From Creativity to Uncertainty

Part 1: How a designer came to write a book about uncertainty.

I have a confession to make. This book was not meant to be about uncertainty. Not at all. I am an industrial designer by training and originally intended to explore a subject matter close to my heart. Creativity. As a designer, creative director, and entrepreneur I have spent the last twenty years learning the craft of upholstery in Italy, designing teak furniture on the island of Java, prototyping bunkbeds in India, building wheelchairs in Korea, and developing LED lights in China. I have designed and built retail stores for French luxury brands, helped 3D print concept cars, and ran corporate innovation programs. If upon reading these lines you feel alarmed by such boastful, immodest claims please allow me to redress it thus: During the aforementioned two decades most of my creative output was revised, cast aside, dismissed, rebuffed or denied. Clients have openly mocked my inexperience, walked out on me during meetings, and, on one occasion, fired me over dinner. My path has been convoluted and erratic, more fit than start, more pain than gain, more failure than fame. However, what I have come to value most is not my portfolio of modest achievements, but the creative problem solving skills gathered working in the innovation space. Those insights were intended to be at the heart of the book I set out to write. But then, as so often in my life, something unexpected happened. During the early research, I became fascinated with the connection between creativity and uncertainty. I discovered that although creative professionals as disparate as script writers, composers, sculptors, user experience designers, and photographers all share a curious personality trait. They have an elevated tolerance for ambiguity and openness to new experiences. Whether consciously or unconsciously they have internalized that generating something original is necessarily the exploration of hitherto unknown connections and the mapping of unpredictable terrain. In the pursuit of novel solutions they have learned (among many other things) to treat uncertainty as a familiar friend, domesticate it, and actively seek out the unknown. This is not to say that creativity is esoteric. Most of a designer’s working time is spent identifying objectives, defining boundary conditions, and then iterating possible solutions to practical problems like user requirements, budget, time frame, material properties, technical feasibility, client preferences, or manufacturing conditions. Creativity isn’t esoteric, it’s mostly problem solving. One of the greatest creatives born in the 19th Century, Thomas Edison said that “genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” What he did not say is that to capture this one percent inspiration it is crucial to step back and make space for the unexpected, to allow for and even welcome surprises. In case you object that Edison was not a creative professional, I would like to explain how I define creativity for the purposes of this book. Creativity is not confined to the work of professionals in the arts and design fields; to poets, troubadours and inventors perched at lofty heights thinking rarified thoughts. I intend it in the broadest possible sense. Anyone who generates original material, whether physical objects, intangible ideas, concepts, or novel solutions is engaged in the creative act. Teachers writing curriculums, software developers coding sub-routines, chefs creating menus, engineers drafting machine parts, chemists developing colloidal systems, retailers optimizing store layouts all walk untrodden paths in pursuit of the new and improved. Now you might object that an unkempt teenager creating a grumpy cat meme in his mother’s basement cannot possibly be compared to a famed composer writing the second movement of a symphony. I argue that you can. That comparison may be more or less favorable depending on the metrics you use, but for the sake of brevity let’s look at economic and cultural impact as a good place to start. Under these conditions comparing an internet meme to a symphony seems unfair, but is it? In today’s digital age, some YouTube videos have more cultural impact than Hollywood movies, some blogs more readers than published authors, and some Kickstarter campaigns more sales than products sold at Macy’s. Let’s imagine that the grumpy cat meme goes viral, and the symphony is scorned by fickle music critics at the premiere and never played again — who had the larger cultural and economic impact?

Because of my professional background, the basis of my understanding of uncertainty is rooted in the creative approach to dealing with the unknown. This includes the theory and practice of creative techniques such as analytic and synthetic methods of ideation, convergent and divergent thinking, the framing of problems as questions, combinatory lists, perspective reversal, random input, and many more. However, I realized that the creative space was a very limited area, and so I decided to expand my horizon to other domains. I was curious to learn how uncertainty was dealt with in other professions, so I started interviewing scientists, corporate strategists, economists, investors, architects and educators. All responses were very much alike. Everyone acknowledged that uncertainty played a significant role in their life, but struggled to define or explain how they dealt with it. In my interviews uncertainty appeared like a dim, murky space that defied attempts to describe it. And thus my obsession was born. I spent the following two years interviewing more people and reading every book, article, research paper and blog related to uncertainty I could get my hands on. I scrutinized uncertainty like a bug in a jar, formulated frameworks, and explored the areas of academia and business where it plays a defining role. I discovered that historically, with a few exceptions, uncertainty had rarely prompted much academic debate. However, the last few decades have seen a wave of renewed interest across economics, decision theory, probability science, mathematics, risk management, strategy planning, political science, defense, environmental science, information theory, machine learning and medicine. As of the present day, entering the search term uncertainty into Google Scholar yields about four and a half million results in academic literature alone.

In light of the above I faced a disturbing question that you may ask yourself too. You may wonder whether the author, yours truly, is qualified to provide meaningful insights regarding this complex topic. The question what a designer could possibly have to contribute to such an intellectual debate is certainly justified. I am neither a scholar, intellectual, or respected authority on this matter. I went to art school. I am an amateur, an ordinary member of the public. I am no one, and I come from nowhere. Surprisingly, therein lies the strength of my argument. Allow me to explain. In preparation for this book I ingested vast amounts of literature related to uncertainty. What I found was expert analysis in a multitude of fields ranging from particle physics and cognitive psychology to neuroscience and constitutional law. The insights I acquired are the foundation of this book and I gratefully stand on the shoulders of many an author that I cannot match in erudition, education and scholarship. However, while the lack of domain specific knowledge made me an expert in none, it conferred me something rare. An expansive birds-eye perspective unobstructed by academic preferences or domain specific biases. Of course, I do not claim to be objective or entirely free of bias. I believe that to be impossible. In Oscar Wilde’s words: “Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself.” In writing this book, my aim is to paint a picture of uncertainty from an uncommon perspective. This perspective is by definition subjective and cannot possibly claim to be comprehensive. However, it is unique, original, and more than the sum of its parts. It is written as an essay because this perspective is best described as a story. A story best told by a passionate dilettante.

This book is a narrative to reframe our relationship with a misunderstood feature of our world. My thesis is that uncertainty isn’t a residual error that thwarts our otherwise flawless calculations. It isn’t the small and remote pocket of unexplored wilderness, the diminishing shadow receding before our growing scientific and technological prowess. It is a permanent feature of the world that we neglect at our own peril. It is the vast negative space that delineates our body of knowledge. It is the boundary condition that shapes the evolution of biological life as well as the confines of our perception. It is a force that determines our choices and social interactions. Most importantly, it is the seedbed of creativity, innovation and everything that lies in our future. Uncertainty is value free. Despite common misconceptions it is neither good nor bad. It can help or hinder, spurn or stymie us. However, it has a powerful impact on our lives. It has a direct effect on professional choices and corporate decision-making. As a precursor to fear, it can send shockwaves through global markets, sway government policy, and even trigger war. Lastly, the feeling of uncertainty is often caused by a feature that is becoming a defining characteristic of our time. Change. On a cognitive and emotional level we do not deal well with rapid shifts in our environment. It makes acquired knowledge obsolete and disrupts our habits. However, whether we like it or not, the pace of social, environmental, and technological change is accelerating in the world and it is crucial that we learn to become more adaptable. Understanding, domesticating, and learning to live with uncertainty may well be key to our success as a species.