The Creative Process: Decisions at the Core (Episode 141)
Interview with Alice Liu, Partner at innovation consultancy ID8 Innovation.
“Creativity is 99% decisions and 1% inspiration.” This reimagining of Thomas Edison’s famous quote about innovation captures a fundamental truth often overlooked: creativity is not merely about sudden bursts of inspiration. As Alice Liu, Partner at innovation consultancy ID8 Innovation, emphasized, creativity is deeply rooted in the decisions we make throughout the process.
Now, if creativity is indeed about making decisions, then honing our decision-making skills is essential to becoming more creative.
Alice Liu, who has a rich background in both innovation strategy and neuroscience (she got her PhD in neuroscience around how humans make decisions), offers a unique perspective on this. She explains that decision-making is at the heart of creativity, whether you’re building a startup or creating a work of art. “There’s a lot of decision-making in creative pursuits,” Liu notes. “Knowing when to prune your idea, when to converge or diverge in your thinking – those are all decisions that move you forward.”
The Role of Decision-Making in Creativity
At every stage of the creative process – defining a problem, generating ideas, refining concepts, and implementing solutions – decisions are crucial. Liu’s experience in venture building highlights how decisions can shape the outcome of creative endeavors. “In the venture studio, we had to make constant decisions based on data from the market,” she says. “Is there enough evidence to continue down this path? Should we pivot or persist? These decisions are central to the creative process.”
Even during ideation, which is often viewed as the most “inspirational” phase, decision-making plays a critical role. Liu points out that while ideas may come to us unexpectedly, choosing which ideas to pursue and which to set aside requires careful consideration.
The Neuroscience of Decision-Making in Creativity
Liu’s background in neuroscience offers valuable insights into why decision-making is so integral to creativity. She explains that our brains are constantly making decisions, often unconsciously. “Our brains are really good at synthesizing a lot of information, even more than we can consciously articulate,” Liu says. This unconscious processing helps us make decisions that feel intuitive, but are actually based on complex neural computations.
Liu also discusses the concept of “prediction errors,” a key mechanism in how our brains learn from decisions. “Every time we make a decision, our brain calculates a prediction error – how much the actual outcome differed from what we expected,” she explains. “Over time, this process refines our decision-making, helping us make better choices in the future.” In the creative process, this means that each decision, each experiment, and each failure contributes to developing sharper creative instincts.
Enhancing Creativity Through Better Decision-Making
Given the centrality of decision-making in creativity, how can we improve this skill? Liu offers three strategies:
Practice Decision-Making Deliberately: Like any skill, decision-making improves with practice. But Liu emphasizes the importance of practicing effectively. “You need to test ideas early and iterate quickly,” she says.
The more decisions you make, the more your brain refines its prediction models, leading to sharper instincts and better creative outcomes. Creative people train themselves to effectively come to the point where they need to make a decision.
Desensitize Yourself to Fear: Fear can often paralyze decision-making, particularly in creative endeavors where the stakes can feel high. Liu suggests that overcoming this fear is crucial. “You need to confront the fear of failure,” she advises. Because fear can stop you from making decisions, or trick you into making the wrong ones.
“The more you expose yourself to situations where you must make decisions despite fear, the more you desensitize yourself to it.” Over time, this builds the confidence to make bold creative choices without hesitation.
Think of a person who is pushed to ask 100 strangers for a date. After 100 rejections the person will have lost the fear of approaching a stranger. After that the decision to approach one more stranger becomes easier.
Respect fear, but work on desensitizing it so that fear doesn’t give you non rational or emotional reasons for not making the right decision.
Optimize the Path to Decisions: In creativity, it’s essential to make decisions as efficiently as possible, but not hastily. “Find the most efficient path to a decision, but don’t rush it,” Liu advises. “It’s about balancing speed with quality.” This balance allows you to move forward in the creative process without getting stuck in indecision or overthinking.
In short: Make decisions as fast as optimal, but not faster.
Conclusion: Creativity is Decision-Making
As Alice Liu’s insights reveal, creativity is not just about moments of inspiration. It’s about the countless decisions that shape, refine, and ultimately bring an idea to life. The creative process is littered with instances where you have to make decisions – decisions that will profoundly influence the creative outcome.
By focusing on improving your decision-making skills, you can enhance your creative potential. Whether through deliberate practice, overcoming the fear of failure, or optimizing your decision-making process, each step you take improves your ability to create. And as Liu’s perspective suggests, “Creativity is 99% decisions and 1% inspiration.”
18
Sep