The Fields

While the domains provide the architecture for creativity, the fields determine which innovation makes it through. Only a tiny percentage of creative ideas will make a lasting impression on the domain, and become part of that domain. Cultures need to be conservative, there are far too many good ideas, compared to what we can judge and implement without descending into chaos.

Members of the field are the cultural arbitrators of what information or skill is added to the domain. Fields vary greatly in amount of members, and their specialisations. It is not uncommon for several fields to interact, we've all heard of 'musicians bands' beloved by other musicians but with no great following by the music press or people at large.

Fields can affect the rate of creativity in three main ways:

• Being reactive or proactive - How engaged is a field in stimulating novelty? Are the members of the field actively seeking new ideas, spending in research and development, attending technology conferences, sponsoring prizes etc.
• The filter - How liberal or conservative is the field, do they accept a lot of novelty at once or only allow a few ideas to be deliberated over? Some fields move very quickly, like technology, others are more staid, like insurance, or accountancy (at least in popular imagination).
  
• Connection to the wider cultural systems - fields which have good connections to the greater society can channel resources into their given domain. This is why so many large organisations employ lobbyists. Connections can ensure legislation is conducive to the domain, additional funds are channeled into the domain, graduates are attracted etc.
  

The first objection I hear when discussing fields is usually, "but everyone is creative, we don't need other people to tell us we're creative." While to me the thought that ideas can't really be creative unless knowledgeable people say they are is stunningly obvious I seem to be in a minority, and I think there are powerful social and cultural barriers at work as well. The continued dominance of individual and personal views of creativity, (the lonely and suffering artist mentality), has come to dominate the idea of creativity as it is trained and disseminated in organisations. Unless some balance is brought to the study of creativity by examining the group and the systems, businesses will continue to waste funds and squander the good ideas already being generated.

The second major objection, is this idea of liberal and conservative fields. It is easy to think of the sexy pro-active organisations like Apple and Google, and think they must have the monopoly on being creative, while forgetting about the proactive organisations that failed in their field during the dotcom era, or the dozens which will no doubt follow in the current recession. There are excellent reasons for fields to be conservative, the market you are in, economic conditions etc. For instance I don't really want my accountant allowing too many creative ideas into my tax returns, though any executives of Enron reading this can feel free to differ. This may also explain why so many "creativity initiatives" of the blue sky thinking variety are so painfully dull, moribund, and unfocused.

Only by a thorough understanding of the domain and field your organisation operates in can you understand what the real value adding creative and innovative ideas are.