10-year-rule in development of master-level work in creative fields (ability to do creative work depends on deep knowledge of one’s chosen field); Deep immersion in one’s chosen field is necessary before innovation is produced→ extensive domain-specific knowledge is a prerequisite for creative functioning;James: knowledge is only in the very loosest sense related to true creativity, and may be detrimental to it; Guilford & DeBono: the role of divergent thinking in the development of new ideas, produce new ideas by breaking away, or diverging, from previously established ideas; Koestler: creative thinking to break out of the boundaries set by knowledge, in the form of habit; Amabie: thinking style: breaking out of your old patterns of thinking about something; breaking out of scripts, which is much of the same thing; perceiving freshly→ change one’s old ways; Campbell: Darwinian perspective, creative ideas are the results of a ‘blind’ process; Simonton(1995): problem solving is a random process; only by falling back on the less disciplined resource can be creator arrive at insights that are genuinely profound.
A consistency of opinion concerning the need for creative thinking to go beyond the bounds of knowledge in order to produce true advances.The relation between education and creative achievement is curvilinear; past experience can interface with effective adjustment to novel situations; using one's past experience results in negative transfer in new situations.
Tension between knowledge and creativity:
- The U-shaped relation between education and creativity: (Simonton, 1984) Examination of the lives of more than 300 eminent individuals, eminence was plotted as a function of level of education, found that the relationship was curvilinear, an inverted U, with the peak of eminence occurring at about midway through undergraduate training; fewer of more years of training were associated with lower levels of eminence.
- Past experience and negative transfer: (Luchins and Luchins, 1959; French and Sternberg, 1989) Past success trapped the knowledgeable participants into habitual modes of thought, and when the world changed, so that the previously successful solution did not work, incapable of adapting; Surface changes and deep or conceptual change, experts were affected by deep changes and had a harder time adjusting to them than did the novices.
- Even the most noteworthy and "talented" individuals required many years of preparation before they began to produce the work on which their reputations were built (composers, painters, poets)
- Hayes (1989) proposed that preparation, in the sense of immersion in a discipline, is required for creative achievement. A long period of time in a domain seems to be a necessary condition for notable contribution.