Being creative
Jun. 20th, 2005 04:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
apparentparadoxAs I mentioned, I just read "The Flight of the Creative Class" by Richard Florida. I'm still in the process of reading "Small Things Considered" by Henry Petroski. Last year, I read "Lean Software Development" by Mary & Tom Poppendieck.
All of these books have a theme (major or minor) about individual creativity. Florida argues very strongly that we (the world) need to enable all people to be creative, not just the chosen few. He & the Poppendieck's talk about Toyota's manufacturing process which empowers the factory floor people (aka the peons) to help make improvements in the process and thus, to increase productivity. Petroski points out that design is present in essentially all tasks (at least the first time) -- from things as simple as "how do I decide what pattern to use when cutting the grass" to taking a serendipitous discovery (teflon) and figuring out how to make a non-stick substance stick to a metal pan; from combining various kitchen ingredients into a meal to designing a machine to manufacture paper bags (a non-trivial thing when it was invented in 1871).
Being creative is not the exclusive province of some intellectual elite. Now, we just need to get everyone to realize that and to capitalize on this. As Richard Florida points out, we're wasting a lot of talent by only having 30% of our population doing "creative" things.
All of these books have a theme (major or minor) about individual creativity. Florida argues very strongly that we (the world) need to enable all people to be creative, not just the chosen few. He & the Poppendieck's talk about Toyota's manufacturing process which empowers the factory floor people (aka the peons) to help make improvements in the process and thus, to increase productivity. Petroski points out that design is present in essentially all tasks (at least the first time) -- from things as simple as "how do I decide what pattern to use when cutting the grass" to taking a serendipitous discovery (teflon) and figuring out how to make a non-stick substance stick to a metal pan; from combining various kitchen ingredients into a meal to designing a machine to manufacture paper bags (a non-trivial thing when it was invented in 1871).
Being creative is not the exclusive province of some intellectual elite. Now, we just need to get everyone to realize that and to capitalize on this. As Richard Florida points out, we're wasting a lot of talent by only having 30% of our population doing "creative" things.