insights.

The intent of this page is to do some public thinking about creativity. There's a lot about this way of looking at the world that's left unexplained.

For example: Professor Teresa M. Amabile of Harvard has championed the notion that intrinsic motivation to perform creatively produces measurably better creative work. And an outside, or controlling extrinsic motivation, such as a reward will lower the level of creativity. Except that certain kinds of extrinsic motivation can be helpful (added in the 1996, Creativity in Context, by Amabile).

But this is counter to a lot of history. Michelangelo, DaVinci, and a lot of other artists did their work while being sponsored by patrons and the subject matter of the work itself was negotiated by the artist and patron. It was not wholly the artist's vision.

And the idea of the intrinsic/extrinsic motivation is countered by today's commercial culture. Copywriters and art directors in ad agencies (sometimes) come up with brilliant creative ideas for a client, for pay, an extrinsic motivation. And the extrinsic pressures which are allegedly killers of creativity are incredible: time pressures, the impending judgment of the work by any number of people, the need to meet many people's expectations and purposes, and so on.

But the work gets done, and some of it is exceptionally creative.

To be fair, Amabile notes that some extrinsic pressures can actually be enabling, but the witch's brew of extrinsic horrors faced by an advertising creative team would seem totally destructive.

In the end, the 1996 extrinsic/intrinsic theoretical position is so general an explanation that it leaves anything as a possible positive and creativity-enhancing motivator.

No. Something's going on inside the head of the creative person. Something we have yet to get a handle on. The intrinsic/extrinsic argument is not measuring the right thing.

Next time, in September, 2007 ... what is that "right thing?"