You have most likely heard of economic stagnation. This happens when a nation suffers from high unemployment and yet, with rising inflation with hardly any economic growth.
- How about intellectual and creativity stagnation?
- Do both economic stagnation and mental stagnation come together? If yes, which one and why?
- What factors lead to creativity and intellectual stagnation?
Those questions started to pour into my mind. I then asked another question if groupthink is a form of intellectual and creativity stagnation.
I find one main reason leading to mind-related stagnation is again extreme bias or tendency to conform to the groups, community, and society.
When an individual loses his authenticity in a brainstorming (ideation) session to conform to the group and keep its cohesion creativity stagnation results.
I relate this to economic stagnation this way. In economic stagnation, unemployment is high. In intellectual and creativity stagnation, it is the high unemployment of minds resulting in the poor growth of ideas.
Because of our tendency to cope with seeking acceptance and cohesion of the groups, we sacrifice our ability to generate creative ideas to choose from intellectually.
The initial purpose of a brainstorming session ends up being the most uncreative session.
Foreign ideas may inoculate the generation of new thinking. However, we tend to treat them, as we tend to meet with foreigners the first time. Doubt, which is mixed with fear, repels foreign ideas.
Countries that have strict policies and a tendency to control deprive themselves of their wealth of intellectual and creative minds. They are finding a way to migrate to countries that are more tolerant or stay at home with their minds imprisoned. No wonder those countries suffer from intellectual and creativity stagnation leading to economic stagnation.
Do you agree?
Control and creativity point to ooposite dircetions. When extreme control is practiced a manager loses the creativity potential of his employees and creativity stagnation results.
I concur with you in full, Aldo
Thanks Ali!
Being creative means not having certainties, it means doing the opposite of what every pre-established system claims. Having creativity means experimenting with something that has never been done, building something from scratch that will have enormous value, and knowing how to take risks.
Creativity inevitably requires a state of non-control, of total courage and, therefore, conformity remains its first enemy.
Unfortunately, new technologies, the spread of the internet, social media, artificial intelligence promise to improve everyday life, but they have unquestionably strengthened the grip of authoritarian regimes. The digital repression, increasingly intense in some areas of the world, shows a bleak vision of the continuous limitation of individual freedoms. This is certainly an alarming scenario which has not, however, prevented creativity, responsiveness and the development of new ideas, new approaches and new tools promoted and supported by “enlightened entrepreneurs” and supporters of fundamental rights and freedoms, aimed at ensuring that the leadership promised by technology in the 21st century doesn’t necessarily become a curse.
Facilitating brain storming sessions is quite the challenge to begin with, especially when vibrant personalities are present. My projects ranged from 2 to 5 years for completion. The following is from my TeamPartnering.com website…
“Sense-making is responsive in meeting diverse challenges, so we make sense common. Coherent and cohesive teams reduce conflicts; fewer complaints, less disruption or downtime, less chance of angry staff, workers or costly litigation. Your Partnering Session Facilitator and conversation crafter, helps build Coherent & Cohesive Teams to garner premium results; time savings and value-added benefits create financial gains for your alliance, project owner, contractor, subs and/or organization.”
The feature component of the sessions is an issue resolution component, where brain-storming is critical. There are certain restrictions based on contract specs (construction), yet opportunities to engage alternatives are presented in a Carnegiesque style, nothing dismissed in the idea-generating piece; then we flush out what will work and determine who is responsible for what, when it will be triggered and who gets the notices along the way.
As a result, some of my projects received the Marvin M. Black Award.
“Sense-making is responsive in meeting diverse challenges, so we make sense common”.
Your comment does this admirably well Zen 🌍 Benefiel. The quote from the website is great and relevant.
I may say that you succeeded in creating a friendly atmosphere to foreign and unusual ideas. You did not interrupt the creation sessions of creative ideas with their evaluation as these are tow distinct processes. Omly later you evaluated the ideas intellectually to select the most relevant and applicable ones.
My deep respect to you and your team.