learn In and Use It for Life)

Twyla Tharp is a dancer and choreographer. She must be creative in order to produce new shows. She likes to be able to do the dances herself, and struggled when she was injured and could no longer show others exactly how to do things. However, that ended up being something that helped her to "let go."

The book dispenses with rather trite advice on creativity. You must work at doing creative things. You must also learn to identify when you are going down a bad path and stop. Know when you are in a rut and work on getting out of it. Have a routing. The advice felt straightforward, even if the examples felt a little "unique". (She would always get in a cab to work out.)

Ignore Everybody: And 39 Other Keys to Creativity

Hugh MacLeod has worked a number of creative type jobs. He was somewhat in the dumps when he started sketching on business cards. He got a huge following from that. Now he is writing a book telling everybody else about it. He ignored everybody else and just did what he wanted. It worked for him. It may or may not work for other people. He seems to have a following. This book did not entice me to want to be one of his followers.

Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind

What makes creative people creative? It seems creative people have a disproportionate amount of trauma in their lives. This helps with creativity, but people are creative without trauma. Mental illness and creativity also seem to go together. Again, mental illness is more common, but only a small number of creative people suffer from it. Creative people may appear to be extroverts. However, it is common for "extroverted" performers to actually be very introverted people who put on a performance. What often sets creative people apart is their willingness to take chances.

This book has an adulation of "creatives". It feels like an Apple ad. (It even quotes the apple "misfits" add.) In real life, creativity is usually shunned. Those "creators" are only respected after their creativity goes mainstream. Those most creative are typically scorned in their time. Scientists, inventors and artists often die penniless, along to have books written about them after they die. Humans prize conformity. Even in school where we claim to respect creativity, the "creativity" that is respected involves only incremental changes. Keep things as close to the standard as possible and only change a few small things and you will be ok.

Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives

Unexpected "shocks" to the normal way of doing things can often help spark the creativity needed to accomplish something truly amazing. Messy opens with the story of a jazz pianist that was going to walk away from a performance due to the poor condition of the piano. However, as a special favor to the promoter, the pianist performed and produced one of the top performances of all time. The condition of the piano forced the pianist to improvise and go out of the "comfort zone" and produce something great.
Attempts to be fully objective often produce bias in how the "objective" criteria are created. External factors have a habit of rearing their ugly head. APGAR scores for new borns lead to more c sections. Diversity produces benefits when there are true differences. Cities that section every thing off in neat areas not only produce great amounts of traffic, they eliminate many chances of spontaneity that can lead lead to positive growth. Providing too much protection from failure reduces the chances of small problems, but increases the odds that a problem will be catastrophic. (The book gives the example of the Air France jet that crashed over the ocean. The pilots were accustomed to auto-pilot, and had difficulty responding to abnormal conditions. Standardization and protection can lead to us keeping the "same old bad".
Startups help to inject new messiness into the system. Amazon did stupid stuff early on. They would even go out and buy toys at retail, losing money on the transaction to get it to the customer. That messiness allowed them to succeed.
People adapt to meet criteria, even if that hurts the big picture. (For example medical appointments in 2 days mean none available in advance. Surgeon ratings on outcomes lead to more unnecessary surgery. Actually results show little difference in surgeon compared to entry condition of patients.) Being able to rely on some messiness can help the big picture to be better - even if there are parts that are not so great.

Disciplined Dreaming

Jazz musicians spend significant time learning the musical framework of jazz music. This framework then gives them opportunity to improvise - and even break some of the rules in the process. Some people are naturally more creative. However, about 80% of creativity is learned. Being in a "heads up" state allows people to get new ideas and be creative. Disciplined Dreaming provides a number of tools to help people be more creative. Often simply asking "why?" can help find new solutions. Fear of change can often be a huge creativity killer. These are all some of the bullet points in "disciplined dreaming." The book itself felt like a serious of points and anecdotes in order to facilitate directed creativity. Focussing creativity can help let the juices flow to find solutions in the area. However, care must be taken to not be too focussed. Most of the points in the book felt like things I had read elsewhere. (I guess the "creative" book was not too creative after all.)