From small-c to big-C in creativity
Why creativity needs to happen across systems.
From small-c to big-C
Four big things happened to the small nation of Singapore.
- According to the 2022 results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), Singapore is the top-performing education system in Creative Thinking among 64 participating systems or countries.
- The Design Education Advisory Committee, comprising of local universities and polytechnics, industry professionals and policymakers, developed a nationwide blueprint for reimagining design education in Singapore.
- Singapore’s education minister, Mr Chan Chun Sing, advocates design thinking by officiating a global alliance of 13 institutions to enhance design education to solve real-world design problems.
- Despite performing well in the study, Singapore students did not think of themselves as creative. Just 64 percent of them said they were confident or very confident of being creative, compared with the OECD average of 73 percent.
These 4 points paint the following picture: although interventions in the learning environment may create positive results in creativity, future generations lack the confidence and courage needed.
Netizens were also quick to question the validity of the PISA assessment, wondering whether the rigour of evaluating creativity is detrimental to the topic itself.
Such thoughts make us sceptical. Often, we think of the mavericks who were school delinquents but revolutionised the world with their game changing ideas. Names like Steve jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Ma and many others would fall under such categories. So how could these students be qualified to be considered creative?
Big C and little c
One news analyst offered an interesting perspective. Dubbed the Big C and the little c, creativity could be understood in two ways:
Big C: Great works of art and breakthrough inventions based on significant talent and deep expertise in a particular area.
Little c: Everyday creativity developed through practice and education
Thus, what the students underwent is test of the little c of everyday creativity. Such tests include writing a story about a robot and man, improving accessibility for wheelchair users in a library with a spiral staircase, and improving an experiment to find the cause of the declining frog population in a river. They are rather reasonable questions that could be asked to a film director, architect or biologist.
This framing can be useful for different types of creativity, but it doesn’t need to be limited to students and their classrooms. The co-chair of the Strategic Advisory Board of the PISA 2022 Creative Thinking Test, Bill Lucas, shared five key leadership messages. One of them emphasises the importance of adopting whole-system approaches to embedding, supporting and measuring creative thinking. Not only should educators be equipped with learning progressions and rubrics for creative thinking, students should also have specific opportunities for interdisciplinary work.
An incomplete whole-system?
However, I will also argue that creative thinking must go beyond classroom and into corporate settings. Consider, upon graduation, how students would transit into the workplace environment, which plays a crucial role. Would there be continuation of learning and development of creative thinking in actual work? Or what about career progressions and leadership practices? Alas, the whole system is left incomplete, partly because it is outside of the realm of education.
Or is it?
Companies that value culture and their employees often set aside a learning budget for their workforce. This includes accreditation, learning development programmes and structured mentorship. Whether learning is done in-house or through external agencies, equipping high-performing talents with the right skills and mindsets is crucial to the long-term success of any organisation.
If creative thinking is a critical component for future generations, then the older generations of todays need to be part of the whole system. They, too, need to embrace creative thinking and create a work environment that allows a creative culture to thrive.
Many chief executives, or human big C, may understand the value of creativity in their organisation but find it hard to implement the little c in practice and with people within their organisation. Even deep research studies on the attributes of successful CEO did not reveal creativity as one of them. (Adapting proactively was the closest, but the behaviour gave a sense of readiness and grit rather than imagination and problem solving, equivalent to the earlier exercise described in PISA.)
That being said, in another research paper, creative leadership is possible and beneficial in a different way. Below is what characterises creative leaders:
- Leverage human and social capital to create value for the firm
- Encourages exploration and risk taking.
- Good at stimulating creative staff intellectually, trusting and supporting them, and providing them freedom
- Promote individual initiative while promoting the integration of group activities and teamwork.
In other words, particularly in high-tech industries, creative leaders are crucial in maximising a firm’s internal resources and capabilities, especially its human and social capital. They help cultivate a corporate environment that encourages innovation and generates new knowledge.
Creative Systems Canvas
As it turns out, good design leaders do fit into this category and may appear to be all-rounded C. The best way to understand this point is with a 2x2 canvas, which I am calling the Creative Systems Canvas.
The axes are as follows: people based on seniority, from students to the c suites; and degree of creativity, from everyday intervention to transformative achievements. Let’s break it down into 4 quadrants.
small-c — small-c: Creative thinking sits at the bottom left quadrants, where a novice gets acquainted and practices incremental creativity. It is the passion of the individual to want to be creative, and they would go to great lengths to grow in this domain. Although not a practitioner with deep expertise, this person is an advocate in design and is willing to collaborate.
Small-c — big-C: On the other end is the practitioner with deep expertises. These are the designers who have technical skills to produce specialised outcomes. They go beyond design thinking by delivering design artefacts for their users and their collaborators, but also uphold necessary practices of creative excellence. They are your specialists who hone their crafts and they contribute to the system in specific, tangible ways.
Big-C — small-c: Creative leadership is in this category. Not only do creative leaders empower and support creative practices for their teams, they also design an environment that encourages the flourishing of creativity. Rather than focusing on specific community, these leaders share creative practices openly and use their stature to carry out the necessary change to grow creative confidence among teams rapidly.
Big-C — Big-C: Every organisation needs that group of champions to drive change that creates groundbreaking innovations. It could be coming out with the latest cure to a global pandemic or a digital product that vastly improves the lives of people. Ultimately, the innovation creates a lasting impact both for the people it serves and for the team that produces it. The leaders who understand that value are your mavericks, who inspire their systems through their visions and do what it takes to realise their goals. This quadrant is probably the hardest to achieve because long-term planning and the right mindset from the leader are required to turn inventions into reality.
At the centre of creativity
It may be tempting to decide quickly which quadrant would be the best place for any organisation to be. Some may quickly jump into the Big Cs category but lose out on individual brilliances. Others may cherish individualistic self-efficacy but lack the organisational structure to receive necessary support.
At this point, the idea of a bubble-level comes to mind. Amazingly, that is a very ‘designerly’ way of thinking. As an industrial designer, the bubble level provides the finer details of elevation when it comes to keeping horizontal. As an interaction designer, the bubble level can also be an indicator of motion with the use of gyroscopes.
In this case, the bubble level signifies creative equilibrium, such that the best position for creativity to thrive is when it is placed in the middle. And so, the whole-system approach comes into play. The glue that combines all of the elements is what observers would call a ‘creative culture’: the norms of creative behaviour with a particular people or society.
But does it really work? Do such systems really exist?
The story of Pepsi’s creative system
To Pepsi’s former CEO, Indra Nooyi, design thinking was the answer to fighting the other beverage giant. Her first successful encounter with design was when she brought in prolific 3M designer Mauro Porcini to take up the challenge of fixing the flaws of Pepsi’s soda fountain, Pepsi Spire.
Porcini responded by flipping the solution upside down and building confidence among his team members by speaking to restaurant owners and their diners about their needs. The end result was a radically different solution with a large interactive display and clever product repositioning, but eventually, because of the initial customer insights, the idea paid off with commercial success.
The story could have ended with a nice design innovation story. However, being the chief design officer, along with the sponsorship of his CEO, Porcini not only spent years building design competency in his team, ranging from industrial design to digital UX/UI, but also formed partnerships within the organisation through prototyping and storytelling, as well as forming collaborations with other brands and artists. This collection of stories will ultimately inspire individuals who come across the design of foods and beverages, possibly even wanting to take their own step into creativity. As a result, a creative culture was born in Pepsi, with Nooyi claiming that “her teams are pushing design through the entire system.”
What may start as a small step of creativity may end up being large echos across an entire system. No matter the size of a nation or a company, a CEO or a student, a designer or a bystander, creativity is a choice for us to explore and exploit in beautiful ripples.
References
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Botelho, E. L., Powell, K. R., Kincaid, S., & Wang, D. (2017). 4 Things That Set Successful CEOs Apart. Harvard Business Review; hbr.org. https://hbr.org/2017/05/what-sets-successful-ceos-apart
Davie, S. (2024, June 20). Are Singapore students really the world’s most creative thinkers? The Straits Times. https://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/are-singapore-students-really-the-world-s-most-creative-thinkers
Design Education Advisory Committee. (2024, June 13). Design Education Advisory Committee — DesignSingapore Council. Designsingapore.org. https://designsingapore.org/resources/design-education-advisory-committee/
Ignatius, A. (2016). How Indra Nooyi Turned Design Thinking Into Strategy: An Interview with PepsiCo’s CEO. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2015/09/how-indra-nooyi-turned-design-thinking-into-strategy
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Makri, M., & Scandura, T. A. (2010). Exploring the effects of creative CEO leadership on innovation in high-technology firms. The Leadership Quarterly, 21(1), 75–88. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2009.10.006
Roth, E. (2023, June 27). The Committed Innovator: PepsiCo’s design chief Mauro Porcini | McKinsey. Www.mckinsey.com. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/the-committed-innovator-the-power-of-design
Tushara, E. (2024, May 16). SUTD forms global alliance with 12 institutions to enhance design education. The Straits Times. https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/sutd-forms-alliance-with-12-universities-to-enhance-design-education
