Francesca Gino of Harvard Business School and Scott Wiltermuth of Marshal Business School published a paper which proposes that dishonesty leads to creativity. Their report states that, ‘dishonesty and creativity have something in common; they both involve breaking rules. Because of this shared feature, creativity may lead to dishonesty and dishonesty may lead to creativity.’ They tested this hypothesis with a series of five experiments. Gino and Wiltermuth found that those people who cheated in one test were subsequently more creative than non-cheaters, even when they accounted for individual differences in their creative ability. Using random assignments they found that acting dishonestly led to greater creativity in subsequent tasks. They believe that the link between dishonesty and creativity is explained by a ‘heightened feeling of being unconstrained by rules.’
These findings present us with a paradox. We do not want our employees to be dishonest but at times we do want them to be creative. So is there a way to harness the power of dishonesty to improve creativity without getting bad practice at work? Creativity guru Jeffrey Baumgartner makes a useful suggestion here. He recommends that you start a brainstorm or problem solving meeting with an ice-breaker which involves telling outrageous lies. Everyone is encouraged to introduce themselves with their real name followed by an absolutely egregious falsehood. So they might say something like:
My name is John. I climbed Everest wearing only a straw skirt. I kept warm by rubbing my skin with a wire brush.
My name is Jane. I discovered a major conspiracy – our government is comprised entirely of aliens from the planet Zog. They are gradually replacing each of us with an identical robot.
The more ridiculous and humorous the lie the better. Laughter breaks down inhibitions. You will find that the subsequent meeting starts in a much more relaxed and creative atmosphere. Because people have already broken the rules of what is acceptable they are much more likely to generate really radical ideas.
Great ways to start your meeting or brainstorm in this Udemy Course
I always preach that creative thinking negates the need for cheating. Why cheat when you can find many better ideas. Also, with creative thinking there is no need for use of force or brutality, because many win-win solutions can be found, that is in theory.
Creativity is also a tool and as such can be used for dishonesty too, and destruction, but this would be a pity, because it would represent the epitome of evil, i.e. creative evil. Creative thinking is supposed to find high value solutions and not shortcuts as with dishonesty.
For inspiration in brainstorming also a question mark?
Of course, that is why criminals are the first and the best users of any technology.
However, how to use this in a positive way is a challenge that has not yet been solved.