July 1986

Art IS big business:
the value of a creative education in
the free enterprise marketplace

By Ted Kingan

J t may come as a surprise to many that
creative problem-solving and innova-
tive thinking are of paramount impor-
tance in the cut-throat arena of the free-
enterprise marketplace. Those who still
believe that a rigid, regimented “back to
basics” education system which relegates
the kind of creative thinking cultivated in
visual art programs to mere tokenism
will best serve the needs of business and
industry in this technological age are
clearly unaware that such a policy will be
found to be counter-productive, by which
time it will be too late.

Mortimer J. Adler, when chairman of
the board of editors of the Encyclopaedia
Britannica, wrote in Newsweek “Corpora-
tions should recognize that the most im-
portant posts they have to offer can be
better filled by broadly trained general-
ists than by narrow specialists.” He
believes, as do a great many, that “the
primary function of our institutions of
higher learning, which means the func-
tion they should perform at the under-
graduate level of the college, should be to
teach the ordinary student to be a cultur-
ed person.”

Tom: Peters, a co-author of the best-
selling book about successful American
companies, In Search of Exceilence, a free-

enterprise polemic if ever there was one,
defines three areas where American
companies need to do much better. One
of these is the area of innovation. By
definition, to innovate is to introduce
something new, original and different, an
ability unlikely to be fostered by any edu-
cation system dominated by standardiz-
ed learning of tightly prescribed material
and the need to memorize this material in
preparation for examinations. As the
Japanese have now discovered to their
cost, such an education discourages crea-
tive, divergent thinking and encourages a
conformity of thought, attitude and be-
haviour, qualities unlikely to be held in
great esteem by companies endeavouring
to hold their own in the fiercely competi-
tive marketplace.

A special report in the business maga-
zine Success poses the question: “Can you
make it to the top in business if you're not
highly creative?’ Many of us, says the ar-
ticle, would say, certainly you can: we
would rank drive, decisiveness, and an
analytical mind high above creativity
among the qualities you need to reach the
true heights. “But,” continues the article,
“surprisingly, many top companies are
beginning to think differently. Faced
with increasingly stiff competition both

Most

However sporadically the Informer may
appear in your mail,
valiantly to be a weekly publication,
at least during the Fall and Spring
terms. This newsletter is published by
Information Services, A118, local 2002,
and submissions are greeted with joy
and delight. Photos are generally taken
by Edna Sakata in MPC and prepared for
publication by Dave Sharrock. Printing
is done by Linda Givens and Dave Callow
in the Print Shop, and distribution is
handled by the Mail Room/Typing Pool.
everything else can be blamed on
Donna McMahon, but she'll deny it.

COLOPHON

it is still trying

British Columbia's BUSINESS EXAMINER

at home and abroad, they are realizing
that they desperately need new ideas.
Some of them, taking their cue from the
best-selling In Search of Excellence:
Lessons from America’s Best-Run Com-
panies, have tried to build creativity into
their corporate structures. Kodak and
Goodyear have innovation committees in
each division and Hewlett-Packard has
an ‘intrapreneurship' program to provide
research and development funding for in-
novative ideas outside the corporate
mainstream.”

Companies are realizing
that they desperately need
new ideas. Some of them,
taking their cue from the
best-selling In Search of
Excellence have tried to
build creativity into their
corporate structures.

Apparently, many corporations are
packing their employees off to training
programs run by the dozens of “creativity
consultants” who have set up shop. Even
business schools now teach creativity
alongside basic accounting and organiza-
tional theory.

Stanford University professor Michael
Ray says: “Creativity is within everyone
and is essential to happiness, health and
success in a business career.”

Tudor Rickards, a professor at the
Manchester Business School in England,
makes the obvious distinction between
the naturally gifted artists and scientists
and the average person, concentrating his
teaching on creative problem-solving; the
ability to overcome obstacles by ap-
proaching them in novel ways. It is this
kind of creativity that he believes comes
in most handy in the business world.

At this point, the reader may be won-
dering what ail this has to do with the arts
and the economy. Simply put, as was
stated at the outset, during hard eco-
nomic times governments tend to con-
centrate their priorities and funding in
areas of the curriculum which they
believe are most directly related to the
assumed needs of the private sector and
which will, therefore, pay-off in eco-
nomic returns. In itself, this goal is not
necessarily unreasonable, but what usu-
ally happens is that the baby is thrown
out with the bathwater, the ‘baby’ in this
case being the humanities and the visual
and performing arts. However, as hard

evidence from the business community
itself is increasingly showing, the most
fundamental need in the private sector is
for creative individuals, such as those
who have been exposed to visual art
courses in particular, where creative
problem-solving is the name of the game.

Specialists in the field of human think-
ing processes believe that most people,
including the vast majority of business-
men, tend to rely on their speech-centred
left hemisphere of the brain to a greater
extent than do “say, artists, who are typi-
cally right-brained and emotion centred.
So, the key to making executives more
imaginative is to teach them to use their
right brains more.” In view of current
research into the workings of the brain,
would it not make sense for education
systems to strive towards a more ration-
ally balanced curriculum in which both
kinds of thinking are given equal recogni-
tion? If not, why not?

The proliferation of creativity training
programs now being implemented by
businesses, have a direct bearing on cor-
porate success, and shows that the op-
posite of creativity is rigid or habitual
thinking.

The Economist featured an article on the
new corporate managers in America,
stating that the main reason American
commerce finds its toughest competition
in Europe is because “people there benefit
from an education system that teaches
them how to do things rather than who
to be.”

In the same article it is mentioned:
“There have always been managers, from
the more enlightened mill-owners of the
last century to the founders of Marks and
Spencer, Honda, IBM or Apple, who
tumbled to the apparently obvious fact
that people work better when they know
about and sympathize with the nature
and purpose of their work. This well esta-
blished but, until recently, little noticed
fact about values and flexibility they give
to organizations has now won wide
recognition because of the need to adapt
quickly to changes in the economy and
faster innovation.’

These insights, coming as they do not
from educators but from the private sec-
tor and published in an internationally
respected business journal, are surely de-
serving of serious consideration. Earlier
in this article it was mentioned that
research shows that people learn best
when they are highly motivated because
they can see purpose and value in what
they are asked to do; when they have a
personal stake in an activity. Since the
majority of people change occupations
several times during their lifetime and
since the introduction of new technolo-
gies will require the re-training of a great
many workers, it is obviously more im-
portant that students leave school equip-
ped to cope with these realities than
crammed full of information which is un-
likely to play a useful part in their lives
once it has served its original purpose of
enabling them to pass examinations.

— Last in the sens.
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