[SOUND]. Hello everyone, I'm Katherine [INAUDIBLE] and I'm a myth buster. When I first came to Penn State, I was a pretty traditional engineer. I built robots, they were big, they were walking machines the size of a bus. I hadn't really thought about creativity very much before, or about whether I was creative or not. But I liked to think about thinking. I liked to think about people's ideas, and why those ideas were different from person to person. So I decided I would look into creativity a little bit more. And what I found fascinated me. But there were other things about it that were made me kind of confused. There were mixed messages I was getting and I wanted to understand them. So for example, some people told me that I couldn't be creative and an engineer at the same time. I thought, wait a minute. What about my walking machines? Aren't they creative? And what about some of the other engineers in history? Like the Wright brothers and their airplane or Grace Hopper, who programmed some of the first computers. Weren't they creative, too? I realized then that there are a lot of myths and misconceptions about creativity out there. And I decided that I was going to try to bust those myths apart. So in this course, that's part of what we're going to do. We're going to take some of the most dangerous myths, take 'em apart and figure out why they don't make sense. And then put them back together in a way that does make sense. Let's get started with the very first one. One of the most dangerous myths about creativity is the one that says that only some people are creative. Lots of times people will put people into piles according to what they do, so they'll take designers and musicians and artists and say, oh, they're the creative ones. And then they will take the accountants and engineers and the math teachers and say, oh they're not very creative we'll put them in this pile over here. Why doesn't that make sense? Well think about it. If creativity is about producing something new, then what does the subject matter have to do with it. I can be creative as an artist or an engineer. Or planting my garden or organizing my closet. The subject matter doesn't matter. What about the second myth? The second myth says that only some kinds of ideas are creative. Usually it means people are thinking about the revolutionary the breakthrough, the out of the box ideas as being the creative ones. Well those are creative, of course! But what about another kind of creativity? A kind of evolutionary creativity that digs down into a subject, where we figure out how the details work, and as we put them back together we get more insight. That's creativity too. It's a different kind of creativity. And so today I want to talk about four principles. Something called creative diversity that's going to help us sort out these myths and misconceptions. Are you ready? Let's find out. [BLANK_AUDIO] So how are we going to bust these creative myths? I want to show you something today called the creative diversity model. It's richer and more inclusive than all those myths put together. It comes from some famous people who look at creativity. People like Michael Curtain, and Robert Sternberg, Teresa Mabalay, and me. So, there are four principles that I want to tell you about. Principle number one says. Everyone is creative. Not just some people. Everyone is creative from the moment from the moment they're born till the moment they die. Whether you have evolutionary ideas or revolutionary ideas. Whether they're practical or outrageous, simple or complex, everyone is creative. Now principle number two says, while everyone is creative, we're not all creative in the same way. Somehow, we have to describe these differences. There are many different ways we could think about doing that. And the third principle says, we're going to describe our creative diversity using four variables. The first variable is creative level. Then there's creative style, motive, and opportunity. Now creative level is about your capacity, your mental capacity. So imagine that your brain is like a bucket, it has a particular size and shape that you were born with. You may have a special, talent, let's say, for math or for language, or for art or for dance. That's part of describing your creative level. There, then there's creative style. Creative style is about how your brain likes to work with all that knowledge and experience. Some people have a more structured way of working with what they have in their heads. They polish their ideas more carefully. They use more detailed. They tend to offer the evolutionary ideas. Then there are people who have a less structured creative style. They are the more [UNKNOWN] thinkers. Those out of the box thinkers. There is actually a whole continuum of creative style and we all fall somewhere along it. All of that diversity of creative style is important. And when you put creative level and creative style together, you get this wide variety of creative proty, profiles and every single one of them is useful. The next variable is motive. We're motivated by different things. And depending upon what motivates you, that's going to determine how you apply your energy to creative endeavors. Some people are motivated by financial gain, other people by doing good works. Think about your biggest motivators. The fourth variable is opportunity. We all see opportunities differently. Somebody may say to you, well, look at this fantastic opportunity. And you say, well, yeah, I can see it. But I don't think I really want to pick that one up today. So we see opportunity differently. So remember those four variables of creative diversity. Level, style, motive, and opportunity. Now the fourth principle of creative diversity says that there's no one combination of those that is ideal all the time. Think about all the problems in the world. Think about all the things that we need to do. Sometimes we need revolutionary ideas in math. Sometimes we need evolutionary ideas in economics. Sometimes we have one motive with a different problem. There's all kinds of variety. And we need that creative diversity to solve all those problems together. There's no ideal form of creativity. So here's what I'd like you to do this week. I'd like you to think about yourself and those four variables. What's your creative level? What are the things that you know, the skills that you have, the kinds of experience that you've gathered in your life? What's your creative style? Do you prefer a more structured approach to ideas, or a less structured approach? Do you think you're somewhere in the middle of that? Think about what motivates you. What makes you put your energy into something? And fourth, think about your opportunities. What are the things that come in front of you as you go through life, and how do you respond to them? That's going to give you your very first glimpse, at your creativity profile. Now, before I go, there's one more myth that I want to mention today. Who says women can't be engineers? Thanks for joining us, I'll see you next time
