My Creativity Book Tour - Third Stop: Manchester and Hull in the UK

Have I been preaching to the converted when presenting my book about Managing Creativity at Manchester and Hull in the UK? 

Not really 😁.  

I have visited colleagues in Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) Business School, and Hull University Business School,.  I want to thank them and the fantastic audiences that my seminars had.  

Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) Business School

At Manchester, I was asked about individual creativity, and how I see it.   In my book (Chapter 1), I venture to lay a distinction between individually and collectively oriented creativity. 

The creativity field has progressed in consolidating a sort of established tradition of the first one, not so much in the second one, which was one of the reasons that led me to write the book.  Systemic creativity, or conceiving of creativity as resulting from creators and their circumstances, could find a place under the second one.  

Green square in front of MMU Business School

In between these (which the sociologist Andrew Abbott associates to lineages or branches on trees as the picture on the right aims to emulate), I see a great deal of creativity research that is focused on the processes associated with creativity, be them internal (cognitive) or external to a creator. Whichever lineage or body of knowledge we consider in creativity, what is becoming clearer is that in each, there are different criteria to study and assess a creative process, idea or individual.  The audience at Manchester also saw that creativity needs to consider environmental constraints and tensions, many of which shape such success criteria.  

I was also asked about how I plan to continue developing my ideas.  Since finishing this book, I have continued looking at creativity, this time in management education   My claim so far is that we as management educators have narrowed down our ideas about creativity, and have become somehow passive instruments of a big trend in digital innovation.


To overcome this situation, we will need to develop more ethical awareness and choices in relation to creativity.  I want to further research on how creators (students, educators) could assume more ethically driven responsibility for our own creativity, a responsibility that also implies engaging with others and accepting that our life and work has some inevitable 'shit' we have to deal with.  

The renovated Hull University Library

At Hull, the discussion and questions after my presentation moved towards how creators need to learn a specific domains of knowledge, in order to be able to improve them.  But how far do creators want or have to go when  learning something new? What motivates them? What criteria of can we then use to assess our own creativity and that of others?  

In my book I present how I addressed a situation which required knowledge about inter-disciplinary creativity.  I found myself having to learn about the domain of creativity and also having to follow certain conventions about how knowledge in an inter-disciplinary research proposal was to be generated.  This situation led me thinking about the risks of following conventions to the letter, in particular if we as creators have to flexibly deal with challenges that we encounter along the way.   Add to this the need to look after our own well being, and the picture becomes more complex.

I was also asked about what notion of creativity I use in my book, which perhaps by now you as a reader are also intrigued about.   My response was that I do not subscribe to a particular one, except that I am aware that in the creativity field some attributes to something creative have been defined:  Novelty, Value and Implementation.    An idea, person, process or product needs to be seen as novel, valued by others and it needs to 'fit' or to 'work' somehow in a situation or context. 

A view of Ferens Way, Hull

On further reflection about these and other questions, perhaps not all creators want to be worldwide recognized eminences in a domain of knowledge.  Not everyone would aspire to write academic journal articles or win prizes or research grants at all times.   This is a lesson that has been difficult for me to accept and assimilate.  Partly forced by circumstances, partly motivated by curiosity and interest, I decided in the last few years to write my latest book instead of writing high impact journal articles.  Writing a book made more sense to my family situation and health.

Now I am pursuing another book project, am putting more effort into this blog, and am collaborating with others in writing some journal articles.  This to me means striving for success using my creativity.  However, and because I am a perfectionist academic, it is still not easy to see myself as different from colleagues or previous role models both in academia or elsewhere.  There is the daily temptation to look at my academic citations and compare myself with others.  

Centre for Professional Success at Hull Business School

There is a lesson from the above:  Perhaps we need to be honest with ourselves and say something about the inner motivations and the external pressures that guide us as creators, and how we could take them forward. Achieving success (fame, economic benefit, fitting in within a community, or even pleasing those who we think deserve credit) needs to fit in with who we want to be.  There is a need to better link creativity with ethics, and do that through education and reflection.   

Many thanks Manchester and Hull, see you soon, with new ideas about creativity and how best to make it happen!