Creativity and Connection

Creativity in Individuals

Creativity isn’t simply generating novel ideas; ideas are a dime a dozen. It isn’t simply being passionate; undirected passion is madness. It’s not just about being skilled; skills are simply the tools of creation. It is when novel ideas, combined with passion and skill, create new things. And for this to happen, the idea must be generated, there must be motivation to do it, and a plan to carry it out. How is this accomplished in the brain? Well, recent developments in neuroscience have significantly altered our understanding of the human brain; we can now recognize each individual part of the brain’s function is highly contextual, related to how it is connected to other parts. Furthermore, each part is connected to a larger brain network, such as the default mode network, salience network, or executive control network, which can be compared to departments within an organization.¹ Similar to how an organization needs to be well-connected to be effective, studies have shown that individuals exhibit greater creativity when there is enhanced functional connectivity between diverse brain networks.² With all this in mind, how can we cultivate diverse connections in the human brain?  

Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire, authors of “Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind”, suggest that in order to cultivate these inter-network connections, you should focus on being open to new experiences, while maintaining healthy habits like mindfulness and rest. When you have new experiences, you create the opportunity for your mind to make new connections. Mindfulness and rest become essential because it gives your brain time to reflect and reorganize your thoughts, fortifying the connections you made through your experiences.³ But in a culture that prioritizes productivity over everything else, the building and maintenance of connections can seem to be a waste of time. New experiences and rest are often neglected in pursuit of profit. However, if the goal is to be creative and innovate, the research suggests that value should be placed upon increasing connectivity, not diminishing it.

This mirrors the philosophy of Harmonic Reciprocity Systems, in which the value shared by two people over a commonality is related to the harmonic mean of the time that both people spend. Because the harmonic mean is limited by the minimum of the two values, spending time in a new environment is the fastest way to maximize potential gains or in other words, increase your total “harmonic reciprocity” with the people around you. Therefore, this strategy of maximizing  “harmonic reciprocity” would have a side effect of also maximizing the connectivity of your brain, and the brains of the people around you.

This is a critical point to realize – that seeking out new experiences also gives new experiences to others: it is reciprocal and social. Therefore, it is sustainable and highlights how creativity in an individual is inherently tied to the social network they are a part of. This also implies that there is some relationship between peoples’ brains and their social networks. In fact, a study found that those who are more central in a social network have coordinated neural activity.⁴ In a sense, aren’t we all just parts of one larger brain? It sounds like science fiction, like “The Borg” in Star Trek, but this idea is far from new. From Biblical analogies like the “body of Christ” to political science metaphors like Hobbes’ “Leviathan”, the fact that we are all interconnected and part of something bigger has been pondered by thinkers since ancient times. But you don’t have to rely on religious or political metaphors to realize this truth. Social network science, with its explicit recognition of the connections between people and how actions flow and ripple through the network, is a scientific paradigm that can give concrete evidence to the reality of our interdependence and collective strength: teamwork really does make the dream work.

Creativity in Teams

So if creativity in individuals is related to connectivity between different brain networks, how does it play out in teams? In his book “The Diversity Bonus: How great teams pay off in the knowledge economy”, Scott Page explains how the power of teams is a function of the diversity of its individual members. The main argument comes from set theory: that the creative potential of a team is related to the union of the sets of each team member’s repertoire.⁵ For example, let’s say that there is a team, let’s call it Team 1, with Alice, Bob, Chris, and Denise. Team 1’s skill set is shown in the table below:

	Skill
Person	Research	Coding	Marketing	Design	Writing
Alice	X
Bob		X
Chris			X
Denise				X	X

While each member of Team 1 has only one or two skills, their total number of unique skills is five. Compare this to another team, Team 2, with Elinor, Franz, George, and Helen. Their skill sets are shown in the table below:

	Skill
Person	Research	Coding	Marketing	Design	Writing
Elinor	X	X		X
Franz	X	X
George	X	X		X
Helen		X		X

On Team 2, each member has two to three skills. Individually, they are all as skilled or more skilled than the members of Team 1. However, the significant overlap between their skills means that the total number of unique skills on Team 2 is less than Team 1. They have only three unique skills, compared to five!

This simple example illustrates the power of diversity in teams. While there is a natural tendency to associate with like-minded individuals, it is when people choose to place themselves in heterogeneous (non-similar) groups that novel solutions can arise from the combination of diverse perspectives and experiences. Another way to think about it is that the advantage of diversity in teams is similar to the advantage of the division of labor in society. If everyone were to be a “jack-of-all-trades”, then we would have nothing to offer each other, and no reason to enter into exchanges. The quality of people’s lives would be diminished, for the quality of services that people could provide themselves would be no greater than the quality that others could provide, on any dimension of need. Diversification and specialization allow people to hone in on their craft, and give freely of the surpluses they generate through mastery of their skills. As a result, society flourishes, and everyone feels a sense of indebtedness to one another.

Although specialization requires that people spend time away from one another honing their skills, the structure of specialization is not isolation. For specialization to have any meaning or purpose, it must be in the context of interaction with others. If there is nothing to compare to, no interaction to facilitate the division of labor, an individual will be forced to become a generalist in order to survive. A fragmented organization with operational silos may appear to be highly specialized, but the lack of communication between silos will lead to unnecessary redundancies: reinventing the wheel in darkness. The paradox is that the more “specialized” a group becomes, the more generalized the specialists become. And the more generalized the specialists become, the less they can develop their unique skills and benefit the team. It is not just diversity but rather the interaction and communication between diverse individuals that is required to reap the benefits of collective action.

So, if communication is truly the key to realizing the benefits of diversity, specifically communication between diverse individuals, then it is important to understand the structure of this admittedly difficult task. In a paper titled A Theory of Subgroups in Work Teams, the researchers found that teams are typically composed of subgroups along “fault-lines” related to identities, resources, and knowledge.⁶ These subgroups provide employees with safe spaces to bond with similar-minded individuals, which is critical for the development of specialized skills, and the overlap between these subgroups functions as the bridges that bind the group together. The more overlap there is between the subgroups, the more likely the team is to attain a collective identity and produce innovative work.

A practical way that the concept of overlapping subgroups or cross-cutting cleavages could be applied to an organization is to try to build teams in such a way that everyone has something in common with everyone else. For example, let’s say that half of a team likes playing golf together. If the leader of the group can find and promote another activity, say a reading club, that is shared by some of the golfers and some of the non-golfers, the group structure will be cross-cut, and less likely to become divided.

Diversity and connection. If you have a completely diverse team, as in no one has anything in common, communication breaks down. Ensuring that there is sufficient overlap between experiences, functions, and identities of the team is critical to the performance and well-being of its members. But just having commonality is not enough either. You have to pay attention to the structure of the commonalities. For if all the commonalities align along one division or fault-line, you are at risk of grievances gaining traction and causing conflict. If your team is split down the middle, with no communication across that divide, it is as if the brain of brains has been lobotomized. It isn’t just interaction that matters, but rather how the interactions and alliances form a tapestry of overlapping subgroups that ensures team stability and efficiency.

Fostering Creativity

Being creative is not easy, because it often arises from going out of your comfort zone, connecting with those who are different from you, and resolving the tensions that arise from overlapping affiliations. It is hard work. And leading others to be creative is possibly even harder, because the pattern of creativity, imposed on an organization, may reveal hidden conflicts. Cross-functional interaction and breaking down silos may lead to more innovation, but groups are sometimes formed in opposition to other groups, so connecting them may require tactful diplomacy. Keeping this in mind, here are a few simple ways you can lead in fostering creativity in your organization:

1. Implement cross-departmental projects and activities. These events provide employees opportunities to interact and form relationships across departments, improving communication and creating opportunities for future collaborations.
2. Be mindful of fault-lines in groups when building teams. If possible, select members in such a way that subgroups are criss-crossed and overlapping. This way, the benefits of diversity can be realized while minimizing the risk of polarization.
3. Encourage mindfulness and rest, especially in the wake of having new experiences. Going out of one’s comfort zone can be mentally taxing, and without time to recover, it can lead to burnout rather than increased creativity. Recognizing and rewarding employees’ efforts to connect with others is a practical way to set this tone.

Creativity, the generation and execution of novel ideas, emerges out of connections between diverse ideas and parts. And those diverse ideas come from diverse people and diverse experiences. Today, the world may seem more divided than ever, but from the perspective of creativity, that just means there is more potential for integrating diverse perspectives and becoming a leader in innovation. Rather than see the divisions as a problem, perhaps we should view them as potential. How will you lead in creating an environment where creativity can thrive? How will you promote an environment that celebrates diverse perspectives and experiences? 

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1. Michael Sughrue, “What Is Connectomics?,” Omniscient Neurotechnology, July 1, 2022, https://www.o8t.com/blog/connectomics. ↩︎
2. Roger E. Beaty et al., “Robust Prediction of Individual Creative Ability from Brain Functional Connectivity,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 115, no. 5 (2018): 1087–92, JSTOR. ↩︎
3. Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire, “Ten Habits of Highly Creative People,” Greater Good Magazine, January 20, 2016, https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/ten_habits_of_highly_creative_people. ↩︎
4. Elisa C. Baek et al., “In-Degree Centrality in a Social Network Is Linked to Coordinated Neural Activity.,” Nature Communications 13, no. 1 (2022): 1118, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-28432-3. ↩︎
5. Scott Page et al., The Diversity Bonus: How Great Teams Pay off in the Knowledge Economy, 2nd ed. (Princeton University Press, 2019). ↩︎
6. Andrew M. Carton and Jonathan N. Cummings, “A Theory of Subgroups in Work Teams,” The Academy of Management Review 37, no. 3 (2012): 441–70, JSTOR. ↩︎
7. Peter Blau, Exchange and Power in Social Life (Routledge, 2017). ↩︎