There’s an old talk by John Cleese, the famous actor and member of Monty Python, about creativity that I think is absolutely brilliant: Creativity in Management.
If you have a little over half an hour to spare, my recommendation is very clear: skip the next episode of whatever series everyone is watching on Netflix and watch this talk instead. I think it’s well worth it.
In that talk, Cleese begins by arguing that creativity is not a talent reserved for a privileged few, but rather a particular way of thinking and operating, and distinguishes between two mental states: Closed Mode and Open Mode:
- In Closed Mode, we execute. We have objectives, solve problems, make decisions, meet deadlines and focus on results.
- In Open Mode, we explore. We play with ideas, make connections, ask questions and follow paths without knowing exactly where they might lead.
To enter that Open Mode, Cleese identifies five ingredients:
- Space to temporarily isolate ourselves from the demands of everyday life.
- Time to explore without the pressure of having to produce an immediate result.
- More time so that we don’t settle for the first reasonable solution.
- Confidence to allow ourselves to play, make mistakes and even suggest absurd ideas.
- And humor, probably one of the best ways to leave Closed Mode behind and open our minds to new possibilities.
The problem is that everything around us seems to be pushing us increasingly towards Closed Mode.
School teaches us to arrive at the right answer — and, what’s more, to follow the path we’ve been given to get there. Work demands objectives, results and deadlines, while our calendars fill up with tasks and half-hour meetings.
We are constantly training ourselves to execute, while leaving less and less room to explore. Less room to play, to learn, to develop our potential.
And in the process, we are gradually eliminating precisely what Cleese considers essential for creativity: time and space to play with ideas.
Cleese explains that some of his best ideas did not emerge because he was necessarily more talented than others, but because he was willing to stay with a problem for longer. While others found a reasonable solution and moved on, he kept exploring, looking for alternatives and playing with other possibilities.
In the talk, he also highlights collaboration with other people and different points of view as a powerful catalyst for creativity. One idea triggers another. Someone asks, “What if...?” Someone else adds, “We could try...” An assumption is challenged. An unexpected connection appears.
And suddenly, something interesting emerges.
And then, suddenly, AI arrived
More than three decades after that talk, I find myself working with a technology that Cleese could hardly have imagined at the time, and experiencing something that might initially seem paradoxical::
Artificial Intelligence is dramatically enhancing my creativity.
Yes, of course AI has also dramatically increased my productivity. But what I could never have imagined just a couple of years ago is how much it would increase both the quantity and quality of my ideas, solutions and proposals.
And I think one of the reasons lies precisely in the two modes of operation Cleese described.
Most people use AI in Closed Mode: “Summarize this document”, “Write this email”, “Analyze this data”, “Generate this code”, “Solve this problem...”
We have an objective, give it instructions and expect a result. AI is incredibly useful for this and allows us to do many things better and much faster.
But I think we are missing something much more interesting: using AI in Open Mode.
Not asking it to solve a problem, but using it to explore the problem. “What if...?”, “What other alternatives do we have?”, “What am I taking for granted?”, “What if we did exactly the opposite?”, “What other ideas could we connect this to?”, “What if we took this possibility to the extreme?”
And this is where something happens that connects directly with what Cleese was describing: AI becomes “someone” we can play with ideas with.
It is no longer simply a tool we assign tasks to. It becomes something different: an assistant, a collaborator with whom we can explore new alternatives.
But there is another aspect that I find even more important. Cleese talked about the importance of staying with a problem for longer and not settling for the first reasonable solution.
AI allows us to do exactly that, but with one enormous difference: it compresses the time required to do it. In an hour, we can explore dozens of alternatives, challenge hypotheses, make connections and follow paths that might have taken us days to explore on our own.
AI doesn’t eliminate creative time. It compresses it.
- It doesn’t criticize, reproach or belittle any of our suggestions, no matter how absurd our idea might be.
- And, perhaps most importantly, it never gets tired of playing.
All of this becomes particularly interesting in engineering. I have always thought that engineering is one of the most creative professions there is.
There is an idea I particularly like: engineers don’t invent, we develop. We take physical principles, mechanisms, materials, manufacturing processes, technologies, tools and knowledge developed by others and combine them to find practical solutions to specific problems.
To a large extent, our job is precisely about making connections. Connecting knowledge. Connecting technologies. Connecting problems with solutions that already exist in other fields. Exploring alternatives. Testing. Discarding. Going back. Developing.
And the greater our ability to explore those connections, the larger the solution space we can navigate.
In that talk, Cleese also explains that a new idea can emerge by connecting two previously separate ideas in a way that generates new meaning.
And then he talks about computers. He explains that a computer — the kind they had back then — could generate millions of connections... but it couldn’t tell which one of them “smells interesting.”
So what does cheese have to do with any of this?
You’ve probably heard of the bestseller Who Moved My Cheese?, Spencer Johnson’s well-known fable about change, adaptation and our ability to seek new opportunities when our environment changes.
Its characters navigate a maze in search of cheese and have to react when something they had taken for granted is no longer where they expected it to be.
Well, today we are facing one of those enormous changes. It’s called Artificial Intelligence.
Thirty-five years after John Cleese’s talk, computers can help us make connections, explore possibilities, challenge our own ideas and follow paths that Cleese could hardly have imagined at the time.
But we still bring something fundamental to the table: knowledge, experience, context, judgment and intuition.
That is why I am becoming less and less interested in debating whether Artificial Intelligence can be creative. I am much more interested in asking myself: How far can it take my creativity if I learn how to work with it?
Because perhaps Artificial Intelligence can help us navigate the maze much faster, explore many more paths and even discover places we would never have thought to look.
But, at least for now... the nose for finding the cheese is still ours.