Why Creativity will rule in the Future of Work

I just stumbled on another salient piece of evidence regarding the important role that creativity will play (is playing) as the world moves into the paradigm of Industry 4.0, digital transformation, and the Future of Work.

Many pundits will now remind you of the conclusions formed by the World Economic Forum - creativity, complex problem solving and critical thinking are at, or near, the top of the list for vital "skills" in the 21st century workplace.

Fewer people really articulate "why". I've written about this, and there are at least two different underpinning reasons.

One is basically a reaction to the change inherent in digital transformation. If robots have taken over many jobs (because those jobs involve routine, algorithmic physical or cognitive labour) then about the only thing left for humans will be the stuff that the robots can't do (recognise needs, formulate novel solutions to those needs, and so on - i.e. creativity).

Another reason is more proactive. Change is occurring every more rapidly, and it is change that generates new problems, for which we need to find new (i.e. creative) solutions. This would be the case with or without intelligent robots, but is exacerbated by digital transformation.

The interesting point is that humans have known this for a long time.

I've previously paraphrased an idea expressed by the psychologist Jerome Bruner, back in 1962. He noted that in the future we are now entering, creativity would be the last bastion of human mental sovereignty. So, I like to say that we've known this was coming for 57 years.

However, today I discovered an even earlier quote that articulates the same point - in 1950!

The paper is one that every creativity researcher is familiar with, because it is widely regarded as heralding the beginning of the modern creativity era. J P Guilford was writing, as incoming president of the American Psychological Association, and he chose to focus on what he saw as the neglected field of creativity (in his paper entitled "Creativity"!). Despite reading this many times over the years, I had never really noticed or appreciated one paragraph he wrote (on p. 446). I reproduce it here because it is such a spot-on description of the importance of creativity in the 21st century.

"We hear much these days about the remarkable new thinking machines. We are told that these machines can be made to take over much of men's thinking and that the routine thinking of many industries will eventually be done without the employment of human brains. We are told that this will entail an industrial revolution that will pale into insignificance the first industrial revolution. The first one made man's muscles relatively useless; the second one is expected to make man's brain also relatively useless. There are several implications in these possibilities that bear upon the importance of creative thinking. In the first place, it would be necessary to develop an economic order in which sufficient employment and wage earning would still be available. This would require creative thinking of an unusual order and speed. In the second place, eventually about the only economic value of brains left would be in the creative thinking of which they are capable. Presumably, there would still be need for human brains to operate the machines and invent better ones." (J P Guilford, 1950, Creativity. American Psychologist, 5, 444-454).

So in fact, we've known what was coming for closer to 70 years!

The change underway will see at least some traditional jobs taken over by robots, AI and the like. We need a finely honed capacity for creativity to find solutions to the problems generated by this social, economic and demographic change.

We also need a well-developed capacity for creativity because it is what Guilford described as the economic value that humans will continue to offer in a digitally transformed economy.

Now for the big "so what?". My point is this. We are past the point of restating the problem. The conversation needs to shift, more rapidly than it is, to the question of "how" to ensure that people, especially current school children and university students, develop this capacity, so that they find their places in the workforce of the future.

I've previously complained that there is still too great a tendency, outside of formal creativity research, to treat creativity as a one-dimension "skill". The old "do these five things before breakfast to unleash your creativity"!

Creativity is a multifaceted competency - a blend of thinking skills, attitudes, behaviours and knowledge. The "trainers" and "consultants" who present creativity only in terms of the cognitive skills are leading organisations, and in some cases, schools, down a dead-end path.

We've known why creativity is now a vital, 21st century competency for 70 years. Time is running out to do something about that!

David Cropley is Professor of Engineering Innovation at the University of South Australia