Creativity vs discipline

The Straits Times had a small piece on Friday about a new report from the Singapore Human Resource Institute. Apparently, a survey of 61 firms found that bosses think that Singaporean workers are [r]eliable, diligent and productive, but lacking in creativity and leadership. The survey included both local firms and multinationals.

What was surprising – even worrying – was the comment that “Not only does it cost more to recruit a foreigner, many employers might also find that they do not need a creative worker vis-a-vis one who has good work ethics”.

I say ‘worrying’, firstly because seems to take for granted an either-or view: either a worker is creative or he/she has good a good work ethic. Secondly, we often hear that Singapore is a small nation, with no resource other than people. Well, Singapore’s economic competitors also have people – and many, many more of them. In the cases of India and China, there are more and more highly-educated, motivated and and innovative people entering the workforce, and they are moving up the value chain very fast.

Singapore is still a high-power-distance society, where many people (and especially the older generation) are most comfortable with a hierarchical model. I guess that’s why so many bosses in the survey preferred obedient, disciplined workers who do what they’re told. Still, if Singapore’s workers are its only resource, then we need them to be operating at maximum capacity and effectiveness – and that, perhaps, means more than just following orders and ‘having a good work ethic’.

Now, this is a topic that can be endlessly debated. It can be seen as tortoise vs hare – i.e. which is better for Singapore: the more anarchic, chaotic creativity of Silicon Valley, or slow, patient, structured research. The first will produce faster results, I guess, and it’s the kind championed by Paul Graham. The second is definitely the Singaporean way; as I understand it, research in universities and agencies here is done by PhDs only and is very closely managed, allowing very little divergence from the original plan.

By chance, there was a good article in Wired recently that reflected on these two approaches. Daniel Pink, in What kind of genius are you? writes about work done by economist David Galenson, which shows that artistic genius can be divided into two types. The first are “Conceptual innovators”, who change the rules of the game. The second are “experimental innovators” who, through trial and error, get better and better at what they do. The former (people such as Orson Welles and Andy Warhol) do their best work young; the latter (for example, Mark Twain, Alfred Hitchcock, Mark Rothko) and, later in life.

If we equate artistic genius and economic creativity, allowing this model to apply to both, then in Silicon Valley we see conceptual innovation; Singapore is investing in experimental innovation.

The problem is that in the world of art, Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles can coexist: there is room for them both. In the market economy, the experimental innovators may find that their work becomes irrelevant, because the conceptual innovators have suddenly and dramatically changed the rules of the market.

In these terms, we can see that the tumultuous economic development in India and China, with their huge numbers of young, educated, and wildy ambitious engineers and entrepreneurs favours conceptual innovation. Even if most of them fail, the sheer number of people innovating means that there’s a high chance of radically market-shifting innovations emerging. Will slow-and-steady, experimental innovation, done by workers with a strong work ethic but low creativity, be able to cope?