CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

Whether it is the HP ink jet printer or the writing of “To Kill a Mockingbird” the role of the patron–the provider of resources–is often key in the creative process. We can identify the role of creativity patron ( I call this person the “Wanderer” in my book Creative Intelligence) today among angel investors and VCs in our tech startup economy but they are everywhere, from the Medicis in Florence to the people who financed a year in the life of the writer who had the time to write To Kill A Mockingbird. 

http://bit.ly/1kCWvHL

Leadership in the creative process is a poorly understood social phenomenon. It isn’t taught in engineering, business or design schools. But it is a key element of success in innovation and creativity. The amazing success of Mr. Hewlett and Mr. Packard in the early years of HP had a lot to do with their management style–Managing by Waling Around. They walked around the many labs, curated the science and technology advancements being made in them, and choose which to nurture.

Of course, Kickstarter shows that we can now crowd source the curating and resourcing of creativity and innovation. Each one of us can now play the role of Hewlett and Packard. 

This ability to curate and nurture creativity is at the heart of successful startups and breakthrough art and music. It is probably the most important leadership quality we need today.

Nothing proclaims the growing importance of creativity and design to entrepreneurship than the move of RISD president John Maeda to the key Silicon Valley venture capital firm of Kleiner Perkins where he will become the first Design Partner. At the same time, John will chair the Design Advisory Board at eBay

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSG3J01nILc&feature=youtu.be

From Airbnb to to Kickstarter to Youtube, a growing number of startup founders have a design/arts background that provides the skills and values to start new companies. Knowing what is meaningful to people, reframing what is conventional, playing to reach unexpected outcomes, scaling creativity to actual creation–all these skills come out of an education based in art, music, liberal arts and creativity in general. John has understood this for many years and has been a proponent of STEAM, not just STEM.

One of the great challenges ahead to to recreate venture capital itself using the tools of creativity and design. The old portfolio approach of backing many, many startups with the hope of one or two breaking out is ridiculously inefficient. VCs typically have a 5%-10% success rate. Applying the creative competencies of design to early startups could raise that startup success rate to 50% or 60%. And that could have a major economic impact on all of us.

Good luck John. Brilliant move.

Two articles, one in the online Politico and the other in the Wall Street Journal, reinforce my belief that a new kind of antiestablishmentarian centrist-populist-capitalist politics is being born in the US. I first began to talk about this trend in my book Creative Intelligence because the young entrepreneurs out of Brooklyn, Manhattan, San Francisco, Austin, Portland, Chicago and elsewhere in the country, the new makers of the Maker Culture, baffled me. They were intensely capitalistic, in the sense of wanting to set up their own companies and build their own networks and organizations, but were profoundly anti Big Business and anti-globalization. Their focus was on hyper-local, community, and making profits to support their like-minded community. Kickstarter was at the heart of this new capitalism. 

In  sense , this cohort is anti-political. Young, able to build their own institutions and entrepreneurial, these men and women face away from the political system because their see no role in it. They hate it.

But what if a “radicalized center” begins to speak for them and to them? What is someone like Democrat Elizabeth Warren decides to run for the President in 2016–or even Bruce Springsteen-loving Republican Chris Christy?

Opposing both the Tea Party and Occupy but sharing their anti-Washington and anti-Big Business perspectives. this new movement is just taking form in time for the 2016 Presidential elections.

Check out this piece:

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/wall-street-elizabeth-warren-president-2016-elections-99697.html?hp=t1

The other story, The Radicalized Center, by Gerald Seib, is in the WSJ today –which I can’t link to because I get the FT, not the WSJ–so check that out if you can.

One thing to keep in mind–this growing maybe-movement is not against capitalism but FOR capitalism–startup, entrepreneurial capitalism. Practically all policy and regulation and money  in Washington focuses on promoting Big Business, Big Agriculture and Big Banks. What if the focus were on creating NEW, smaller companies (where all the job growth is)?  What if we had Kickstarter Capitalism in America?

There is a great line in Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention – “Creativity must, in the last analysis, be seen not as something happening within a person but in the relationship within a system.” One of the key systems, of course, is the city, which is the reason why politics and elections are important to artists, entrepreneurs and all creators.

The New York City mayoral election appears to be turning out to be a huge negative for creative people. In a week when London Mayor Boris Johnson is calling for a “London Visa” to attract high tech, fashion and other talent to his city, New York is facing a choice between an old-fashioned liberal and an old-fashioned conservative and a return to an old 20th century era of class and ethnic conflict. Sad and boring. It’s as if the past 10 years hadn’t happened in Brooklyn, that the booming Maker Culture wasn’t there and that the soaring Gen Y and immigrant populations weren’t important. Did any of these candidates for mayor hear of Kickstarter?

To whomever eventually wins the NYC Mayor’s office, I’d like to suggest a few policies to promote what I call  "Indie Capitalism.“  It’s the kind of capitalism that is remaking the face of the city. Here goes:

1) Crowdfund new housing for the middle class. Moderately priced housing is in short supply in the city, threatening to drive creative people–and lots of non-creative people–away. Brazil is pioneering the crowdfunding of skyscrapers. Why not do the same for middle class housing. Kickstart another Stuy Town–or 10 Stuy Towns. 

2– Fund the student creative class. There are amazing universities in NYC where students produce remarkable  work in their classes, especially senior classes. That creativity gets flushed after graduation (it goes into student portfolios). My sense is that a good third of those senior projects could become the kernel of a new businesses. Many of my students go to Kickstarter for this, but Kickstarter is a narrowly curated crowdfunder. A city-wide AppleStarter available to all MBAs, senior design students and young creators could generate lots of startups and jobs. 

3–Start a "C-School” that does innovation the New York City way, putting culture, experience and engagement first in generating products and services, in contrast to the “D-School” kind of innovation out of the West Coast that is technology-centric. (I’m working on an Institute of Creativity at Parsons and this could be the foundation.)

4–Expand the Gifted & Talented public school programs. New York already spends more money on education per student ($22,000) than any other public education system in the nation. But very little goes to develop creativity. Even children who test highest for being creative have to enter a lottery to get into Gifted & Talented classes because there are so few of them. This is just nuts for a city that runs on creativity. 

In fact, this whole election in New York appears nuts for a city that runs on creativity.

Gen Y voters went mostly for President Obama on Tuesday for his social policies. But the Republicans could just have easily attracted this rising demographic with new business policies– if they had taken time to learn about Gen Y culture.

Gen Y may be the most entrepreneurial generation in a century but neither party appears to understand that. In this election neither party put forth an economic policy that bolsters economic growth through start-ups, crowd funding, local sourcing, additive manufacturing (3D printing), venture capital or scaling creativity into new creative companies that employ hundreds of people in the US. This is the stuff of an entrepreneurial capitalism, an Indie Capitalism, that Gen Y is trying to build that could replace the disastrous Finance/Shareholder Capitalism that has led to the immiseration of the middle class.

The talk now in Washington is about going over a “fiscal cliff.” We need to talk about more fundamental economic issues–How to promote economic growth through innovation and creativity. The Democrat and Republican parties need to tune more into the rising Gen Y and less into the fading Boomers.