1.5 Value of radical creativity

Why should we focus our attention on radical creativity? Why do societies need it?

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Creativity scholars theorise that radical creativity is distinct from other forms of creativity because it generates new ideas that are revolutionary to a field, often through a willingness to take risks, and results in a paradigm shift or changes how people live. In the Creativity and radical creativity sub-chapter, one definition of radical creativity was its ability to bring about major change. In this sub-chapter, we look at the value of radical creativity in terms of economics and business. In the world of business, radical creativity can manifest as disruptive innovation that significantly changes technology, art, health, science, education — or even the economy itself.

Some scholars think that radical creativity is the most important element of the 21^st century economy, reflected in the entrepreneurial activities of new firms and small firms (Audretsch et al. 2006). The emergence of the entrepreneurial economy can be traced back to Joseph Schumpeter, an economist and political scientist of the early 20^th century known for his theories on business cycles and creative destruction. In his 1942 book, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, he wrote:

‘The function of entrepreneurs is to reform or revolutionize the pattern of production by exploiting an invention, or more generally, an untried technological possibility for producing a new commodity or producing an old one in a new way, by opening up a new source of supply of materials or a new outlet for products, by reorganizing an industry and so on.’ 

Radical creativity is implicit in this quote in the way that entrepreneurship is seen to facilitate technological advancement. Schumpeter thought that large corporations resist change, which drives entrepreneurial people to start new firms so they can pursue innovative activities.

Startups can play a crucial role in generating radically creative products. They can grow into influential innovators that enable progress, economic growth, and an improved quality of life.

Large companies can also generate disruptive innovations and are clearly important players in economic growth. Later in life, Schumpeter coined the term ‘creative destruction’ to refer to the necessity for all firms, small and large, to innovate to ‘keep their feet on ground that is slipping away from under them’ (Silverthorne, 2007). Business professionals cannot afford to not reinvent themselves. Someone out there is always thinking about what to improve or disrupt.

The economic value of creativity

Innovation and creative solutions create economic value.

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Innovation is crucial for national economies. Modern economies need investments to support skilled people with bold ideas and innovative approaches.

In Aalto University’s Economic Defence Course, Professor Matti Pohjola talked about the link between economic growth and knowledge workers:

‘Since 1860, two-thirds of (economic) growth have come from ideas and one third from training and education. The proportion produced through fixed assets has been low. Ideas used to come from industry; today, it is from information technology. Above all, ideas are generated in knowledge-intensive service sectors.’

Where do knowledge workers get their ideas from? Neuroscience studies have shown that creative thinking in the human brain is based on complex and random links between perception (what stimuli we pay attention to and how we interpret them), cognition (what we know) and behaviour (what we do) (Abraham, 2018). Radically creative ideas often come from paying attention to default assumptions about how something works and daring to challenge those assumptions.

In other words, radical creativity usually starts with noticing and questioning our familiar beliefs about the world. For example, scientists at Aalto’s FinnCeres Research Center challenged the assumption that using wood for energy always causes climate emissions. Instead, they asked the question: ‘What if we could use wood for energy without emissions?’

Watch the video to learn what they ended up creating. If you don’t see the video below, watch it here.

Radical uncertainty

The uncertainty of life also drives radical creativity

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We now live in an era of radical uncertainty. Strategic decisions must be made in the face of unexpected changes and ambiguity. This makes it important to enhance our creative capacities to anticipate future scenarios. Even in a world of databases, computing power and analytics, we still need creative thinking — perhaps more than ever before — to inform our analytical methods and technological development.

COVID-19 was a powerful reminder that uncertainty is an integral part of life. But our brain seeks certainty and predictability (Hirsh et al., 2012). One way to transform uncertainty into certainty is to identify problems worth solving (Beghetto 2017). During the pandemic, one of the main problems to address was the urgent need for antimicrobials and antivirals. This led researchers at Aalto and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland to start thinking of a wood-based self-sterilizing material.

Watch the video (less than 10 minutes) below to hear of the creative process. You can also watch it here.

Creative people and crises

People sometimes need support to deal with the emotional challenges involved in radical creativity.

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Petrou and Jongerling (2022) examined the COVID-19 crisis as a contextual factor that activated employees’ creative thinking. They examined creativity as a personal strategy to deal with the crisis and distinguished between incremental creativity (minor modifications to current practices) and radical creativity (major departures from current practices). They found that employees who responded with incremental creativity experienced lower exhaustion and positive changes in performance throughout the pandemic. By contrast, the radically creative individuals reported increased task performance as well as adaptation to changes and learning. They didn’t observe any effect on well-being.

Incremental creativity may be less emotionally consuming, and radical creativity is more likely to be taxing in terms of resources (e.g., time, mental energy, interpersonal conflicts, etc.). In general, people resist unique and radical ideas, which means that radically creative people need to make an additional effort to convince others of the usefulness of their ideas. The effect on well-being is not certain. For example, Zhang et al. (2020) found that radical creativity leads to higher work performance but does not affect employee well-being.

Society needs people who are willing to take radically creative actions and prioritise progress and the greater good of society. Radical creativity is necessary to create disruptive and innovative products and enterprises that enable social welfare in a dynamic environment. Organizations must therefore support the well-being of radically creative individuals and provide conditions and resources to enable radical creativity.

Radically changing economics itself

Do we need new rules for business?

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While this sub-chapter has explored how radical creativity unfolds in the business world, we conclude by shifting focus to the very rules and operations of business itself: should business, too, undergo radical transformation, especially considering that not all businesses are ecologically or socially sustainable? The question we pose is this:

What if companies measured their success not in short-term profit but in terms of sustainability and resilience?

Professor Minna Halme has spent most of her career thinking about why businesses focus on maximizing shareholder profits and economic growth and how traditional indicators like GDP don’t capture information about people’s well-being. She asks:

‘What are we trying to do here? Are we trying to create a better economy for all — or most — people? Whose lives are we trying to improve when we sell more differently-packaged types of yogurt or clothes that quickly become obsolete?’

Halme argues for a paradigm shift and the adoption of models that are based on less consumption, local production and sustainable practices. For instance, she recommends durable clothing design in the fashion industry. Adopting such practices and principles in fashion and other domains would ensure long-term ecological and societal resilience.

The fast fashion industry has a huge impact on the environment due to its water use and high rates of consumption. Through her research, Halme is designing tools and methods that the clothing industry could embrace, like the Shades of Green (SoG) instrument (Turunen & Halme, 2021). SoG is designed to give consumers information to help them evaluate how sustainable a product is. How durable is it? How easily recyclable? What hazardous chemicals were used in its production?

Halme is not alone in her thinking. She’s part of a growing field of economics that is questioning current economic goals and priorities. Alternative economics goes beyond the idea of giving consumers enough information to make sustainable choices. It aims for a more radical and fundamental change, challenging the notion that shareholder profit and GDP growth are the right metrics for economic performance. Were this to happen, that would surely be a radical change.

In a culture of creativity and experimentation, radically creative ideas and initiatives can come from anyone who dares to do something different, scary or unheard of. These people can succeed when they build support networks to drive progress in small and large communities.

Summing up, we need radical creativity to drive different dimensions of progress:

• Disruptive innovation: Radical creativity is reflected in major innovations and breakthroughs. Challenging assumptions that others take for granted leads to new ideas, such as using wood to develop novel solutions to climate change.
• Adaptation: Societies are constantly changing and evolving. Radical creativity helps businesses and societies adapt to new realities by envisioning future scenarios and creating solutions that cater to the evolving needs, values and situations.
• Problem-solving: Faced with crises like the COVID-19 pandemic, conventional approaches need to be set aside. Radical creativity enables the generation of unorthodox solutions that can address multifaceted uncertainty more effectively.
• Societal change: Sometimes a fundamental change in how society functions is needed. Faced with today’s environmental and sustainability problems, we need radical creativity to change the goals of the economy itself so that it better serves people’s well-being and the good of the planet.

To succeed, radical creativity needs support from team, management and organizational levels to survive. It’s hard, but it pays off, and the world needs it.

References

Abraham, A., 2018. The Neuroscience of Creativity. Cambridge University Press.

Audretsch, D. B., Keilbach, M., & Lehmann, E. E., 2006. Entrepreneurship and Economic Growth. Oxford University Press.

Beghetto, R.A., 2017. Inviting uncertainty into the classroom: Five strategies to help students respond well to uncertainty-and foster complex problem-solving skills. Educational Leadership, 75(2), 20-25.

Hirsh, J. B., Mar, R. A., Peterson, J. B., 2012. Psychological entropy: A framework for understanding uncertainty-related anxiety. Psychological Review, 119(2), 304–320.

Petrou, P. & Jongerling, J., 2022. Incremental and radical creativity in dealing with a crisis at work. Creativity Research Journal, Volume 36(2), 2024.

Schumpeter, J.A., 1994. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. London: Routledge.

Silverthorne, S., 2007. Rediscovering Schumpeter: The Power of Capitalism. Working knowledge. Harvard Business School.

Turunen, L.L.M., Halme, M., 2021. Communicating actionable sustainability information to consumers: The Shades of Green instrument for fashion. Journal of Cleaner Production, Volume 297.

Zhang, Y., Li, J., Song, Y. and Gong, Z., 2020. Radical and incremental creativity: associations with work performance and well-being. European Journal of Innovation Management, Vol. 24 No. 3, pp. 968-983.