Creativity (excerpt from The Collapse of Parenting, © 2016 Leonard Sax)

 

Let’s consider this notion of American creativity. The Irish author Eamonn Fingleton observes that American global supremacy in creativity and innovation is a relatively recent phenomenon. Ralph Gomory, former head of research at I.B.M., told Fingleton that up until the 1930s, the United States was regarded as an adapter of other nations’ technologies.[1] In other words, prior to World War II, the United States played the role which has been played in more recent decades by East Asian countries.  

The half-century between 1945 and 1995 was the great era of American creativity and innovation. In the first half of that period, from 1945 through roughly 1970, Americans truly did lead the world in transportation, in manufacturing, in agricultural sciences and food production, and in communications. In the second half of that period, from 1970 through the mid-1990s, researchers at American universities as well as at private corporate R&D departments continued to lead the world in each of these fields, as well as in the newer fields of biotechnology and computing and information technology.

But the world has changed since 1995. Silicon Valley venture capitalist Peter Thiel told Fingleton that American innovation in the past two decades has been remarkably narrow, “confined largely to information technology and financial services.” For innovation in transportation, in manufacturing, and even in biotechnology, the leaders are now in Western Europe and in Asia. Fingleton reports that “the evidence of international patent filings is looking increasingly ominous” for the United States. According to data compiled by the World Intellectual Property Organization, only four United States companies currently rank in the Top 20 among international patent filers.[2]

Even research conducted by American companies is increasingly conducted outside the United States. Fingleton has found that American corporations are moving their R&D operations abroad. Fully 27 percent of all employees in U.S. multinational corporations’ research departments were based abroad as of 2009, up from 16 percent in 2004. Fingleton interviewed Paul Michel, a former federal appellate judge who is an authority on patent law. Intel is launching a huge new R&D operation in China, larger than anything that Intel now has in the United States.  The patents which are developed in the new facility will be registered in the name of Intel, which is an American company. But Michel observed that “most of the staff in these labs will be Chinese, and undoubtedly many of the resulting manufacturing jobs will be located in China.” [3] The United States currently ranks #11 in the world in the filing of international patents per capita, behind Denmark, Finland, Germany, Israel, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, South Korea, Sweden, and Switzerland.[4]

***

. . .The golden era of creativity for young Americans was 1945 through 1970, when American students were much more likely to be respectful and deferential to teachers. (The college campus sit-ins and demonstrations of the 1960s were for the most part politically motivated, often organized around opposition to the Vietnam War. And even the largest demonstrations engaged only a small fraction of the population. The silent majority[5] of Americans during the 1960’s were at home, watching The Andy Griffith Show or Gidget.) The silver era of creativity was 1970 through 1995, when the attitude of American students toward teachers was still much more respectful than the attitude of American students today. The marked rise of the culture of disrespect over the past two decades has actually been associated with a decline in American creativity.

Kyung-Hee Kim is an educational psychologist at the College of William and Mary who has analyzed results from the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking.[6] Kim finds that the creativity scores of American children have diminished steadily over the past two decades. According to Dr. Kim, that means that American kids have become “less emotionally expressive, less energetic, less talkative and verbally expressive, less humorous, less imaginative, less unconventional, less lively and passionate, less perceptive, less apt to connect seemingly irrelevant things, less synthesizing, and less likely to see things from a different angle.”[7]

The culture of disrespect is not essential to creativity. The evidence suggests that the culture of disrespect actually undermines true creativity while strengthening same-age peer conformism.



[1] Eamonn Fingleton, “America the Innovative?” New York Times, March 30 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/sunday-review/america-the-innovative.html.

[2] The four American companies to make the top 20 were Qualcomm, Intel, Microsoft, and United Technologies Corporation. In case you were wondering, Google was #22 and Apple was #38. For the complete list, go to the WIPO listing at http://www.wipo.int/export/sites/www/pressroom/en/documents/pr_2015_774_annexes.pdf#page=1.

[3] The evidence in these two paragraphs is taken from Fingleton’s article “America the Innovative?” (see above).

[4] To obtain rankings of international patent filings per capita, I first obtained the most recent figures for international patent filings per country, from the World Intellectual Property Organization, WIPO, http://www.wipo.int/export/sites/www/pressroom/en/documents/pr_2015_774_annexes.pdf#page=2. I then divided the number of patents per country by the total population of the country. The results are shown in the table below:

 

Patents

Population in millions

Patents per capita X 10-6

China

25,539

1,357

18.8

Denmark

1,301

5.6

232

Finland

1,815

5.4

336

Germany

18,008

80

225

Israel

1,596

8.0

199

Japan

42,459

127

334

Luxembourg

392

0.54

726

Netherlands

4,218

17

248

Norway

690

5.1

135

South Korea

13,151

50

263

Singapore

944

5.4

174

Sweden

3,925

9

436

Switzerland

4,115

8

514

USA

61,492

319

192

 

[5] Here I am alluding to President Richard Nixon’s speech in which he appealed to “the great silent majority of my fellow Americans”. The full text of Nixon’s speech, delivered on November 3, 1969, is online at http://www.nixonlibrary.gov/forkids/speechesforkids/silentmajority/silentmajority_transcript.pdf.

[6] The Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking are one of the few well-validated tests of creativity. The tests have been normed for different age groups, from first grade through adulthood, and have also been validated across cultures. More information is available at http://www.ststesting.com/ngifted.html. 

[7] I first encountered the work of Kyung-Hee Kim in Hanna Rosin’s article for The Atlantic titled “The Overprotected Kid,” March 19 2014, http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/03/hey-parents-leave-those-kids-alone/358631/. The quote is taken from this article. You can read Professor Kim’s presentation of her own work, with links to the full text of her scholarly papers, at her own web page, http://www.creativitypost.com/education/yes_there_is_a_creativity_crisis.