Tired after zooming in and out

It’s not easy to accept that I am tired and am allowed to have bad or less exciting days. 

(Source:  http://clipart-library.com/clipart/741683.htm)

The pandemic has asked to be really alert.  This is like going into overdrive more often than not. Part of the new ‘normal’ for people like me. 

(Source: https://www.istockphoto.com)

For example, taking each of my children to buy sports gear in the last couple of days and in between work meetings proved to be taxing.  I was careful and so were they.  An opportunity to go out and fulfil promises, also to zoom out after being online (which really drains me after an hour or so!). Still, we missed not cleaning an item or checking on another one before using it, and my mind raced to foresee tragic consequences.  To top it all, watching the news made me feel powerless and feel in need of a hug.  

https://dougdvorak.com/worry-never-works-take-action/

When things like this happen, I withdraw and try to recover, often doing so on my own. I curse, I panic, I go into fight or flight mode, only to fall (even more) tired and regretful. 

Perhaps it’s time to continue accepting we cannot control everything around us, and give ourselves a pat in the back for having tried to do our best, or even failing. 

Let’s accept the good and the bad.  Let’s hope we can do better tomorrow, perhaps more slowly.  We are still in lock down, even if that means slowly learning to live differently, with our different selves, and with the virus. 

Our creativity is still at work. Silently, she is leading us to complete the day. She might be saying: “No need for big fanfare. Just a bit of routine, tantrums allowed along the way”, putting her hand in our chests to let us know we are all right.  

Source:  https://sunflowerrosecw.wordpress.com/tag/inspiring/

Let’s acknowledge that in certain circumstances, zooming in and out is tiring, and that we are just learners who are not alone in this journey.  Creativity is there, with all of us living the best way we can, just for today. 

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! 

The blind leading the blind : IT and economic growth

For some reason today I remembered my participation in an international event a few years ago.  The theme was e-government in small (commonwealth) states.  Not that I know much about the commonwealth, or e-government for that effect.  But then I was invited to talk about my research.

The opening discourse made it clear a link between IT and economic growth.  In other words, invest in IT and somewhere along the line of time, there will be economic benefits.  Success stories from some countries seem to confirm this.  If you want to be more specific, then think of IT as a new source for business creation, tool to  achieve of efficiencies, sharing and dissemination of knowledge, and ultimately a leveraging point to improve quality of life. 

It is at this point though where the magicians (aka the blind people) appear to guide the rest of us (the rest of the blind people).  Those experts with knowledge to translate the effects and impacts of IT in economic terms.  The same experts that then go on to claim IT as a somehow gift from heaven, pervading every aspect of life, and making it better.  The latest chapter of this story is being edited by claiming that IT can help you and I live longer, so that we know what we can be living or dying for in the future given our bodily data.  

I am not an expert in economics as said before.  But cannot digest entirely this link between IT and economic growth.  If the link was so evident, why is that we have different success and failure stories? Whilst IT can indeed become a way to create industry, a way to innovate, and a way to disseminate information (not sure about disseminating knowledge either), why is it that we still think that it is people (managers, policy makers, students, entrepreneurs, housewives, house husbands, unemployed or failed graduates among many others) the ones who make the difference between success and failure? 

We can end up comparing the hardworking, visionary and organised people with the more lazy and less outspoken (I include myself in this latter group). I personally hate comparisons of character.  Perhaps I could live with comparisons of skills.  But then the debate would be limited to education or training, something I also think is misleading.  

As a good friend and former boss said to me once, we are betting on an ideal when we invest in IT.  We are unconsciously hoping that the success story will become true (you can read a previous blog post on the nice story about IT).  We are putting millions in the casino.  

All because of a link.

And of course we are hoping that people will do their bit, even in the darkest hours, when the link appears elusive.  

We need more meta-studies to ascertain more clearly what really IT is generating.  We need to decide how IT is really impacting in our societies, as well as how we want IT to be conceived of and used.