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.
The dismal New York Mayoral campaign has me wondering if we might be seeing the peak of New York as a creative, innovative hub for this cultural/economic cycle. The biggest political themes are class and ethnic conflict revolving around “You got yours, I want mine” politics. What I don’t hear is an understanding of why New York is so “hot” right now, while Paris is not and why dynamic young people from all over the world are moving the to Big Apple and not to Rome.
I am not hearing much about innovation and startups, incubators and universities, Kickstarter and MakerBot, creativity and economic growth, the data-driven economy and the art-driven real estate market. There is silence about the need for better gifted-and-talented public school programs or better tax-breaks to build middle-income rentals for the people who are not Russian moguls and escaping Chinese plutocrats. Does any candidate even know about what is happening in Brooklyn and the Brand Brooklyn? Or understand what the growing share economy means?
Meanwhile, over in London, mayor Boris Johnson is calling for a “London Visa” to attract more talent. The special visa would target high tech startup people, hot fashion designers and creators of all sorts to London. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/62459d68-1701-11e3-bced-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=intl#axzz2eJGbJSik
Now that’s brilliant thinking. I hear nothing of the sort from the horde of candidates wanting to become mayor of New York City.
I am co-teaching a grad course at Parsons this fall on Creativity and the City which examines the crucial role cities play in engaging and promoting our creativity.
This week in class we are reading Mihaly Csikszentmihaly’s book “Creativity,” focussing on his chapter on Creativity and the Renaissance which deals with the rise of Florence. It’s so good I could cry. He says that “…creativity, must, in the last analysis, be seen not as something happening within a person but in the relationship within a system."
The ultimate system, or "domain” as “Chicks” calls it, is the city. Without the proper leadership which understands the value of creativity to both society and the economy, you won’t get creativity. Without the right kind of patrons who support creativity, the right kind of experts who can recognize creativity and the right kind of spaces and neighborhoods where creative people are drawn to live, you’re not going to get creativity.
Bloomberg, a high-tech financial entrepreneur, who became the single largest philanthropist in New York City, understood most of this. But who among the seven candidates running for mayor really does? Beats me and I have to vote next week.
It is Fashion Week in NYC and an incredible number of hugely talented fashion creatives are crawling its streets. Samsung needs to hire some of them. Perhaps it is not as bad in real 3D, but the new Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch really seems ugly/clunky to me.
Google Glass has serious value issues with privacy but it looks very cool on the face–thanks to Google hiring a Swedish industrial designer, hooking up with Warby Parker and Sergey hanging out at runway shows with Diane Von Furstenberg. Who are the guys in Seoul hanging out with?
Tech companies moving into “wearable technology” really need to start hiring graduates They have been designing wearable technology for eons–call them clothes, eyeglasses, shoes, hats….Each draps the body, extending and enhancing its capabilities. Clothes frame and reframe identities and personalities. They allow you to try them on and become someone, something else.
Fashion designers know all this already–and have amazing skills at understanding the deep meaning of “wearing” and the true purpose of “technology” in peoples’ lives. They also live in a global world and understand the importance of mining culture, male/female, Chinese/American/boomer/gen y. They are deep into “Making” culture–indeed, unlike other designers, they never left it. They do two collections a year–they create twice a year, year after year. And designers are hugely entrepreneurial, they love to set up their own businesses.
So Samsung and other wearable technology companies, listen up. Hire fashion designers if you want people to actually love your technology. And check out the Fashion Week runway shows now:
http://www.youtube.com/user/mbfashionweek
It’s all about creative intelligence.
I just learned that the Book 21 in Korea will pick up the translation rights and publish Creative Intelligence. That’s wonderful. Korea has spent tens of billions of dollars making itself more creative and innovative over the past decade. Samsung is poised to make the shift from Fast Follower to Creative Leader in consumer electronics. And Korea is home to the largest alumni of Parsons School of Design. Many of the concepts in the book were developed in my classes at Parsons which are filled with terrific students from Korea. It’s a good day.
I’m about to start the second unit of my Creativity and Capitalism course at Parsons which will focus on ritual and play as the paths to understanding the existential and the deep meaning of cultures.
For the business folks, we will focus on Branding and how the successful brand succeeds in mining the existential–how it succeeds in understanding and representing what is meaningful to the culture of its audience.
Its not about satisfying needs or even wants. A great brand speaks to the higher order desires of people. No focus group or marketing research can get to these higher order desires of people because they are usually tacit and unexpressed–yet real and meaningful.
So we read the following together and talk about stuff:
Readings Unit Two:
for March 18:
Lewis Hyde “The Bones of the Dead” from The Gift
David Foster Wallace “Federer as Religious Experience”
following, in yet-to-be-determined order:
Dreyfus and Kelly, “Our Contemporary Nihilism” from All Things Shining
Dreyfus, “Heidegger on the Connection between Nihilism, Art, Technology and Politics”
Barthes, Selections from Mythologies
Cowbird, especially the Pine Ridge Community Storytelling Project
to be read in prep for April 1st (Annie Correal guest)
Vygotsky, “The Role of Play in Development”
I am so happy to be moderating a great panel on Social Innovation tonight at 6PM at Parsons. Finalists for the New Challenge contest will get their awards and I will have a great conversation with Cheryl Dorsey, President of Echoing Green, Sasha Dichter, Chief Innovation Officer of the Acumen Fund and Jeremy Heimans, co-founder of Purpose.
http://newchallenge.newschool.edu/projects/2013/winners-2013/
Social Innovation has moved from the periphery to the core of our conversations about economics, capitalism, social justice, design and doing good. Social Innovation is hot on the campuses of design and art schools as well as business schools. Now, how crazy is that? Something deep is happening.
I have two great examples of Social Innovation in Creative Intelligence, both in India. One story is about Paul Polak and his drive to bring clean drinking water to Orissa villages. He used what I call Donut Thinking–see what is NOT there– to solve the problem (hint, its not the scarcity of water but of “clean.”
Paul worked with IDIOM, the top innovation consultancy in India, to design the project and Acumen invested in the new company, Spring Health. Paul hopes it will grow to a $1 billion company, employing thousands of people in India, most of them in their own villages.
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Dan Pink’s new book, To Sell is Human, is on all the best-seller lists. It’s terrific. I noticed a while back that nearly all my students at Parsons are incredible performers. They can switch on a stage persona that "sells" whatever they are pitching at that moment. They grew up with participative video, they don’t just watch but act. Fits right into what Dan is talking about in his book.
Dan did a Q & A with me for his blog site. Here it is.
http://www.danpink.com/2013/03/be-mindful-meaningful-and-masterly-3-questions-for-bruce-nussbaum
Here’s the part about “Donut Thinking."
It took me about 10 years to become a decent birder. Birding is all about seeing the “odd duck.” You spend years in the field training to look for what’s NOT there. In Singapore four years ago, I saw a black swan. It didn’t surprise me. I was looked for what didn’t fit the pattern. That’s what “Donut Knowledge” or “Donut Thinking” is about. You spend the time to learn the patterns and then you train yourself to look for what doesn’t fit.”
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062088424?ie=UTF8%20&tag=harpercollinsus-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0062088424
B&N: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/creative-intelligence-bruce-nussbaum/1112757030?ean=9780062088420&cm_mmc=AFFILIATES-_-Linkshare-_-MdXm68JZJz8-_-10%3a1&r=1&