Future Forum, Hanaholmen and Tech Rave-olution, Epicenter. The case for work climate for creativity.

One commonality here in Finland are popular science, business, or entrepreneurial-oriented conferences. This week I attended two such conferences. Both aimed at the future, had innovation as themes but one conference was centralized and the other decentralized. Innovation is based on creativity plus implementation, mental qualities that emerged as function of climate change, and the implementation of an animal source diet. Creativity is a social process that can be facilitated by dancing, leadership, and work climate. Its also important identify the present. As processes, creativity is discriminated from science, but if they are combined, its possible to apply Rational entrepreneurial thinking. Facilitating the work climate will improve that process. 8 pages.

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One commonality here in Finland are conferences. Not the scientific conferences I'm used to attending in various countries, but popular science, business, or entrepreneurial-oriented conferences. They usually have a major theme, Q;A:s, and the possibility of mingling with sparkling wine and Hors d'œuvre. This week I attended two such conferences.

On Wednesday, I was invited to Future Forum 2024 at Hanaholmen in Esbo next to Finland's capital Helsingfors. The major theme of the conference was the Future and it was framed by a very centralized EU-political approach, with markers like The green new deal, global warming, as well as renewable energy sources. Based on that outlook, the organizers and the speakers called for innovations. But they didn't allow people to ask question the normal way. Instead, people had to submit their questions via an app. No questions were asked.

Peter Österberg, Ph.D. psychology, especially prospection

Luckily, the conference planner had squeezed in a number of opportunities for mingling. During the breakfast session we spent a good 30 minutes exchanging ideas. After that, there was a lunch break. One alternative was standing lunch. In the line for food, I had some exchanges with people, and during the standing lunch I had conversations with other people. Then there was a coffee-break where more verbal exchanges took place. After the conference, sparkling wine was offered as the verbal exchanges continued.

On Thursday I attended a second conference - Tech Rave-olution - organized by Epicenter. The conference started with business exhibitions in the hallway, and they kept going in parallel with the sessions. Embedded in the overall theme was creativity and innovation. It was also very decentralized.

The first session was about creativity, and then they interviewed the exhibitors in different panel sessions. In parallel to that, verbal exchanges went on in the kitchen and other parts of the venue. That was followed by Brain stretching which I missed due to an interesting conversation.

Peter Österberg, Ph.D. psychology, especially prospection

After that, the main mingle started, with music, artists, as well as food and wine. There I had even more conversations.

In conclusion, great conferences, and it was great to meet all the interesting people with competences other than mine!

But for a scientist, the presentations lead to a number of questions about definitions, and also, the conference's different approaches when it comes to centralization versus decentralization. And are we really at risk due to changes in the climate?

The future is something we have never experienced but something we can imagine from the present. In fact, we are the only species who have the ability to experience the future - prospection (Gilbert and Wilson, 2007).

How did that happen?

The human species - Homo Sapiens Sapiens - evolved over millions of years as a function of changes in the climate (Österberg, 2022). The chart below show the variation of global carbon dioxide and temperature throughout the Phanerozoic (the eon is not shown in the chart but include Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and the Cenozoic - the age of the mammals):

Link to source.

The climatic transition from Mesozoic to Cenozoic is explained by the Chicxulub Impact Event (~66 Mya), when an asteroid hit the Mexican Gulf.

~3.5 million years ago, in the midst of Pliocene, our ancestors added bone marrow to their diet (McPherron et al. 2010; Thompson et al. 2019). Because of this new diet, their guts shrunk, and their brains grew, from the occipetal lobe and forward (Aiello and Dunbar, 1993; Aiello and Wheeler, 1995;  Hublin et al. 2015). That gave room for new mental faculties, like the executive functions (Coolidge and Wynn, 2018; Diamond, 2013) including prospection - using memory and perception to elaborate mental scenarios forward in time (Kaku, 2014; Schacter and Addis, 2007), and language.

A cultural language likely emerged after our genus Homo was established (2.8 Mya) during late Pliocene or early Pleistocene (Aiello and Dunbar, 1993; Everett, 2017; Villmoare et al. 2015).

The purpose of verbal exchange is to transfer information from one mind to other minds (Pinker, 2012), either for the purpose of insulting (polemics; Heider, 1958), winning the argument (Mercier and Sperber, 2011) or reasoning, that is, exchanging ideas or talking without winning (Borgström, 2023; Pinker, 2011).

One aspect of executive functioning and prospective thinking is creativity - a social process where non-related objects, or fragments thereof, are combined or melded into new distinct cognitive categories (Einstein, in Hadamar, 1945/1996; Finke, 1996; Österberg, 2012; Österberg and Köping Olsson, 2018, 2021; Wynn et al. 2009). Creativity is general to our species and is said to have emerged ~70 000 years before the present after a significant change in the climate (Ambrose, 2010), and reveals itself at an early age as a subset to the executive functions (Welsh and Pennington, 1988). The first manifestation of creativity is the Lion-man which dates ~40 000 years before the present:

Löwenmensch/Lionman. Foto: Dagmar Hollmann.

Creativity is triggered, like starting an engine, as a function of goal-oriented prospection (Christian et al. 2013; Locke and Latham ,2002; Spzunar et al. 2014), decentralization, but even better with both (Österberg, 2004, 2012).

Leadership style matter for workplace creativity (Amabile and Khaire, 2008; Österberg, 2012).

Work climate will improve creative thinking (Ekvall, 1996; Isaksen, 2007).

Dancing will facilitate idea generation (Österberg and Köping Olsson, 2021).

Creativity is mainly a social process, meaning that talking to people with other competences or viewpoints will increase the probability that a creative idea will emerge. But there's an important prerequisite for verbal exchange: entrainment - rhythmic synchronization of behavior or the dance of conversation (Borrie, 2017; Wynn and Borrie, 2022).

Innovation. If the outcome of creative thinking is implemented, it is said to result in an innovation. That means you can be creative without being innovative, but you can't be innovative without being creative.

How do we start this social process of creating which may lead to implementation?

Before we start elaborating scenarios forward in time, it's important to make a proper assessment of the present - the starting point (Duncker, 1945).

Most things on planet Earth are better than ever (Goldstein and Pinker, 2016; Pinker, 2011; 2018 a; Österberg, 2021), and there seem to be three factors at play for the progress: Humanism, Reason, and Science (2018 b).

Humanism is defined by its opposite - honor culture. In honor culture, young men are sent to die by invading other countries. With humanism, human value comes first.

Reason means:

1. being able to apply logic, which basically means using general models to infer conclusions about observations (Proudfoot, 2010).
2. “the cognitive faculties, honed by the exchange of ideas through language, that allow us to understand the world and negotiate social arrangements” (Pinker, 2011).
3.  “talking without winning” (Borgström, 2023).

Science is not, like some people seem to believe, a process of publishing something or innovate, but a process of exploring to discover, and is today based on rigorous, systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world (Heilbron, 2003; Wilson, 1999).

Adding science and creative thinking together is consistent with Rational entrepreneurial thinking (RET; Österberg, 2021 a, chapter 3 (In Swedish)). That means, when applied, we can use the factual outlook as a starting point to create scenarios forward in time.  RET is facilitated by work climate.

In summary, both conferences offered great opportunities for mingling, but the framing of the first conference at Hanaholmen wasn't optimal for creative thinking, the precursor of innovation. The conference at Epicenter had better opportunities for that.

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