Creating Around Copyright

A. Creativity and the Path of Least Resistance The basic intuition underlying constraint's emergence as a positive force in creativity theory is a story of overabundance. The more resources one has, the easier it is to find and solve a problem in a manner that imitates a prior exemplar. Some freedom is critical, but too much of it invites stasis. (149) This phenomenon stems from creativity's cognitive mechanisms. According to the influential model developed by Professor Ronald Finke and his colleagues, problem solving occurs over the course of two phases. (150) In the initial "generative" phase, an individual develops "preinventive structures," loose mental representations such as verbal combinations or visual images that serve as potential precursors to a solution. (151) He may retrieve these structures directly from memory, synthesize them by combining other structures, or transfer them analogically from another domain. (152) These structures are necessarily incomplete, sometimes no more than "a mere germ of an idea. (153) This is where the second, "exploratory" phase comes in. The individual explores and interprets these structures, feeling out their suitability as solutions to the problem. (154) If that process doesn't yield a satisfactory solution on the first try, the individual will shuttle back and forth between generating and exploring preinventive structures, updating those structures with the feedback from each cycle until a solution emerges. (155) The constraints that govern the appropriateness of the solution affect the structures that individuals will retrieve during the creative process. (156) If there are few constraints, most individuals by default seek out a prior successful exemplar and work in a top-down fashion to conform the solution to it. (157) Following this path of least resistance inhibits originality, and hence creativity, by launching a mimetic approach to problem solving. The ultimate product will closely resemble the exemplar from which it sprang. (158) Whether the creator is conscious of it or not, there has been a powerful cognitive constraint at work all along: the exemplar itself. Increasing the amount of constraint that the individual must satisfy breaks the mimetic cycle. Constraint makes it more difficult to retrieve a fully formed exemplar that will remain appropriate to the task. (159) As a result, preinventive structures grow more abstract and less likely to conjure up a previous solution. (160) Rather than conform a solution to an already well-developed model, the individual must instead consult broader knowledge frameworks and engage in the sort of conceptual synthesis and analogy that tends to produce original ideas. (161) This approach to creative cognition has come to be known as the Path of Least Resistance theory. (162) To be sure, there's nothing inherently wrong with following the path of least resistance, as Professor Thomas Ward, the theory's pioneer, has emphasized. (163) Conforming solutions to prior exemplars is, in fact, a perfectly efficient way to approach many problems. But it's not a terribly effective route to originality. And where the problem solver transfers aspects of the exemplar to a new context where they are unnecessary or detrimental to the solution, it's not an effective route to appropriateness, either. (164) In the 1970s, for example, Sony almost abandoned plans for the CD on the ground that an LP-sized digital disc would hold far more music than most consumers would be willing to pay for. Apparently, the thought of creating a smaller disc hadn't occurred to the company's engineers. (165) Sony realized its error only when it saw another firm using smaller discs. (166) That error, according to Ward, was probably the product of path-of-least-resistance thinking. (167) Cognitively, then, creativity is better off under constraints that encourage a more abstract approach. (168) The next section describes in greater detail a few of the significant empirical studies that show the theory at work. …