Today we will learn about the benefits of using more
abstract (as opposed to specific) exemplars as a starting point for creative
behavior.
Abstract Exemplars
Provide More Creativity
Thomas Ward found evidence to suggest that the way in which
you frame a creative task can affect the creativity of the product produced.[1]
Specifically, more abstract exemplars, instead of specific ones, will allow for
greater creativity.[2] In
his study Ward asked participants to imagine and draw an alien that might exist
on a different planet.[3]
He found that participants that were instructed to consider that the aliens
must need to survive and navigate the conditions of their environments attained
higher ratings of creativity in their drawings than both participants who were
not instructed at all and participants who were instructed to think of specific
earth animals as examples. As Ward put it,
Because stored properties at higher levels of abstraction would be less specific and constraining and allow a wider range of possible instantiation (e.g., generic sense or organs vs. two eyes symmetrically placed in the head), more original products would be expected to result when people access knowledge in these more abstract ways.[4]
These findings on conceptual expansion, also known as the path-of-least-resistance model, has been
replicated in other domains with participants similarly imagining novel fruits
and tools based off of specific exemplars vs. more conceptualized properties. And similarly those who used a more conceptualized abstract approach showed more
creativity.[5]
Real Life Examples
These findings can be generalized to real word examples. For
instance, if one was trying to think of a new animated comedy series to make
they could think of the best current series. Take for example Family Guy. Family Guy is an adult cartoon featured around an American family with a talking pet,
full of absurd and unrealistic plot events, crass humor, jokes focusing of pop
culture and current events, and the comedy styling of Seth McFarlane. If you
were trying to create a new show, one could think of Family Guy as an exemplar of
a successful comedy and slightly tweak it to create a new product. The extreme
similarity between shows like Family Guy, Cleveland Show, and American Dad provides
support for this path-of-least-resistance
model. And indeed, the common critique of these shows in fact is that they lack
creativity.
However if more abstract exemplars were used, more creative
comedy shows could have easily been created. For instance, perhaps the studio execs
could just ask a writer to produce a show that serves the same demographics.
The show must include humor that appeals to both an older audience, but enough
silliness to draw in younger audiences as well. And also instruct the writer to
remember that since it is a cartoon they can have less realistic features in
the show. Such a show will certainly be more rated as more original or creative
than American Dad or The Cleveland Show. But will it be more successful?
A show that greatly deviates from the Family Guy strategy
may not be accepted as an adult-themed comedy cartoon just in the same way that
aliens that deviate too far from known earth animals might not be
recognized as an animal at all.[6]
Therefore, a good balance of both approaches can be suggested. An idea of an
existing business venture may be used as a starting point for a new business
venture – however an eye should be kept at more abstract considerations of what
made the business venture successful instead of blindly accepting
potentially needless properties of the exemplar business venture. [7]
[1] Thomas
B. Ward, Merryl Patterson, Cynthia Sifonis, The
Role of Specificity and Abstraction in Creative Idea Generation, Creativity Research Journal (2004), 7.
[2] Id.
[3] Id. at 6.
[4]Id. at 8.
[5] Thomas
B. Ward, Cognition, Creativity, and Entrepreneurship,
Journal of Business Venturing 19.2 (2004), 183.
[6] Id. 184-85.
[7] Id. at 185.
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