CREATIVITY

Giving Up Is the Enemy of

Creativity
by Brian J. Lucas and Loran Nordgren
DECEMBER 01, 2015

What determines whether the ideas we generate are truly creative? Recent research of
oursfinds that one common factor often gets in the way: we tend to undervalue the
benefits of persistence.
Giving Up Is the Enemy of Creativity

In a series of experiments we observed that people consistently underestimated the

number of ideas they could generate while solving a creative challenge. In one, we brought
24 university students into the laboratory during the week leading up to Thanksgiving and
asked them to spend ten minutes coming up with as many ideas of dishes to serve at
Thanksgiving dinner as they could. Then we had them predict how many more ideas they
could generate if they persisted on the task for an additional ten minutes. After that, they
actually persisted for ten minutes.

On average, the students predicted they would be able to generate around 10 new ideas if
they persisted. But we found that they were actually able to generate around 15 new ideas.

Several similar follow-up studies we conducted produced the same result. We asked
professional comedians to generate punch lines for a sketch comedy scene; adults to
generate advertisement slogans for a product; and peopleto come up with tactics a charity
organization could use to increase donations. In each of these experiments, participants
significantly underestimated how many ideas they could generate while persisting with
the challenge.

Importantly, after each study we asked a

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separate group of people to rate the creativity

of the participants ideas. Across the majority
of our studies we found that ideas generated
while persisting were, on average, rated to be
more creative than ideas generated initially.
Not only did participants underestimate their
ability to generate ideas while persisting,

they underestimated their ability to generate their most creative ideas.

Why do we underestimate the benefits of persistence? Its because creative challenges feel
difficult. People often have the experience of feeling stuck, being unsure of how to find a
solution, or hitting a wall with one idea and having to start over again.

Trying hard and failing to make progress on a non-creative task, like an advanced physics
problem, may appropriately signal that its time to stop working. But creative ideas take
time. They are often generated after an initial period of thinking deeply about the problem,
considering different ways to frame the problem, and exploring different possible solution
paths. Consider that Sir James Dyson developed over 5,000 prototypes before he patented
his best-selling Dyson vacuum cleaner. Or that Walt Disney animated cartoons for nearly
two decades before his first big hit, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

But our work shows that whencreative challenges start to feel difficult, most people lower
their expectations about the performance benefits of perseverance, and consequently,
underestimate their own ability to generate ideas.

Its important to accurately value persistence because our beliefs powerfully regulate our
behavior. If you do not recognize that persistence is valuable for creativity, you will be less
likely to persist when you face your own creative challenges.

In another study, we asked participants to work on a creative challenge, and we paid them
a small sum of money for each idea they generated. Then we told them they could
continue generating ideas (and make more money) if they first paid a small fee to go on.
We included the fee to simulate how the decision to persist always has an opportunity cost:
persisting on one task means having fewer resources to invest in other tasks. Even though
nearly all participants were expected to profit from persisting (based on the results of
pretesting), only 54% of participants chose to continue, and as we expected, those who
chose not to generated fewer creative ideas and made less money.

Our research suggests that workers typically underestimate the benefits of persistence
when it comes to being creative. In other words, some workers may have creative potential
that goes untapped when they decide not to persevere with a challenge. Based on our
research, we offer two recommendations to avoid this:

1. Ignore your first instinct to stop. When working on a tough creative challenge, you will
likely face a moment when you feel stuck and cant come up with any more ideas. Youll
first want to quit and spend your time doing something else. Temporarily ignore this

instinct, especially if youre still in the early stages of the work. Try to generate just a
few more ideas, or consider just a few more alternatives. You may find that your next
creative idea was closer than you imagined.
2. Remember that creative problems are supposed to feel difficult. Most involve setbacks,
failures, and that stuck feeling. Its part of the process. Suppress your instinct to
interpret these feelings as a signal that you just arent creative or that youve run out of
good ideas. Reaching your creative potential often takes time, and persistence is critical
for seeing a challenge through to the end.

Brian J. Lucas is an adjunct assistant professor of behavioral science and a postdoctoral researcher at
the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business.

Loran Nordgren is an associate professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School of
Management.

This article is about CREATIVITY

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2 COMMENTS

Edward Pierce

21 hours ago

Love the topic - thank you for taking the time. Id like to share some of my thinking / observations:
(1) Curious-ness I hypothesize that this research is skewed towards curious brains because the studies
looked at collegiate students and comedians. Both are problem solvers and are in their prime of problem
solving ability. Also, references to innovators like Dyson and Disney are using examples of people who
loved their task (were in fact all in on their task) and stopping could/would have been career endingthey
are also the last of 1% that crossed the finish line; we are not looking at all the animators and inventors
that started and stopped (I think the Popeil family is much more interesting) which I think is more relative
in your discussion. I would love to see the same experiments on average white-collar workers (over
various age ranges as I believe youll see trends in each age bucket) and see the resulting data.
(2) "Spool up" time - you talk that ideas while persisting were more creative than the initial ones. Based
on what Ive read to date is that the brain does required spooling up so often starting is the hardest
effort and if you dont hit the mark on the first idea, people who dont realize that they need to spool-up
their brain may quite the race before they warmed up! This is learned and can be taught to people to begin
the iterative process of problem solving.
(3) Scrumming Part of the iterating process that is so important is to have a team you can use to de-stick
yourself when youve gotten stuck. These folks are typically highly trusted so the stuck person can (a) be
AOK with admitting they are stuck and (b) trust that these conversations are held in confidence. The main
point of scrumming is to gain the other perspectives of the problem you see. This could also be a good test
to conduct to see the impact of teaming versus independent problem solving.
THANKS!
00

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