Creativity is a term we generally apply to artists. It sits somewhere outside maturity, a talent of the ‘thinkers’ rather than the practical ‘doers’ of business.
That’s what makes psychologist Abraham Maslow’s chapter on creativity in his book Towards a Psychology of Being so fascinating.
Maslow is best known for his ‘Hierarchy of Needs’, a theory that attributes the exceptional endeavours of society’s elite to the meeting of certain psychological needs in their development.
The hierarchy is as meticulously formulated as you’d expect, and Maslow rarely commented on creativity as a result. He saw it as a selfish attribute, one that had did not clearly fit anywhere in his ideas.
When, finally, Maslow did address creativity, he did so in a unique way. Instead of focusing on what he called ‘Special Talent Creativeness’ – what we perceive as genius – he discussed the value of Self-Actualising Creativeness.
This way of thinking defines creativity as a means of innovation, rather than a tool. By his explanation, someone who runs their company by unconventional means is far more creative than someone who can play cover songs on their guitar.
He calls this kind of creativity ‘second naïvety‘. Essentially, this allows a creative professional the kind of courage to explore outside of tradition in order to discover what works for them. Where their peers may be terrified by uncertainty, a Self-Actualising Creative embraces it as the path to new ideas.
Where Maslow really surprises readers is in the line “Consequently, they (creatives) live far more in the real world of nature than in the verbalised world of concepts, abstractions, expectations, beliefs and stereotypes that most people confuse with the real world”.
It’s extraordinary to think of creatives as more in touch with reality than others, but he has a point. Innovators know that convention can only go so far, and so fill the gaps in the landscape accordingly. That might mean coming up with a revolutionary marketing campaign, or the next Broadway sensation.
In the world of Maslow’s Self-Actualising Creativeness, there is no difference.
You can read the full excerpt from Maslow’s Towards a Psychology of Being here.