EDITORIAL

Templates for Creativity

S ome years ago the word template had arather traditional meaning. The earliest

templates were small pieces of wood thatcould be used as guides in the often repetitivework of the craftsman. The template was ofvalue because it served as a means of repli-cation and of generating variety. Perhaps atemplate was one of the earliest of all guidesin the manufacture of artifacts. The ability tosupport repetitive actions resulted in laboursaving. The contribution to variety supportedan essential ingredient in generating creativeand aesthetically pleasing products. In engin-eering, the simple templates that helped inthe building of machines of all kinds becamemore sophisticated. Now the `machines thatmake machines' are the successors to thesimpler templates.

Word processing packages have also ex-tended the meaning of template. Mostpackages offer short-cuts or templates thatthe user can put to use so as to generate amemo, or a letter or a graphic. The templateagain offers the combination of fitness for usefor repetitive tasks, and scope for modifica-tion each time of use to achieve local-leveloriginality. We can see that a template forwriting a letter does not reduce the scope forbeing creative in the way we shape thecontents of the letter; yet it helps out thevarious elements that shape the structure of aletter.

Here we have the way in which structureand freedom co-exist in creative production.It might be argued that in writing a letter wemay wish to be creative about its structure aswell as its contents. The template may befound wanting in impact, for example Theseare issues that might be worth pursuingfurther. At the simplest level, however, wecan see the merits of resorting to templateswithin the processes of generating novel andcreative products. In short, templates arepossible aids to everyday creativity.

Templates and Structures forCreativity

There is one view of creativity that regards allconstraints as inhibiting. To which, we mightcomment that some kinds of constraint seemmore inhibiting than others, and that con-straints can also be regarded as a necessarycomponent within a wider `world'. Theprocess of identifying and seeking to dosomething about constraints is one way ofdescribing creative effort. This leads us tothoughts of threat/opportunity as two sidesof the same coin. Even in the west we arebecoming more familiar with this notion, socentral to eastern philosophies. So there isnothing ultimately paradoxical about struc-tures (such as templates) that are valuableelements within the creative process.

If `some constraints are more inhibiting thanothers' we need to look more carefully at whatsort of constraints, under what conditions, aresupportive of creativity? The question wasimplied in the work of the British researcherMichael Kirton. Famed for his KAI (KirtonAdaption Innovation inventory), Kirton drewattention to a previously ignored possibilityin studies of the creative individual. He sug-gested that creativity as a mental product couldemerge from a process with relatively littleattention to structure. This is what he termedan innovative style or preference. It could alsoemerge from a mental process with relativelyhigh levels of structure, which he termed anadaptive style or preference. Before Kirton,the innovative style was generally regardedas the only one associated with creativity.We might see it as a template or structurethat supported creativity. Kirton pointed outthat the adaptive style was also supportiveof creativity, although it tended to favour a`different kind of creative product'. So, wenow have different templates and differentkinds of product. Kirton has helped us realise

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that templates or structures have to havesome sort of `fit' with the requirements of asituation. At times the person favouring aninnovative style (`template') may be highlyeffective; at times it will be the adaptive,highly structured approach that is more likelyto be effective. Both styles are productive ofinnovation, and we are better able to see thedistinctions between breakthrough creativityand step-by-step or developmental creativity.

The Voice of the Product

This journal has papers that indicate ways inwhich templates and structures can supportcreativity. Jacob Goldenberg and DavidMazursky take the term template to indicateidentifiable regularities in product featuresthat can serve as means of facilitating andchanneling the creative process. The implica-tion is that products can `speak to us' and tellus about those features that have becomeencoded into them. In effect, the complexityof the market gets encoded and can be de-coded to `tell' us about new product possi-bilities before any possibility of conventional`signals from the marketplace'. Goldenbergshows how the `voice of the product' can bestudied. One of his methods, that of morpho-logical analysis, is in our terms a structurethat enables creativity. It happens to be onethat establishes a relatively high level of struc-ture on the ideational search. The authorssuggest that the less structured approachesthat occurred in developing more break-through products we intuitive and tacit,whereas the creativity technique makes theprocess of knowledge acquision and conver-sion more explicit.

Benign Structures for TeamDevelopment

The article by Goldenberg examines tem-plates for new product development. Ourown article (Rickards and Moger) examines`benign structures' for team development.Like Goldenberg, we have come to believein the importance of structures that enhancecreativity. The term indicates that structuresare not necessarily inhibitors of creative pro-cesses and outcomes. We suggest that theapplication of creative problem-solving tech-niques represents efforts to strengthen the useof some benign structures. From that pointof departure with established theory we aredeveloping insights into the way various oper-ational procedures re-structure behaviours,particularly within project-focused and task-focused teams.

The third contribution dealing with tem-plates comes from Gerard Puccio, who hasserved a long apprenticeship at the hub ofcreative education research at Buffalo. Pucciobriefly outlines the historical contributionsof the Buffalo School before introducing anew measure of personal preferences. Hiswork suggests that operating a template orstructure for creative problem-solving willhave differential effects on users. This hasconsiderable implications in the design andapplication of structures, not least in thescope for better utilisation of the differentialtalents within a problem-solving team.

Less than Benign Templates

John Groth and John Peters have conductedan extensive study of perceived blocks tocreativity. This is itself an established routeto considering how to enhance creativity. Inthe context of this issue, we might regard theblocks as malign structures, the study of whichhelps identify the more positive or benignstructures or templates for supporting thecreative process.

The Multi-facetted Nature ofCreativity

We should not, however, assume, that atemplate-based view of creativity will removeall the complexities of the subject. We arereminded of this in Cameron Ford's study inwhich interpretative style, motivation, abilityand context are all contributing features thatimpact on executive's creative performance.

A similar multiplicity of factors occurs atthe level of enterprise support systems,studied and reported by Rustam Lalkakaand Pier Abetti. Perhaps support systemscan themselves be seen as templates in whichcase the key success factors vary according tothe maturity of the enterprise.

The final contribution, by Patrick Sik-wahFong from Hong Kong, re-examines theconcept of Value Management as a templatefor group creative problem-solving. It indi-cates how such methods are applied to theculturally important issue of the potential badfeng-shui of redeveloping of a site facing afuneral parlour.

Thus the issue spans Eastern and Westernexperiences, and examines creativity across arange of levels and contexts. In such varietythe concept of benign structures or templatesfor creativity is revealed, and remains achallenge for future studies.

Tudor Rickards

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