The Beachcomber

Bill Hartston is the resident creativity question setter at the Mind Sports Olympiad. He is known to a wider audience as Beachcomber in The Express and previously held the post of Creativity correspondent for The Independent. He is also an experienced Mind Sports player, having achieved the title of International Chess Master and won the British Chess Championship on two occasions.

How would you define creativity?

That is a difficult one. If it is to mean anything it must be separated from originality. Simply coming up with an original idea is not necessarily creative; it needs to have something more. Also it is not enough that a new idea simply works - some very good ideas don't work, while other bad ones do. What is required is a blend of originality and effectiveness. Arthur Koestler, in his book Act of Creation, identifies the essential component of creativity as 'dissociation' - thinking about something on two parallel levels and then drawing them together. Humour is a good example. The art of telling jokes is to set the mind on one train of thought and then to derail it with the punchline.

Is it possible to teach creativity?

I don't think so. However, as Tony Buzan has shown, you can train uncreative people to come up with ideas that they would not otherwise have had by using techniques. However, creativity is a process and not a technique - it comes from somewhere deeper.

Is it an advantage to be creative?

For a while I had a job as a management consultant dealing mainly with management psychology and the project I worked on most was that of management teams. We discovered that for a team to be successful you need to have one creative person and no more. When you are actually trying to get things done creativity can be a disadvantage. If a project is divided into formulation and implementation then creativity is useful in the first but a positive hindrance in the second.

Do you regard yourself as a creative person?

When I started out as an industrial psychologist I was set a personality test, the result of which informed me that I was indeed creative. This came as something of a surprise to me as I had never really regarded myself as creative. I think I am a product of a defect in the educational system which encourages too much thinking in terms of right and wrong. For example, at school I was hopeless with languages because I didn't appreciate that they were about communication, and in order to communicate, you have to make mistakes. 

Is it possible to test objectively for creativity?

Well, of course this is what I attempt to do in the Creativity Championship and I think it is possible. For example, if you ask a group of people to identify unusual uses for a paper clip, there will be a hard core of about 10-12 commonplace answers that almost everyone will think of. This might be classified as mundane creativity. However, there will always be some people who will see beyond these and come up with ideas that no-one else has considered. Those who do this stand out as creative.

How good is the standard in the Mind Sports Olympiad Creativity Championship?

Exceptional. Some of the answers that are produced are quite astounding. Each round lasts just half an hour and to not only come up with highly original ideas, but also to formulate them into a coherent argument and occasionally even draw up designs in such a short time is extraordinary. Most of the time creativity works by confronting a question and then going away and thinking about it. To be able to perform effectively under exam conditions is very impressive. A question that worked very well this year was to suggest a redesign for the human body. Common responses included such thing elements as incorporating an extra arm or an eye in the back of the head. However, the most impressive replies did not just tinker with the existing bodily structure, they gave it a complete and radical overhaul.

Can you identify people in the public eye who you regard as highly creative?

This is a very difficult question, as creativity in one field does not necessarily imply an all round creative approach to life. For example although Mozart was fantastically creative at music, you could argue that if he were truly creative in a broad sense, he might have regarded music as too limiting a career to pursue.

Is creativity stifled in contemporary society?

There is an element of this. We are born creative but growing up is essentially a limiting procedure. Children have the ability to entertain alternative realities (e.g. to believe in Santa Claus or the tooth fairy, while simultaneously 'knowing' that they don't exist) but society places pressures on them to conform. Life is also easier if you conform. Much of society is based on cultural scripts - society lays down rules that it expects others to live by. Everything becomes routine and life encourages people to fall into this mode which is, unfortunately, thoroughly stifling to creativity.