Experimentation in Science
Experimentation in the Arts
Experimentation in the Classroom
Conclusion
Creativity Reflections
Tenacity for Students
Tenacity for Educators
Tenacity in the Classroom
Conclusion
Creativity Reflections
APPENDIX A: ASSESSING CREATIVE PROCESSES IN THE CLASSROOM
Reconciling Creativity and Academic Standards
Research on Creativity in the Classroom
Evaluating Creative Processes in the Classroom
Creativity Reflections
APPENDIX B: GUIDELINES FOR LEADERS
Get Brainstorming Right
Establish a Process of Mutually Exclusive Decision Alternatives
Foster a Work Ethic That Respects All Feedback
Think Inside the Box
Learn From Failure
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Douglas Reeves, PhD, is the author of more than thirty books and many articles about leadership and organizational effectiveness. He was named the Brock International Laureate for his contributions to education and received the Contribution to the Field Award from the National Staff Development Council (now Learning Forward). Doug has addressed audiences in all fifty U.S. states and more than twenty-five countries, sharing his research and supporting effective leadership at the local, state, and national levels. He is founder of Finish the Dissertation, a free and noncommercial service for doctoral students, and the Zambian Leadership and Learning Institute. He is the founding editor and copublisher of The SNAFU Review, a collection of essays, poetry, and art by veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Douglas lives with his family in downtown Boston.
To learn more about Douglas’s work, visit Creative Leadership Solutions (https://creativeleadership.net) or the Change Leaders blog (www.changeleaders.com), or follow @DouglasReeves on Twitter.
Brooks Reeves is a playwright, actor, and author. He authored New York Times-reviewed The City That Cried Wolf. His frequent leading roles in New England area theaters have been reviewed by the Boston Globe and many other New England publications. Brooks received the Best Supporting Actor award from the New Englander Theater Critics Association in 2015. He lives in Boston. To learn more about Brooks’s work, visit his blog at www.BrooksReeves.com, where his latest literary and artistic work appears.
To book Douglas Reeves or Brooks Reeves for professional development, contact [email protected].
INTRODUCTION
THE CREATIVITY IMPERATIVE
Much of history is divided into epochs based on the development of human innovation: the rise of agriculture, written language, philosophy, geometry, the printing press, the steam engine, the transistor, vaccines, and the Internet, just to name a few. These innovations and many others have fundamentally shifted not only our worldview but also our capacity to grow. Cultures are defined by their art, music, and literature. Things that are useful—and perhaps more important, that are meaningful, beautiful, and good—can be seen as an outgrowth of the creative process. Creativity is at the heart of the solutions to our most intractable challenges and is, therefore, essential for survival.
Readers would doubtless do anything to spare their children, grandchildren, and complete strangers of future generations the pain of disease, hunger, violence, and oppression that are part of the daily lives of too many people today. Creative solutions in medicine, government, and technology have made modern life immeasurably better than that of our ancestors. But now the torch has passed, and we are not merely the beneficiaries of creativity but the authors of it. In particular, society now depends on creative solutions to address competing demands. For example, how do we cure devastating illnesses and feed the hungry while providing the resources to sustain a growing population? How do we address the global challenge of climate change while still encouraging economic growth and technological innovation? How do we fight global terrorism while respecting commitments to democratic ideals and privacy rights? If the lesson of the 20th century was as Alan Deutschman (2007) asserts, change or die, then the lesson of the 21st century is create or die—and die miserably. And yet, in few areas of human endeavor is there a wider gap between aspiration and reality than in creativity.
The Creativity Chasm
In his 2011 State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama touted the importance of creativity, saying, “In America, innovation doesn’t just change our lives. It is how we make our living” (The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, 2011). A 2010 IBM study of more than fifteen hundred chief executive officers shows that creativity ranked number one on the list of qualities that these CEOs valued in their employees (IBM, 2010). John Hattie’s landmark synthesis of more than nine hundred meta-analyses (2012; Hattie & Yates, 2014) concludes that creativity is strongly linked to academic achievement, particularly when instruction in creativity takes place. The themes that surface again and again from these diverse realms of world politics, business, and education emphasize that innovation and creativity in science and politics, and collaboration among nations and individuals, will be essential for our civilization to conquer future challenges, from poverty to climate change.
The value placed on creativity is well documented, but the reality is that the deck is stacked against the creative process. Creative business leaders are tolerated as long as they avoid
