Creative Motivation

Why should anyone try to be creative? Creativity has many risks and uncertainties. like the risk of failure and the need to persuade others. There is the need for political skills. It can be less risky to sit quietly and do what you are supposed to do.
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If all is well, who needs creativity? If things are going wrong, then there is no time for the uncertainties of creativity.
If you try to be creative - and even if you use the powerful tools of lateral thinking - you cannot be sure of a result.
There is another problem. All valuable creative ideas must always be logical in hindsight - otherwise they would have no value. So it is assumed that logic could have reached the idea to begin with.
This is completely untrue in an asymmetric patterning system like the human brain. But how many people are knowledgeable about asymmetric systems? So executives expect only 'blue sky ideas' from creativity and these are then labelled impractical.
If we think of creativity as an inborn talent which some people have and others do not have, then we just look for creative people.
If we think of creativity as the 'skill' of using information in a patterning system like the brain, then everyone can develop the skill of creativity. To be sure, certain people will achieve a higher degree of skill than others - as with any skill - but this is not the same as being naturally creative. People who are not naturally creative could develop a higher degree of skill than those who are naturally creative.
Confidence is an important factor in creative effort. Those who have succeeded in having creative ideas in the past are much more willing to make an effort creatively. They know from the past that new ideas are possible. They have experienced the elation and achievement of having a new idea.
How do you build up confidence if school does not encourage creativity, and the workplace does not demand it?
The majority of people do what is expected of them. The rebellious few stray from that path. That is why we usually associate creativity with rebelliousness. But it does not have to be this way.
To get creativity into an organisation you have to make it an 'expectation'. At the end of every meeting, the chair person must set aside the last fifteen minutes to 'anyone who is exploring a new idea'. If nobody has anything to say, they are told they are not doing their job.
A creative 'Hit List' of areas which need new thinking should be produced and made visible to everyone. Executives must then work on items from this list - either as individuals or as assigned teams.
Striving to have ideas is key. If new ideas are expected, then people will make an effort to have new ideas. Their confidence will grow and sooner or later there will be a creative organisation.
It is also important to learn how you can be creative. There is a need to learn the formal skills of lateral thinking which make creativity accessible to everyone.

Computers & The Human Mind

Using a computer-based card game and microelectrodes to observe neuronal activity of the brain, the Penn study, published March 13 in the journal Science, suggests that neurons in the human substantia nigra, or SN, play a central role in reward-based learning, modulating learning based on the discrepancy between the expected and the realized outcome.
“This is the first study to directly record neural activity underlying this learning process in humans, confirming the hypothesized role of the basal ganglia, which includes the SN, in models of reinforcement including learning, addiction and other disorders involving reward-seeking behavior,” said lead author Kareem Zaghloul, postdoctoral fellow in neurosurgery at Penn’s School off Medicine. “By responding to unexpected financial rewards, these cells encode information that seems to help participants maximize reward in the probabilistic learning task.”
Learning, previously studied in animal models, seems to occur when dopaminergic neurons, which drive a larger basal ganglia circuit, are activated in response to unexpected rewards and depressed after the unexpected omission of reward. Put simply, a lucky win seems to be retained better than a probable loss.
Similar to an economic theory, where efficient markets respond to unexpected events and expected events have no effect, we found that the dopaminergic system of the human brain seems to be wired in a similar rational manner -- tuned to learn whenever anything unexpected happens but not when things are predictable," said Michael J. Kahana, senior author and professor of psychology at Penn’s School of Arts and Sciences.
Zaghloul worked with Kahana and Gordon Baltuch, associate professor of neurosurgery, in a unique collaboration among departments of psychology, neurosurgery and bioengineering. They used microelectrode recordings obtained during deep brain stimulation surgery of Parkinson’s patients to study neuronal activity in the SN, the midbrain structure that plays an important role in movement, as well as reward and addiction. Patients with Parkinson’s disease show impaired learning from both positive and negative feedback in cognitive tasks due to the degenerative nature of their disease and the decreased number of dopaminergic neurons.
The recordings were analyzed to determine whether responses were affected by reward expectation. Participants were asked to choose between red and blue decks of cards presented on a computer screen, one of which carried a higher probability of yielding a financial reward than the other. If the draw of a card yielded a reward, a stack of gold coins was displayed along with an audible ring of a cash register and a counter showing accumulated virtual earnings. If the draw did not yield a reward or if no choice was made, the screen turned blank and participants heard a buzz.
“This new way to measure dopaminergic neuron activity has helped us gain a greater understanding of fundamental cognitive activity," said Baltuch, director of the Penn Medicine Center for Functional and Restorative Neurosurgery.