Creativity and Imitation: How to Get More Great ideas
- Posted on November 18, 2009
- Viewed 567 times
- (4) comments
Fast Company asks the question: But can society organize itself in such a way as to maximize the number of good ideas it produces?
It might sound like an impossible question, but Stefan Leijnen and Liane Gabora at the University of British Columbia in Canada have created a clever mathematical model that offers an answer.
Their key insight is that creative ideas can only spread if they're actually adopted by others. Too much creativity, and there's not enough imitation--ideas die on the vine, because there are so many of them and few ever catch fire. For good ideas to spread, there's an optimal balance to be reached between creating and imitating.
Leijnen and Gabora modeled that dynamic, and they found that to optimize the profusion of good ideas, we should spend less than 50% of our time on creativity. If some individuals spend all of their time creating new ideas, then they shouldn't comprise any more than 30% of a population.
Now, the model is obviously a gross oversimplification of how the real world works--and the model depends crucially on its assumptions about the rate of uptake in ideas. But it does offer some interesting insight to the eternal question of how much time an organization should spend inventing ideas, and how much time it should spend vetting them. Organizations and societies that spend too much time on ideas see their overall fitness decline.
Interesting. Could this be true for churches as well? If churches spend too much time on 'ideas' will their overall fitness decline?
Maybe we need to spend less time on new ideas, and more time vetting the ideas we already have in our churches?
Thoughts?
Comments
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Michael Holmes on Wed, November 18, 2009
I’m not sure of the mathematical equation…but I do agree with this fact: time off is a necessity to creativity.
That’s probably why Jesus tried His best to get away so much.
handbags shop on Thu, November 19, 2009
I know what you’re thinking (because I’m thinking the same thing myself). How do I differentiate between the person who is taking things way too seriously and the person who is not taking things seriously enough? And what makes me think that I am the one that can discern the proper balance? I mean, obviously, I would hope that I would be one of the balanced ones, but maybe I’m the one out of whack.
000-086 on Tue, January 19, 2010
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