Why Creative Thinkers Are Smarter Than Logical Ones

THE GROOVE

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If you set out to do work that is truly creative and innovative, you will encounter a lot of resistance at first.

Ideas that are new and different, either in a boardroom or in a studio, are usually perceived as threats that make other people’s brains work harder. Most don’t want that challenge; they’d rather conserve energy and be in a comfortable place.

Critics, respected for their vast knowledge and logical thinking, will tear down innovative ideas. These are the people who always seem to know better or have arguments that are supposedly more elevated than the novelty that’s being proposed.

Creative thinking requires more intellectual effort than logical thinking. This is because being creative engages more parts of the brain across both hemispheres. It involves trying multiple ideas by way of juxtaposing, mixing, and extracting.

Evaluating or criticizing an idea is much easier than coming up with a new one that has been synthesized from multiple sources. In other words: creative people are smarter than the critics who “know it all”.

Here are three remarkable examples in art, business, and science:

Auguste Rodin is considered the pioneer of modern sculpture who forever revolutionized the medium. Using clay, he was able to infuse emotions of ecstasy, love and grief in his work, breaking away from the canons and traditions imposed on the artists of his time.

Critics came after him for reasons that now seem laughable: he modeled the human body unidealized and so real that he was accused of cheating and sculpting on top of his model instead of casting him from afar.

“The Age of Bronze,” as he titled the work, was exhibited in the 1877 Paris Salon and caused such a stir that Rodin became known everywhere in France. After the scandal settled, the French government bought the sculpture, acknowledging Rodin’s mastery and the work’s importance in history. (Today there are several casts from the same sculpture in museums ranging from The Met in New York to the Musée d'Orsay in Paris).

Years later, Rodin was already well known and affluent, imbuing his sculptures with ideas that came from other fields such as literature and poetry. He was decades ahead of his time with his interdisciplinary thinking expressed through art.

In a conversation Rodin had with French writer Paul Gsell, the latter said, “Your censors blame you for having an inspiration that is more literary than plastic and that art is not the place for such literary ambition….” Rodin shrugged and answered: “It is a mistake… to imagine that the true artist can be content to remain only a skilled workman and that he needs no intelligence.”

Does anyone remember the name of the critics who came after Rodin? … I rest my case.

When Steve Jobs took over Pixar, the company had been lagging and struggled to produce a blockbuster, despite employing some of the most brilliant minds in the world.

Jobs noticed that people and teams criticized each other’s ideas and with this, they were killing the best ones. So, he instituted a policy of “plussing”-- one could only offer a criticism if it included a potential solution.

This was a catalyst moment that shifted the entire dynamic of the company, turning the employees and managers from critics to creators. This marked the beginning of a winning streak for Pixar, starting with the development of Toy Story followed by A Bug’s Life and Monsters Inc.

The issue is that in real life, “critics” seem to get more respect and rewards than the creatives because the critics sound more intelligent.

The “smart-talk trap,” a term coined by Stanford professors Robert I. Sutton and Jeffrey Pfeffer, refers to those who seem to know too much but do too little.

They let “smart talk” be a substitute for action and discuss plans or take others' ideas down instead of actually fixing the problems at hand.

These people, known for their logical reasoning, get high positions in companies and organizations but are ineffective leaders because nothing really ever changes. The best ideas from other people die and solutions don’t get executed.

Much in the same way that Rodin’s censors relied on the “smart-talk trap” by trying to appear more cultivated and superior, book reviewers were the subject of a study conducted by Harvard professor Teresa Amabile.

She found that people who wrote negative book reviews were perceived as less likable but more intelligent and expert compared to those who wrote positive book reviews, even when the content of the positive review was independently judged as being of higher quality and greater forcefulness. Do you see the dysfunction in this?

As a creative, the way to counteract the critic is by taking a neutral stance like Rodin did, and continue exploring meaningful, purposeful, and independent work. Or demonstrate this with actions -which speak louder than words- proving the value and viability of a great idea.

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