CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE AND ITS APPLICATION TO

Contemporary Readings in Law and Social Justice
Volume 4(1), 2012, pp. , ISSN 1948-9137

CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE AND ITS APPLICATION TO
ENTREPRENEURIAL OPPORTUNITY AND ETHICS

MURRAY HUNTER
murray@unimap.edu.my
Centre for Communication & Entrepreneurship
University Malaysia Perlis

ABSTRACT. This paper begins with a review of major issues facing society today,
observing how difficult they are to solve. After a review of the nature of the
environment, introducing the concepts of relatedness and influence of time and
space on innovation, thinking, cognition, intelligence, and creativity, the metaphoric
concept of creative intelligence is postulated. The elements of creative intelligence
are described along with other supporting elements like prior knowledge,
imagination, energy, and awareness. The role of creative intelligence in developing
entrepreneurial opportunities and solving ethical problems is then discussed.

Keywords: Environment, relatedness, cognition, imagination, energy, intelligence,
creativity, creative intelligence, awareness, entrepreneurial opportunity, ethics.

“Hard imaginative thinking has not increased so as to keep pace with
the expansion and complications of human societies and organizations”
H.G. Wells1

1. Introduction

On the face of current events one could be excused for thinking that we are
facing a crisis in creativity and original thinking.2 The absence of derived
new meanings from the environment is leading to a vacuum in the
emergence of new philosophies. Generation Y appears to be on a sojourn of
self discovery for meaning. Technology has created a dual economy made
up of exploited unskilled assembly workers on one side and wealthy
consumers on the other. The North-South divide is as wide as ever. We are
not sure whether the economic downturns of late are a cyclic phenomena or
whether there is something structurally wrong with the system itself. Many
decisions institutions within society has made achieved counterintuitive
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results, where the opposite to what was desired has occurred, i.e., the
restriction of narcotics and enforcement has produced a large underground
industry with a high cost of enforcement. There are so many potential crises
in the world today without apparent solutions (see table 1.), highlighting a
great discrepancy between these issues and our ability to solve them.
Some are calling upon our past growth paradigms to be re-evaluated due
to growing resource scarcity, our damaging effect upon the environment,
and the inability of the economic system to make reallocation adjustments
to account for rapid depletion of hydrocarbon resources.3 As we move from
elite to mass education, students primarily attend universities as a means to
gain a more lucrative career, rather than intellectual enrichment4, Our level
of knowledge is doubling every five years, yet our understanding about the
workings, interrelationships and co-dependence within the environment is
still apparently lacking.
We think in predictable ways5 rationalized in one dimensionality6,
where idea originality is scarce. Problems that don’t fit into our socio-
political worldview are downplayed, ignored, or even abnegated existence
because of our prevailing biases, vested interests and/or the fear of moving
to new viewpoints and positions. Most often, politically embedded national
agendas prescribe our solutions without giving the opportunity to reflect or
develop new insights. For example, nationalist sentiment, strict border
control, and immigration laws hinder the redistribution of labor migration
from areas where there are acute levels of poverty and unemployment to
areas where there are chronic labor shortages. Positive thinking has become
a form of social control, where dissent is brushed aside and labeled as
pessimism. Our optimistic outlook to the affairs of the world is a delusion of
willful ignorance, reducing our vigilance, and contributing to the creation of
a blind and powerless society.7 Future solutions will depend upon the
ability of humans to escape this moral callousness and think creatively
outside our existing patterning, and predisposed paradigms of thought.

2. Domains, Reductionism and Paths

In the Victorian era scientists began to divide fields into narrow and
protected domains with their own vocabularies, hierarchies, and elites; thus
cementing tightly bounded beliefs into respective disciplines. The
predominating metaphor of these disciplines has been that of the machine,
clockwork, precision, and predictability, reflected in the precision of
mathematics and quantitative theories. The goal of science was to reduce
the world into understandable parts in order to reduce our sense of
uncertainty and anxiousness. The development of these academic domains
where expert specialization takes place has led to little increased creativity
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and original thinking. In fact specialization has seemed to hinder
innovation.8
Many massive engineering developments like the building of the
Hoover Dam, the development of the atomic bomb, and the space program
were not based on science as much as they have been based upon
engineering reductionism.9 Potential new breakthroughs in specific
domains are often resisted by discipline centered experts committed to
established reductionist views based on the models they work from. Some
discipline premises were totally incorrect. For example, economics
preached individualism and decentralized markets, yet our security and
prosperity has been largely the result of collective action to eradicate
disease, promote science, develop critical infrastructure and, provide
widespread education.10 The tools of trade are usually too selective to allow
the big picture to be seen, becoming the ‘rose colored glasses’ of perceptual
and discipline-centric domain imprisonment.11
This can be very clearly seen in the parable of a king who invited a
group of blind men to identify an elephant shows that our understanding is
based on perspective. One feels the tail and says it is a rope. Another grabs
the leg and says it is a pillar. Another feels the side and says it’s a wall.
Another felt the head and said it was a water jug, and so on.
Real science and the development of new knowledge are based on
simple experiments to test hypotheses, more like creative art. As a
consequence the advancement of science is unpredictable. Gathering
intelligent individuals together is not the answer to creating breakthroughs.
Without the element of creativity there is unlikely to be any major
breakthroughs, as we see in so many organizations today.12
Reductionist tools like mathematics and geometry have great difficulty
in explaining everyday occurrences like the operation of a steam value, a
tennis game, riding a bicycle, and catching a ball as there is the element of
chaos (not to be confused with crisis) and unpredictability in any
phenomenon. One can develop complex wave equations but never really
know exactly what is going to happen. Reductionism relies upon linear
perfectionism which doesn’t exist. Even the earth’s rotation is not exact.
Our perfectionist time systems must be regularly adjusted to account for
nature’s imperfection.13 We try to think about the world in a linear way
where the world really behaves in non-linear ways. Most events need to
unfold along particular paths, something that cannot be controlled.
Evolution is an unplanned process.
Table 1. Some of the major complex problems facing the World today
Antibiotics European credit and Racism
currency crisis
China-Taiwan relations Floods Rising food prices

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Climate change and Guantanamo Rising unemployment
global warming
Corruption Hate Soil salinity and erosion
Counterfeit medicine Labor shortages Spratly Islands
Decaying infrastructure Migration (Understanding)
sustainability of agriculture
Decline of biodiversity Ozone depletion within Urban sprawls
the ionosphere (overdevelopment)
Decline of coastal Population growth War and regional conflict
fishery stocks
Energy Poverty Water scarcity and
management

Very few humans tend to think far beyond their familiar geographical
territory and immediate future. The majority of our everyday ‘thought flow’
tends to be negative and could reasonably be described as ‘cognitive
garbage’, consisting of random thoughts that lack any substance to be of
any usefulness. We muddle through basing our thinking on unquestioned
patterning influenced by past behavior, beliefs shaped by myths and even
superstitions we gather. Much of what we actually think and do is a
progression and culmination of a series of previous ideas that define the
pathways we follow. Where original ideas were ‘poor ones’, all following
decisions along the defined path will lead to less than ‘optimal’ situations
that eventually accumulate and could lead to a disaster – metaphorically like
drifting into a dark tunnel with no way out. This is reflected in the way the
world economy is being managed, present approaches to poverty
eradication, the history of abandoned medical practices found to be
ineffective, current unsustainable farming practices, poor resource
management,14 and disastrous approaches to river irrigation, coastal
fisheries management,15 and water sharing across major world waterways.16
The decisions we make are primarily dependent upon the context and
circumstances of a particular time and place. For example many countries
focused on national development to promote domestic industries after the
Second World War and started their own automobile industries as an import
replacement strategy. Contemporary development theories at the time
advocated import replacement strategies to assist a developing country save
foreign exchange and create employment17. However industry protection
measures over time created industrial inefficiency which led to high
domestic prices for automobiles, the inability to create sources of
competitive advantage, with little ability to compete with the rest of the
world. Firms in these import replacement industries struggled to survive and
many industries closed down completely. An import substitution policy
initially brought economic growth, but the industrial base it created became
a basis for economic rigidity and stagnation later on. Management theory
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over the years has also been value laden providing fixed paradigms that
brought particular types of results, i.e., scientific management, Theory Y,
TQM, Industrial democracy, Re-engineering and lean production
techniques. A good decision at one time based on contemporary theories at
the time can become a poor decision at a later time. The contexts, situations,
circumstances, and benchmarks for judging decisions change, thus
creativity is paramount to society to enable flexibility and dynamism
according to changing economic structures and conditions, i.e., the ability to
break out of rigid paradigms.
Creativity embodies the concept of utility, one of the pillars of classical
economics,18 and is more important than ever before as traditional sources
of growth and prosperity are drying up. From an integrated global
perspective, progress in the future will not be about crude wealth formation,
but more about selected growth, redistribution, and stabilization in selected
regions around the globe, much more complex than fostering crude growth,
requiring coordination on a global scale that has never seen before.

3. Thinking, Creativity, and Society

Our understanding of creativity and thinking has been drastically enhanced
through emerging ideas within the biology, genetics, neuroscience, and
evolutionary psychology disciplines. The advent of functional magnetic
resonance imaging (fMRI) and position-emission tomography (PET) which
can measure cerebral blood flow in the brain through sensing magnetic
signals or low level radiation respectively to determine brain activity levels
have greatly deepened our understanding of the cognitive processes
involved.19 Quite remarkably, the cognitive process has many similarities
with computer information processing steps of acquisition, storage,
retrieval, processing, data organization and artificial intelligence structures20
leading to the computer metaphor in the science of cognition.
All our religious doctrines, political ideologies, economic philosophies,
management theories, and technology applications are based on our
collective beliefs and values. Political philosophies of the last century have
been based upon our primal fears of elimination or aspirations about a
defined image of what the future should be, and traditional religious
theologies brought hope of immortality through the promise of forgiveness
of our guilt and an afterlife. We are part of the environment and define it
through our experience, needs, beliefs, values, biases, and motivations.
The paradigm of knowledge has shifted from something seen as factual
and absolute, to a contextual nature. Philosophers and psychologists of the
20th century changed our conceptuality of knowledge in a massive shift
from the predictable Newtonian order centered on absolute identities of the
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past. Our metaphor of understanding and explaining the environment has
transcended from a detached to an embodied view. Knowledge is a relative
construction, where for example, a coastal foreshore area can be understood
as a hinterland of resources by a geologist, a backdrop for a landscape scene
by a painter, a potential location for settlement by explorers, a place for
children to play, and a romantic place to walk by couples; all deriving
meaning through context, need, aspiration, and experience. There is now
acceptance that the environment embodies multiple realities where meaning
is based upon the context of individual and society.
The importance of creativity can be explained through the metaphor of
the universe as a medium full of drifting matter where distribution and form
changes over time. The universe evolved from being a homogenous
environment of dust particles to becoming a complex haphazard
environment where matter has condensed to form galaxies, clusters, and
super-clusters. Evolution is thus a series of time phased transitions from one
form of matter to another under the influence of energy,21 Therefore the key
to evolution is the ability to reconfigure new combinations of information to
create new knowledge, enacted by energy (discussed later), within our
available resources and capabilities to fit what the environment will accept.
This is creativity.
Creativity and intelligence are two very different cognitive qualities.
Intelligence is more a characteristic and promotes paradigm specific
convergent thinking. Creativity on the other hand is a process and operates
divergently,22 more relevant in finding solutions to problems and
developing new ideas. Creative thinking through various thinking styles
connecting and restructuring information is the process that develops new
combinations of knowledge that manifest new ideas, inventions, and
innovations,23
New ideas must be accepted by peers to catalyze the progression of
society. Sometimes the acceptance of new ideas may take a long period of
time. The delays in acceptance may occur because the significance of some
ideas may not be fully appreciated at the time. The theories of flight and
aerodynamics were not understood until the Wright Brothers found meaning
and significance through experimentation based upon trial and error.
Moreover inventions like Dunlop’s tire may be lost to the world if there is
no apparent immediate application. The tire was only reinvented when an
immediate application (the bicycle and automobile) existed.
What constitutes creativity and original thinking can be very subjective.
There is great argument about whether new ideas and inventions constitute
progress and what simply advocate change for change’s sake or solves
problems people never knew they had. The additional apps and features
built into new mobile phone models are probably not going to advance
society in any way, but may appeal to consumer emotions. Creativity can be
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distinguished from fad creation, where creativity should incorporate new
visions.
The consequences of creativity may only be discovered some time in the
future. The moving of polluting industries out of Europe to Asia in the
1990s was originally seen as an advantageous move by European
manufacturers in lowering production costs and escaping stringent
environmental regulations within the EU,24 but the consequences of this
were not fully appreciated by policy makers at the time. The absence of
these industries has drastically eroded the EU’s tax base and contributed to
higher unemployment levels.25
The application of creativity is primarily concerned with adaption to a
changing environment. Creativity is culturally, geographically, and
emotionally bound. It is also situational, and time phased. Creativity and
original thinking is concerned with technology, organization, social
disposition and the ethical aspects of our lives. This is an important trait for
a firm to posses in order for it to survive within a dynamic environment.26
The top companies on the “500-lists” in 2020 will most likely be
companies that we don’t even know today. Adaptation is grounded on
adopting new understandings that lead to new meanings that turn the
imagination into the explicit which can be acted upon to create value to
society. Testimony to the failure to adapt is the number of firms that drop
off the “500-lists” into bankruptcy, and the number of firms that rise in
times of recession, replacing failed companies on the “500-lists”.27
Creativity facilitates change and enables evolution within society.
Unlike analytical thinking, creativity and the resulting ideas are rarely
constructed upon tangible evidence and information. It’s an intuitive
process and flourishes at the edge where there is the potential for change.
Creativity is the very catalyst of new knowledge itself, resulting in a new
ideas, inventions, technologies, or business models that translate into
change of society. Creative thinking must therefore transcend the thought
boundaries that society has defined; otherwise society will remain static.

4. Complex Systems and Our Thinking Approaches

The environment is part of a larger system, which is part of a larger system,
which is part of a larger system constituting the ever changing ambiguous
medium that we are immersed within. W. Brian Arthur postulated that
complex systems have three important characteristics.28 Firstly complex
systems grow in co-evolutionary diversity where different entities compete
and collaborate in ever diversified activities, some surviving, while others
perish. Secondly, complex systems are on a continual path of structural
deepening where entities will increase in complexity, and thirdly complex
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systems act as ‘capturing software’ where entities interact with other
entities giving birth to new entities, objects, and events. These three
processes work continuously creating new phenomena where actions are not
totally predictable, e.g., the equities market, human immune system, etc.
Consequently the environment continually reorganizes itself to higher
degrees of complexity, capacity, and meaning, through independent but
interrelated actions, while each entity maintains its own identity and
redefines itself according to the changing requirements of the environment.
Opportunities can be recognized in the market through discovery,29 or
constructed through developing a concept over time30 through actions in the
real world.31 This approach sees opportunity creation much the same as the
process of creating new knowledge, a social construction that makes sense
out of the environment.32
The market system can metaphorically be compared to the ebb and flow
of a tide. The market environment is a culmination of time, place,
technology, society, government, suppliers, customers, and competitors. It’s
an emerging system where new entities, business models, inventions, and
ideas spin off the ‘ebb and flow’ of the possible.33 Entrepreneurial
opportunities exist as rocks uncovered by the ‘ebb and flow’ of the tide. It is
a dynamic construct, a result of the continually interacting elements of the
market system. One invention or innovation may provide a platform for a
host of other innovations to spring into existence just like the railways in
America catalyzed the potentiality of many new industries that fostered
economic growth in the late 1800s and the internet that did the same in the
late 1990s. Innovation drives emergence and maintains the sturdiness of the
market system, continually changing the market structure. The market
structure being the skeleton of the market system could be metaphorically
described as shifting sands along a coastline, regularly eroded by the tide,
molded by the winds, and left with impressions of the footprints of animals,
people, and tracks of vehicles that pass over it.
The market structure consists of companies undertaking various
activities, transport infrastructure, supply chains, distribution points,
bookkeeping systems, money, institutions facilitating exchange, regulatory
bodies, and consumers. The structure is a complex web of reciprocal
relationships where each part relies on the rest of the market structure for
existence; i.e., the market structure cannot exist without each component
and each component cannot exist without the market structure. Existence is
relative to the existence of other entities within the market structure, i.e.,
products cannot exist without the means of exchange, transport, and vice
versa.
The concept of relatedness applies to everything. Man doesn’t have a
masculine self identity until he is in proximity to a woman and vice versa.
Without males and females being side by side together there is no gender
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awareness. Although being male and female is biological, the gendered self
is determined learning in childhood and the feelings we develop over our
growth and development.34 Likewise Pluto was considered a planet until
2006, an equal member alongside the other eight planets within our solar
system until many other similar objects of similar magnitude to Pluto were
discovered within the Kuiper Belt. Pluto is now controversially described as
a dwarf planet due to the new set of relationships known as Trans-
Neptunian objects (see figure 1). The discovery of the trans-Neptunian
object Sedna in 2003 changed our understanding of the solar system
dramatically. Our knowledge is enhanced through new understandings of
relatedness. Knowledge is not a static constant but rather an emerging
dynamic phenomenon that continually changes our understandings. Our
knowledge is subject to what we know today, which can completely change
tomorrow. This facilitates change.
The ‘ebb and flow’ of the tide embraces complexity. It appears very
simple, but actually is the manifestation of complex interrelationships. The
tide isn’t an object in itself, but has so much influence on what is going on.
The tide defines and shapes the landscape. The tide is invisible but the
effects are clearly visible. The force of a tide can vary in magnitude from a
small wave covering your feet as you walk along a beach to a massive
tsunami that can wipe out coastlines on multiple continents during a single
event like an earthquake. Tide is similar to the invisible effect that occurs
within the environment, appearing simple but with overly complex motions.
The change we see appears simple but the forces behind it are extremely
complex. Most phenomena are just so complex we just see the effects and
can only hypothesize the causes or the motions. The true nature of a tide
isn’t the water as just the true nature of the environment isn’t the individual
constituents within it, i.e., infrastructure, objects, or activities. This is not
something that can be grasped, touched, clearly defined, or truly understand.
The fall of the Soviet Union, the Asian financial crisis, and the economic
crisis of 2008, and the Arab Spring all came with little warning. Ambiguity
is invisible where only the manifestations can be seen, unable to be
correlated to any causes directly, and thus too complex to be understood – it
can only be known, i.e., we can see the effects of gravity, but not gravity
itself.

Figure 1. The concepts of context and relatedness are metaphorically
illustrated by the two grey inner-circles which are both the same size.35

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From a quantum perspective existence depends upon the relation between
entities and objects. We cannot understand anything in isolation, but only
through what it does.36 The nature of the environment is both a bond
(structure) and a flow (system) that embodies complexity. It is relationship
that gives meaning and forms the tide of the environment – an extremely
powerful concept that gives our identities an existence. Each particle is a
mere abstraction in physics until the interactions with other particles are
understood.37 We see the relationships between things which enable us to
see the ambiguity and contradictions.38 For example, we cannot make sense
of, or understand human beings in isolation. We must focus on the
relatedness, i.e., experience between our self and others. Even the concept
of “I” and “me’ is grounded in relatedness between people. All politics,
diplomacy, economics, are based upon relatedness. The key to
understanding is seeing the relationships and contradictions rather than the
singular entities.
Connections can best be seen where contradictions are perceived;
becoming a starting point for a new understanding of the possible. New
ideas come from where there are errors, not perfections. Errors act as a
trigger to force us to rethink our hypotheses and challenge our
preconceptions. This opens up possibilities to ‘what could be’. Benjamin
Franklin once said “Perhaps the history of the errors of mankind, is more
valuable and interesting than that of all the discoveries.” Seeing new
connections through relatedness is the basis of new creative insights that
lead to breakthroughs in new knowledge.
We simplistically understand climate change as global warming,
characterized by rising temperatures, changing weather patterns, melting
icecaps, and rising sea levels. We generally believe in the phenomenon
primarily because of greenhouse gases we as a society collectively emit into
the atmosphere. Anybody who argues against this would be labeled a
skeptic or non-believer, protecting vested interests. However a recent study
suggests the relationship between temperature change and higher CO2
levels in the atmosphere are highly exaggerated where atmosphere is not as
sensitive to CO2 levels as was first thought.39 In addition the Arctic and
Antarctic ice caps are growing, and not in decline as many believe,40
leading to confusion, more debate, polarized positioning and even
skepticism.41 In complexity, truths are not absolutes.
In the field of development economics there is little agreement about
strategy and what should be measured as success indicators. The
Millennium Village (MV) project founded by Professor Jeffrey Sachs and
philanthropist Ray Chambers was started with a host of objectives, desires,
and hopes.42 Overwhelming successes were claimed.43 However, these were
strongly questioned from a number of perspectives, with some claiming
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better results could have been obtained through other strategies.44 Truths are
not absolutes they are relative to what one believes. Any view we have is
only partially the truth. There are many truths – and it is important to
acknowledge that.45 Reality rests upon these multiple truths which
accommodate ambiguity. Creativity is about continually restructuring and
evolving our worldviews to accommodate change and ambiguity. Within
the quantum view one must accept uncertainty upon the premise that we can
never know everything. Instead of using mathematical formulas, we can
only assume probabilities that certain things may happen. Precision does not
exist.
Our lives and the environments we live within have become so complex
that it is exceeding our cognitive abilities to cope. Our brain has developed
frontal lobes over the last two million years making two significant
contributions to the way we think. If we return to the first scene “The dawn
of man” in Stanley Kubrick’s epic 2001: A Space Odyssey, the beginning of
our species was sparked off by a moment of creativity – the great ape
gaining an insight on how to use a bone as a tool and weapon. Our
prefrontal cortex has given us the ability to make connections. Secondly our
prefrontal cortex gives us the ability to interact, to have empathy, to
imagine, and to manipulate the social surround. Kubrick’s great apes
defended the group – a social action.
However over time we have become preoccupied with our manmade
systems and ignored natural systems, becoming too logical and linear
thinking. The great sociologist Max Weber called this the process of
rationalization. He characterized this rationalization as efficiency,
predictability, calculability, and control over uncertainty, manifested by
rigid bureaucracy,46 the prime means by which we organize our society.
Author and psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist describes the phenomena as a left
hemisphere dominated society, where the left has no wisdom, just data and
representations, where for example money stands for values and objects,
where maximum utility is sort, where there is need for control, in an
environment where we comply to rules.47
What most don’t realize is that we actually have very little control over
the environment, just an illusion of control. We have developed structures
like bureaucracy and systems like ISO, Six Sigma, and TQM to give the
appearance of order and control around us. But our science is not fact as we
tend to assume. Science is made up of hypotheses about finding
correlations, not necessarily cause and effect, not necessarily fact.
Economics, management and sociology simply reflect our values,
aspirations and fears at the time and thus impasse narrow perspectives upon
environmental phenomena. This is clearly seen in academia today where
according to Tufts Professor Amar Bhídé, most of the big economic
journals today reflect right wing ideology,48 thus suppressing alternative
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views. People beliefs, expectations, and values influence their views of the
world according to their respective perspectives.49
Change occurs through the development of new ideas, inventions, and
innovations. The environment is a self regulating system evolving through
the trial and error, driven by creative thinkers who take action upon their
ideas. This could be a morphic phenomenon where collective information
becomes an enabler of new emergence, explaining why different groups in
different parts of the world without knowledge of each other or
collaboration can invent the same thing. This drives what Schumpeter called
‘creative destruction’ and what the systems theorists call ‘emergence’, and
is where creative thinking originates. Creative thinking occurs out of the
chaos rather than order of any environment.
Creative thinking is also restricted through our bounding to time and
space.50 What is possible must have the right social, cultural, legal, and
technological ideas, inventions, and innovations in place as prerequisites,
before a new idea, invention, or innovation can exist through what Steven
Johnson calls the ‘adjacent possible’.51 Numerous scientific discoveries
and technological improvements like the steam engine, automobile, or
winged flight, occurred after thousands of cumulative hours of thought
transpired. No single person can be considered fully responsible for these
discoveries or inventions.52 A single idea is a summary of all concepts
which have been learned over the years of living. An idea must be
expressed for creativity to emerge, which is not restricted to any one form.
It could be a narrative, a poem, a model, a picture, or a piece of art.
Any original concept without all necessary ideas, inventions, and
innovations in place will be fantasy rather than something with immediate
potential reality, i.e., the absence of a small engine that could produce
enough thrust over and above its own weight was one of the barriers to
inventing powered flight. The idea of nano-sensors circulating within the
bloodstream to diagnose human ailments currently lacks the ability to
miniaturize such sensors, but will most probably become a reality when the
required nano-technology exists. All new ideas, inventions, and innovations
are created on the foundations of previous works – a summary of all
previous concepts that have been learned over previous years expressed as
an idea, invention or innovation.
For example, an automobile is a compilation of numerous previous
inventions that enable the form of an automobile to exist. Without the ideas
of steel, rubber, fuel, concepts of compression and combustion, electronics,
tires, braking system, new alloys, hydraulic systems, road rules and
carriageways, the automobile cannot exist (see figure 2). The creation of
inventions that become automobiles is a continuous process. Incremental
improvements to the whole idea advance the automobile. New composite
polymer materials and plastics make lighter frames without sacrificing
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strength, new engine power enhancing systems like turbochargers and fuel
injection systems contribute to the enhancement of car performance. The
automobile is a system of ideas and also forms part of other ideas like
transport systems and city planning, etc. The potential reality is limited by
knowledge and imagination.
The inter-connectiveness of everything is so entangled that looking at
the separate parts of any system will tell us very little about the functioning
of the whole. Anything without the context of the rest of the system has
little meaning, i.e., tires, a braking system, or a chassis will tell us little
about an automobile itself. Everything must exist in relation to other things
in order to have meaning. To the inventor who is making connections,
finding the related meanings between the different objects is the key to
ingenuity. It’s the new meaning that ingenuity provides that advances
society.
Automobile

Chassis Engine Tires Control & Braking System Environment
Management
Systems

Suspension Fuel Rubber Electronics Alloys Road Rules
Systems

Steel Compression Chemical Microprocessors Hydraulics Roads &
& Processes carriageways
Combustion

Heat Engineering Plantations Transistor Laws of Fluids Horse &
Processes principles Buggy

Figure 2. Time and Space: It was the previous ideas and inventions that
existed before an invention like the automobile was possible.

The invention process is subject to multiple realities. Entrepreneurs develop
new ideas upon their prior knowledge, existing technology and inventions.
Any new invention is based on the past and is a projection into the future.
Thus the entrepreneur stands on the origin of possibilities and projects his or
her imagination along a new vector of reality of choosing. For example,
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Anita Roddick’s holiday in America and visit to the Body Shop operated by
sisters Peggy Short and Janet Saunders in Berkeley California, triggered her
to imagine a new reality of ethically based retail outlets around the world.
Without entrepreneurs standing at the origin of possibilities and envisaging
a different future, society could never change. Had each entrepreneur
chosen a different way to go, different realities to what was created would
now exist. An entrepreneur is the creator of new realities.

5. Thought Cognition

The cognitive functioning of the mind is no longer a mysterious black box.
Over the last fifty years we have developed a much deeper understanding
about how we think. With the work of Pierre Paul Broca and Karl Wernicke
in the 19th Century, the different functioning of the left and right
hemispheres of the brain began to become vaguely understood. This
understanding was greatly enhanced with the work of Michael Gazzaniga
and Roger Wolcott Sperry on functional lateralization and how the two
hemispheres communicate with each other when the corpus callosum that
transfers signals between the two hemispheres was severed with split-brain
patients.53 After further work by Robert E. Ornstein, a strong consensus
developed that the brain was fully conscious in both hemispheres carrying
out perception, thinking, storing and retrieving memory simultaneously, but
at the same time providing different and conflicting views of the world.
Julian Jaynes hypothesized in his controversial book The Origin of
Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind that the brain was
indeed divided with a dominant left part that spoke and a subservient right
that obeyed – hence the bicameral mind.54 Although at the time Jaynes saw
bicameralism as metaphoric, advances in cerebral imaging in the 1990s
confirmed his early predictions.55 Jaynes postulated that we have a schizoid
tendency due to hemispherical conflict in the way each hemisphere thinks,
which heavily influenced beliefs about consciousness at the time. These
ideas about split brain functioning were taken up by academics and
practitioners in the creativity and education fields.
The functions of the brain was described as split into two hemispheres
where the left side was believed to be sequential, concerned with facts,
splitting the world into concrete and identifiable categories, logical
reasoning, linear thinking splitting things apart, mathematically orientated,
and the centre of words and language. Thus the left hemisphere is able to
bring narrow and sharply focused attention to detail. On the other side, the
right looked at the environment in a holistic manner looking at the whole,
visually and spatially orientated, seeking similarities through analogy,

22

thinking in images, and thus able to believe, be vigilant over the
environment, and transform ideas.
Our education system has been orientated towards developing general
intelligence and critical thinking, all left traits. This is probably due to belief
in the 1960’s that left side traits were more important in earning an income.
This is clearly reflected in the learning taxonomy developed by Benjamin
Bloom in the 1950s.
Edward De Bono brought predominating focus upon the right
hemisphere of the brain as the centre of holistic or what he called lateral
thinking, where creativity was thought to be derived.56 At that time it was
believed that the dominance of one side and corresponding thinking styles
would suit specific activities, i.e., left side dominance would suit activities
like learning languages, mathematics, engineering, and reading, while right
side dominance would better suit activities like social science, education
and the visual arts57. From a gender perspective it was considered that right
dominance would enable superior interpersonal skills and would be more
common in women and left hand dominance which promoted logical
reasoning would be more common in men.58,59 which supported Anglo
Saxon arguments about male dominance in the Victorian era and influenced
vocational guidance right up to recent times.
The divided brain paradigm was reinforced by medical schools where
students would examine brain anatomy to see the clear division of the brain
down the centre. For many years child psychologists and educators would
look at children’s hand orientation as a rough indication of brain
hemisphere dominance.60 As it was believed that the left hemisphere was
most important to develop scholastically, most children were encouraged to
be right handed which was controlled by the left hand side of the brain.
This belief in the way we thought was built upon by Ned Herrmann a
physicist who worked within the human resource department of General
Electric. After years of research in creativity of the human brain Hermann
developed a metaphorical model of how the four quadrants of the brain have
specialized functions.61 Herrmann believed the brain works as a coalition of
four quadrants that carry out specialized functions. Quadrants A and B are
superimposed over the left side of the brain which is sequential and time-
bound and quadrants C and D are superimposed over the right hand side of
the brain which is holistic and timeless. Quadrant A thinkers think in terms
of words and numbers, logically and analytically. They are achievement
orientated and most people are trained and educated in this way.62 Quadrant
B thinkers are task-orientated and result driven in the way they organize
facts and plan. Quadrant C thinkers are intuitive and rely on interpersonal
stimulations and quadrant D thinkers are conceptualizing, imaginative and
holistic.63 The four quadrants are the basis of our thinking preferences
which determine how we prefer to learn, understand and express things in
23

what are called cognitive preferences or preferred modes of knowing.64
People tend to think from different positions within the whole brain
metaphor. Each quadrant works in tandem in varying degrees within
individuals. When faced with a situation or problem we use our preferred
way of thinking to make sense and solve the problem. When people are
anchored toward one mode, other modes of thinking are avoided. This
greatly affects our intake of information, comprehension of a situation and
overall learning capabilities.65
However this was not reflective upon how the brain really worked.
Functions that were previously believed to only occur on one side of the
brain were found to actually occur on both sides, and it was found that the
corpus callosum played a very important coordinating role, which can vary
from person to person.66 In addition, our whole understanding of
intelligence was beginning to be redefined both in terms of concept and
application.67 Traditional general intelligence was not the only form we
have. We have many different forms of intelligence which vary in
importance according to the time, location and situation we exist within.
The talents and abilities of a New York stockbroker differ from an Olympic
marathon runner, an advocating lawyer in a courtroom, a geologist, and an
Australian aboriginal living off the land in Central Australia. No one can
say which of these people are more intelligent as the necessary talents,
abilities, and underlying intelligences differ just as the tasks, applications,
and required outcomes differ.
Our increasing understanding of the role of the prefrontal cortex through
both cerebral imaging and examination of brain damaged patients indicated
that it is the thinking processes that are of upmost importance in applying
intelligence to problems and challenges we face. The prefrontal cortex is
the centre where we are able to distinguish differences in people, objects,
and events and develop premeditated time phased actions, choose between
alternatives based on set criteria and values, override unacceptable action
pathways that the limbic system may bring attention to. Thus the prefrontal
cortex is able to filter and inhibit inappropriate thought, emotions, and
distractions.68
The prefrontal cortex receives highly filtered data from the senses. It
combines this data with selective memory recall69 to construct a map of
reality that enables us to see the world within our own context. This divides
our reality into, and connects past, present, future together through both
cross temporal and modal association and deliberate potential actions70 – a
totally relational system.
Consequently the prefrontal cortex is a top-down processor rather than
the bottom up limbic system that encourages action through emotional
generation. The prefrontal cortex can also be seen as an integrator of the
two hemispheres, limbic system, senses, and memory functions. Both
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reason and imagination originate from the prefrontal cortex where both
processes require all facets of the mind rather than being exclusively
domiciled in any one hemisphere. The prefrontal cortex must integrate the
left hemisphere’s narrow focused and categorized view of the world which
lock us into particular patterns with the right hemisphere’s overall open
view seeing the world more as a system – as the right hemisphere sees and
this needs to be made sense of by the left hemisphere which categorizes
what the right sees. A mental map is constructed which will differ from
others in the degree of balance between left and right hemisphere
domination.
The prefrontal cortex selects data that creates our mental maps filtered
with set patterns, values and beliefs contained within neurologically
constructed schemata stored within the memory. Where thoughts, desires,
feelings, and ideas are not consistent with the values and beliefs within
these schemata, feelings of confusion, puzzlement, surprise, guilt and/or
remorse may emerge due to the conflicting way reality is interpreted.71
These types of conflicts must be resolved through reason, imagination and
emotion. Sometimes this leads to great new insights where new connections
are made integrating into what could be called reasoned imagination. The
role of emotion is to draw attention to important triggers and keys in the
process. Due to the empathic nature of the prefrontal cortex, we see
relationships between people, things and events. Creativity and original
thinking is about seeing these relationships. At other times emotions trigger
the initiation of any of a vast array of defense mechanisms that may lead to
some forms of dysfunctional thinking.72 From this point of view it could be
argued that our conscious awareness resides within the prefrontal cortex
and connected tracts leading to the rest of the brain.73 The world we
experience is as much a product of our mind as it is the environment.
The brain is a self organizing system full of neural connections.
Probably one of the closest explanations to how our brain processes
information in the recognition process is the neural network model.74
Information is broken up and stored in nodes that connects with other pieces
of information through the dendrite of a neuron (a branched tree like
structure) to terminal buttons at the end of axons (thin branches of neural
cells), where the terminal buttons connect to the dendrites of other cells at
the synapse (junction between the terminal button of one neuron and the
dendrite of another neuron). These neuron connections are numerous
creating (or arranging) our thoughts from a relational database of
information that can be assembled to form meaning when electrical
impulses go above a threshold that makes us aware of a piece of
information.
Neural networks accommodate learning through changing the weights of
node activation through excitatory or inhibitory actions. This improves the
25

efficiency of the network in making identifications through being able to
process information in parallel, through both top-down and bottom-up
processing. This enables a person to look, in the case of writing, either at
the word level, letter level, and feature level, which implies we can interpret
incomplete words and sentences.75 The controlling mechanism of
communications (i.e., connections) between neurons is located within the
prefrontal cortex.76

6. Memory and Prior Knowledge

Our memory stores information about people, objects, and events; in
something like a web of connections explained above. We are not exactly
sure where memory is stored, but it is believed to be around areas of the
brain responsible for language, vision, and hearing, etc, connected through
millions of complex synapses. The hippocampus performs the role as a
mediator in forming memory and as a coordinator in connecting the
respective memory centers of the brain.77 Consequently information is not
stored whole and divided into relational bits. Recent research has shown
that when new experiences occur, a gene activates within the hippocampus
that triggers modifications in neural connections by adjusting the strength of
the synapses.78
Our life experiences, knowledge, knowhow, values, and beliefs are all
stored within the neural systems within our memory. Prior knowledge is
information and knowledge a person accumulates over their lifetime.79 As
one’s experience grows the mental matrix of prior knowledge becomes
richer and more complex. However prior knowledge is not all truth, it is
made of perception, beliefs, and imagination which make up the
components of our memory (see figure 3) – our constructed reality.
The content of prior knowledge can be demonstrated by thinking about
Leonardo da Vinci’s mural Il Cenacola or The last Supper . In the picture
many people believe that a holy chalice is present. On viewing the painting
one will find there is actually no holy chalice on the table whatsoever
(however there are cups). This is how our beliefs developed through
Biblical stories around the last supper shape and influence our mental
construction of what we would expect to see, i.e., how we construct our
reality. Our prior knowledge as well as being influenced by the world
around us also influences our general perception of the world.

26

Memory

Truth Knowledge Belief

Imagination

Figure 3. Prior knowledge consists of truth, belief, knowledge, imagination, and
memory.

We build up knowledge upon a pool of metaphors as a way to comprehend
and construct meaning about the environment around us.80 The advantage of
metaphor is that it can be loosely applied to contextual situations in a
flexible manner to help clarify uncertainty through analogy. Metaphors
make things more familiar to us and if they can explain new experiences to
our satisfaction, our current schemata and emotions are reinforced. Through
the use of metaphor, prior knowledge assists in problem solving by
providing simpler analogies where complex cause and effect cannot be
easily understood and evaluated. Metaphors help a person make sense of
their experiences, perceptions, develop plans for the future, and
communicate these ideas to others.81 For example, business strategy is often
referred to through sport and war analogies which make concepts easier to
understand and visualize. In a similar manner, blood circulation is often
explained in pumping and pressure analysis.
Metaphor is not restricted to narrative and relies very heavily upon
mental imagery. Spatial based mental imagery is extremely important in
conceptualizing and solving problems. Imagery is powerful in arousing
emotion as we see when the majority of people are exposed to sexually
explicit and violent material. Mental imagery originates within the visual
cortex located in the occipital lobe in the posterior of the brain, thus sharing
the same processing space with the visual perception area.82 Much of our
imagination is generated in the visual mode which is sometimes confused
with reality.83
Imagery is a composite picture just like a mental map. We cannot
reconstruct an entire image of a scene we can only make a composite
simulation, which is actually what we also do when we look at a scene
through our eyes84 - remember the Last Supper example. What we see is the
27

composite we construct and not reality. Images cannot however serve as
concepts or ideas themselves, they can only serve as the meaning of words
like a dictionary.85
Metaphorical language evolves into existing imagery and narrative
frameworks within prior knowledge, where ideas can be shared with others.
If current metaphors cannot explain our interpretations of current
experiences and solve particular problems, then new experiences need to be
blended in with prior knowledge to create a modified schemata and new
emotions. This overtime develops much more sophisticated and richer
mental models which assist us when issues and problems we consider
become much more complex – the development of wisdom.86
Experience differs from knowledge in that it introduces feeling and
emotion. For example one could read about snorkeling and diving but until
one has gone diving where they can feel the pressure and experience the
undersea life, knowledge has no feeling. As individuals experience things
differently, i.e., diving around the surface verses diving at the depth of 25
feet and diving in clear tropical waters verses murky lake water. To a great
degree knowledge is individually orientated. No one has the same
experience of the same event and this adds to the concept of understanding
as something relative rather than absolute. The enrichment and
transformation of our schemata over time occurs through learning and
experience.87 The key to our ability to continue learning is to be able to
integrate the knowledge we acquire with the knowledge we already have.
The belief and imagination components of prior knowledge influence
our thinking and decision making processes. Our current beliefs are like an
anchor that prevents us from thinking of new ideas. We are also strongly
influenced by the beliefs of others and emotions tied to similar past
experiences.88
Prior knowledge manifests as stereotyping which assists a person
comprehend a story and judge its plausibility, bringing in judgments and
biases to our thinking.89 In addition, biases guide our decision pathways.
Any first decisions we make on any matter creates a pathway upon which
future decisions will be guided. Biases tend to keep us on a consistent path
through an “escalation of commitment”, even though we may know that the
original decision was wrong.
We are also bound by culture. Culture has a strong bearing on our ability
to be creative both at a social and organizational level. For example, culture
influences how employees feel in a workplace; are people linked or work
within a ranked hierarchy?, do people seek ideas through collaboration or
take on ‘top-down’ ideas?, are people empowered or controlled?, do people
exist within an environment of ambiguity or certainty?, do people make
decisions spontaneously and intuitively or through formal processes and
procedures?, is the organization flexible and quick to act or inflexible and
28

slow to act?, and does management make work play or work under an
environment of seriousness?
Creativity and original thinking is about making new connections, i.e.,
developing new neural networks. Thus our thinking is limited by the
knowledge we already have within our memory and the process of how we
integrate new perceptions into existing prior knowledge. As perceptions are
influenced by our beliefs and biases, new ideas are actually the result of
logical hindsight rather than foresight.90 Therefore creativity can be seen as
being a restructuring of our knowledge to fit the elements of the problems
we face. In these cases the role of creativity is to find new ways to define a
problem so it can be solved with the knowledge we have. From this
perspective the mind’s self organizing system is restricted by the boundaries
of environmental perception and our prior knowledge, placing limits on the
scope of possible emerging ideas.
Virtually no idea or invention has occurred in isolation. We learn
through various methods from others i.e., James Watt used pre-existing
knowledge to develop his version of the steam engine. New ideas and
inventions tend to be incremental steps rather than breakthroughs outside
the bounding of prior knowledge. Humans are social animals and
communication is central to our evolving thinking. As our prior knowledge
increases through social interaction, learning and experience, so does the
number of potential possibilities for making new connections that lead to
new constructions, just as our ability to speak a foreign language increases
exponentially once we know the basic syntax rules and increase our
vocabulary.
The way our cognition system is designed and the role prior knowledge
plays is extremely useful for people carrying out their work like doctors
making a diagnosis, mechanics inspecting an engine for faults, airline pilots,
and farmers, etc., doing the routine parts of their jobs. Prior knowledge
guides them through a number of frames each representing pre-existing
mental models through which they perceive – shaping our reasoning and
decision making process. This is also the basis of their specialist intuition.91
Any new idea is anchored to our life experience, formally or informally
acquired knowledge and associated emotions attached to vision that enables
new connections.92 The key to original thinking is reflection, plasticity and
flexibility at both the neural and thinking levels.

7. Imagination

Imagination is the ability to form mental images, phonological passages,
analogies, or narratives of something that is not perceived through our
senses. Imagination is a manifestation of our memory and enables us to
29

scrutinize our past and construct hypothetical future scenarios that do not
yet, but could exist. Imagination also gives us the ability to see things from
other points of view and empathize with others.
Imagination extends our experience and thoughts, enabling a personal
construction of a world view that lowers our sense of uncertainty.93 In this
way our imagination fills in the gaps within our knowledge enabling us to
create mental maps that make meaning out of the ambiguities of situations
we face where information is lacking,94 which is an important function of
our memory management. This partly explains why people react differently
to what they see due to the unique interpretations they make based on
different prior knowledge and experience. Imagination enables us to create
new meanings from cognitive cues or stimuli within the environment, which
on occasions can lead to new insights.
Our knowledge and personal goals are embedded within our imagination
which is at the heart of our existence, a cognitive quality that we would not
be human without.95 Imagination is the means novelists use to create their
stories.96 The Turkish Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk imagined a world he
retreated into as a child where he was someone else, somewhere else in
creating the narrative and story of his novel “Istanbul”. Imagination is
needed in marketing to create new value sets to consumers that separate
new products from others. This requires originality to create innovation97.
Imagination is the essence of marketing opportunity98 that conjures up
images and entices fantasy to consumers, allowing them to feel what it
would be like to live at Sanctuary Cove in Northern Queensland, Australia,
receiving a Citibank loan, driving a Mercedes 500 SLK around town, or
holidaying in Bali. Imagination aids our practical reasoning99 and opens up
new avenues of thinking, reflection, allowing a mentally reorganized world,
to enable concepts of doing things differently. Imagination decomposes
what already is, replacing it with what could be, and is the source of hope
fear, enlightenment, and aspirations.
Imagination is not a totally conscious process. New knowledge may
incubate subconsciously when a person has surplus attention to focus on
recombining memory and external stimuli into new meanings. Most people
tend to spend a great deal of time while they are awake “daydreaming”,
where attention shifts away from the present mental tasks to an unfolding
sequence of private responses.100,101 This may be enough to activate our
default network, a web of autobiographical mental imagery, which may
provide new connections and perspectives about a problem we have been
concerned with. Recent research has shown that the brain periodically shifts
phase locking during a person’s consciousness,102 where neural networks
activate and these brief periods may be enough to allow the dominant left
hemisphere give way to the right hemisphere, enabling a person to see the
environment, problem or issue from a new perspective.103 This has been
30

corroborated with research that found where people engage in mildly
demanding intellectually challenging tasks during breaks from work that
they are doing, there is a higher probability of finding solutions to problems
that they have been engaged within their primary activity.104 These
processes originate from the prefrontal cortex where we imagine ourselves
and the feelings of others, the posterior cingulate cortex connecting our
personal memories throughout the brain, and the parietal cortex connecting
the hippocampus which is reported to store episodic memories.105
Unguided imagination (or what was once termed “free association”)
through dreaming and “daydreaming” enables the gathering of information
from different parts of our memory, which may not be easy to access
consciously. This information may come from a within a narrow domain or
a much wider field. The more imagination takes account of the wider field,
experience, and prior knowledge, the more likely these ideas created
through imagination will have some originality – through complex
knowledge restructuring. Allen McConnell writing about Steve Jobs in
Psychology Today postulated that the large array of fonts designed for the
Macintosh computer were inspired from Job’s interest and knowledge about
typography he learned while doing a calligraphy class at Reed.106 It was
Job’s imagination of seeing an array of fonts in the Macintosh that made it
reality. There are very few serendipitous occurrences in creative insight.
Most are the result of triggers and slow incubation periods that lead to a
revelation.107
Marsh and Bower called the above types of insights inadvertent
plagiarism.108 Most cases of insight were inspired by something in the past;
although though imagery these new concepts may have been given new
types of manifestations. It is through the imagery of analogies that many
breakthroughs in science have been achieved.109 Einstein developed his
insight for the theory of relativity through imagining what would happen if
he travelled at the speed of light, Faraday claimed to have visualized force
lines from electric and magnetic fields from a wood fire giving insight into
the theory of electromagnetic fields and kekulé reported that he gained
insight into the shape of the benzene molecule after he imagined a snake
coiled up in a circle.
Imagination is a multidimensional concept and encompasses a number
of different modes which can be described as follows;
1. Effectuative imagination combines information together to synergize
new concepts and ideas. However these are often incomplete and need to be
enhanced, modified, and/or elaborated upon as more information from the
environment comes to attention and is reflected upon. Effectuative
imagination can be either guided or triggered by random thoughts, usually
stimulated by what a person experiences within the framework of their past
experience. Effectuative imagination may also incubate from pondering
31

over a specific problem within the occasional attention of a person.
Effectuative imagination is extremely flexible and allows for continuous
change. This is an important ingredient in entrepreneurial planning, strategy
crafting, particularly in opportunity construction, development, and
assembling all the necessary resources required to exploit any
opportunity.110 Effectuative imagination also leads to other forms of
imagination that assists in the construction of concepts, ideas, and action
scenarios. Effectuative imagination enables flexibility in our thinking.
2. Intellectual (or constructive) imagination is utilized when considering
and developing hypotheses from different pieces of information or
pondering over various issues of meaning say in the areas of philosophy,
management, or politics, etc. Intellectual imagination originates from a
definite idea or plan and thus is guided imagination as it has a distinct
purpose which in the end must be articulated after a period of painstaking
and sometimes meticulous endeavor. This can be very well illustrated with
Charles Darwin’s work which resulted in the development of his hypothesis
explained in his book The Origin of Species which took almost two decades
to gestate and complete. Darwin collected information, analyzed it,
evaluated and criticized the findings, and then reorganized all the
information into new knowledge in the form of a hypothesis.111 This can be
a long drawn out process, sometime decades long, with intermittent periods
of high intensity and other periods where very little thought is given to the
problem. Intellectual imagination is a very conscious process, although it
may slip into other forms of imagination that enable new insights.
3. Imaginative fantasy creates and develops stories, pictures, poems,
stage-plays, and the building of the esoteric, etc. This form of imagination
may be based upon the inspiration of some fact or semi-autobiographical
experiences (James Bond), extrapolated or analogized into new persona and
events (Star Trek) that conform to or stretch the realms of reality into
magic, supernatural mythology and folklore (The kane Chronicles, King
Arthur). Imaginative fantasy may be structural with mythical people in real
world settings (The Planet of the Apes), past, present, or future, with real
people in mythical settings (Lost in Space). Fantasy may totally disregard
the rules of society (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz), science and nature (The
Time Machine, Back to the Future), or extrapolate them into the future with
science fiction (2001: A Space Odyssey). Fantasy can also be based upon
human emotions (Romeo and Juliet), distorted historical facts (The Patriot),
historical times and political issues (Dr. Strangelove), take a theme and
fantasize it (1984, Animal Farm), encapsulate dark fantasy (Wag the Dog),
or evoke urban legend (The Stepford Wives, Dusk to Dawn). Imaginative
fantasy can be a mixture of guided and unguided imagination and is
important to artists, writers, dancers, and musicians, etc.

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4. Empathy is a capacity we have to connect to others and feel what they
are feeling. Empathy helps a person know emotionally what others are
experiencing from their frame and reference.112 Empathy allows our mind
‘to detach itself from one’s self’ and see the world from someone else’s
feelings, emotions, pain, and reasoning.113 Empathy can assist us in seeing
other realities, alternative meanings of situations, which may consist of
many layers. Empathy shows us that there are no absolutes, just alternative
meanings to situations.114 Empathy links us to the larger community and
thus important to human survival in enabling us to understand what is
required to socially coexist with others. Empathy shows that realities
sometimes conflict. Seeing conflicting realities is a sign that we are starting
to know. Howard Gardner postulates that the concept of empathy should
also include our empathy with nature and our place within it.115 High ego-
centricity leads to reduced empathy and the inability to see other
viewpoints. However recent studies on narcissistic individuals has shown
that there are two types of empathy, affective empathy discussed above and
cognitive empathy which involves the ability of people to see person’s
emotional state without being able to feel what they are feeling.116 Lack of
empathy can also be compensated by strategizing and spontaneous
mentalizing to manipulate others to their advantage. These Machiavellian
personalities don’t necessarily feel the same emotions as those with
empathy receive, so don’t feel guilty when manipulating others.117 This type
of behavior can be seen in short-term mating strategies by males.118 Besides
being extremely important in interpersonal relationships, empathy is an
important tool for competitive strategy as it enables one to think about how
our competitors would react to our moves and what they would do.
Branding can also be considered a result of empathy as branding is designed
to try and capture connections with potential customers by appealing to
their emotions, self identity and aspirations.
5. Strategic imagination is concerned about vision of ‘what could be’, the
ability to recognize and evaluate opportunities by turning them into mental
scenarios, seeing the benefits, identifying the types and quantities of
resources required for taking particular actions, and the ability to weigh up
all the issues in a strategic manner. A vision helps a person focus upon the
types of opportunities suited to their disposition. This sense of vision is
guided by a person’s assumptions, beliefs and values within the psych.
Vision has varying strengths in different people depending upon their ego
characteristics and motivations. The ability to spot and evaluate
opportunities is closely linked with a person’s imagination, creative
thinking, propensity to action, and perceptions of their talents and available
skills. According to Bolton and Thompson entrepreneurs spot particular
opportunities and extrapolate potential achievable scenarios within the
limits of their skills and ability to gather resources to exploit the
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opportunity.119 These extrapolations from opportunity to strategy require
both visual/spatial and calculative thinking skills at a strategic rather than
detailed level. Adequate concentration is required in order to have a
strategic outlook upon things. This requires focus in strategic thinking,
creativity, a sense of vision, and empathy. Strategic (and also intellectual)
imagination can be utilized through thought experiments, the process of
thinking through a scenario for the purpose of thinking through the
consequences. Too little focus will result in random jumping from potential
opportunity to opportunity without undertaking any diligent mental
evaluations. Too much focus may result in narrow mindedness and even
obsessive thinking which would result in either blindness to potential
opportunities or at the other end of the scale taking action without truly
“objective” evaluation. Strategic imagination in some cases is a form of
wisdom.
6. Emotional imagination is concerned with manifesting emotional
dispositions and extending them into emotional scenarios. Without any
imagination, emotion would not be able to emerge from our psych and
manifest as feelings, moods, and dispositions. Fear requires the imagination
of what is fearful, hate requires imagination about what is repulsive, and
worry requires the imaginative generation of scenarios that make one
anxious. Through emotional imagination, beliefs are developed through
giving weight to imaginative scenarios that generate further sets of higher
order emotions. Emotional imagination operates at the unconscious and
semi-unconscious level. People who show excessive emotional imagination
would most probably be defined as exhibiting psychotic tendencies.
Emotional imagination is one of the most powerful types of our imagination
and can easily dominate our thinking processes.
7. Dreams are an unconscious form of imagination made up of images,
ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur during certain stages of sleep.
Dreams show that every concept in our mind has its own psychic
associations and that ideas we deal with in everyday life are by no means as
precise as we think.120 Our experiences become sublimed into our memory
passing into the unconscious where the factual characteristics can change,
and can be reacquired at any time. According to Jung, dreams are the
invisible roots of our consciousness,121 and connect us to our unconscious.
However the meaning of dreams is can only be based on our speculative
interpretation. Some dreams are very straight forward, while others surreal,
magical, melancholic, adventurous, and sexual where we are most of the
time not in control.
8. Memory reconstruction is the process of retrieving our memory of
people, objects, and events. Our memory is made up of prior knowledge
consisting of a mix of truth and belief, influenced by emotion. Recurring
memory therefore carries attitudes, values, and identity as most of our
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memory is within the “I” or “me” paradigm. Memory is also reconstructed
to fit into our current view of the world, so is very selective. The process of
memory reconstruction occurs within our subconscious emerging into our
consciousness without us being really being aware of the source elements,
i.e., what is fact and what is belief. Memory reconstruction is assimilative
and can construct new knowledge out of random facts, beliefs and
experiences which may lead to insight.
Each form of imagination outlined above certainly overlaps and may
operate in tandem. Imaginative thinking provides the ability to move
towards objectives, and travel along selected paths. Imagination is much
more divergent than logical thought, as imagination can move freely across
fields and disciplines, while logical thinking is orientated along a narrowly
focused path. From this perspective imagination is probably more important
than knowledge as knowledge without application is useless. Imagination
enables us to apply knowledge.
However imagination can also be dysfunctional. Personality disorders
and the emerging emotion can dominate our imagination with fear, anxiety,
paranoia, and/or narcissistic tendencies, etc.122 This may prevent a person
from imagining new alternatives to their current goals and behavior, thus
allowing their past fears and anxieties to dominate their thinking.123
Imagination can consciously or unconsciously dissociate a person from the
reality of their everyday life where they may fall into the life of fantasy.
Abstract imagination can very quickly take a person away from reality
where current problems are ignored in favor of fantasy.124

8. Emotion

Cognition as a discipline has emerged over the last sixty years with the
brain as a computer metaphor, leaving the study of emotion to behavioral
psychology. But recent research has determined that our cognitive
processing has an emotional element, and is paramount for effective
functioning.125 Our thinking and decision making is influenced by two
distinct, yet interwoven processes. One involves conscious deliberation and
analysis through the prefrontal cortex where facts are considered and
weighed, options generated and compared with reasoning to determine an
outcome. The second system is non-conscious rapid emoto-based pattern
recognition with emotionally weighted biases.126 Emotion triggers
memories, and perceptions, and memories also trigger emotions which
define the nature of our existence relative to the past and future, and our
sense of power over any situation.
Emotions are part of our fundamental irrationality and unpredictability
and thus an important influence in creativity and original thinking. Our
35

basic emotions come from inner extra-rational dynamics deep within our
psych that are expressed as feelings, dreams, fantasies, and other imagined
aspects of our lives.127 Our more complex emotions like loyalty, sympathy,
pride, confidence, achievement, embarrassment, indignation, bewilderment,
pity, elation, satisfaction, boredom, shame, disgust, frustration, and surprise,
etc, tend to be socially related and constructed.128 Everything we perceive
evokes some form of feeling and the process of creativity, innovation and
invention is always an emotional and even sensual experience in people as
concepts are translated into words, numbers, diagrams, or objects, leading to
something inspirational.129 Emotions decide what we like, dislike, what is
agreeable, disagreeable, giving meaning to our world. Emotions can
sometimes help us see similar patterns across fields without conscious
deliberation and plays an important role in signaling preferences for
opportunities by arousing positive emotions, kindling enthusiasm and
determining our reactions to shocks and the behavioral trajectories we take.
Our view of the world is filtered through emotions which guides our self
awareness to a past or future orientation. Our thinking is swayed by our
time orientation within an emotion matrix depicted in figure 4. Any past
orientation will be full of stories which influence our sense of meaning
about the present. Some of the stories we remember will be full of regret for
past mistakes, disappointment for what was not done, or full of satisfaction
and/or pride for what was achieved. The past influences our interpretation
of the present. Positive and negative experiences influence what we
perceive, contemplate and put our focus upon in the now. The positive and
negative memories of the past also guide our direction in the future. Positive
memories guide us towards action where we have a high sense of self
efficacy and negative memories tend to make us averse to taking action
where we have a low sense of self efficacy. The future represents our
positive hopes and aspirations, or negative fears and anxieties where
positive emotions may lead to a sense of high self efficacy and become
powerful motivators for action, while negative emotions may lead to sense
of low self efficacy feasibility and take an averse attitude towards action.
Extreme feelings of low or high self efficacy can lead to either reckless
overconfidence in a positive emotional state or an aversion from action out
of fear and anxiety in a negative emotional state. The same feelings are not
uniform across the all activities, where a person may feel a high sense of
self efficacy in some areas and low sense of self efficacy in other areas.

36

Imagination Heuristics
Action adverse Reckless overconfidence

Negative emotions Future Orientation Positive emotions

Optimal drive

Value sets
Optimal learning

Sense of Present Sense of
low self high self
efficacy Orientation
efficacy

Patterning

Past Orientation
Bad memories Good memories

Memory
Imagination
Belief System

Figure 4. The emotion matrix

There is a strong nexus between our experiences, prior knowledge and
emotion. We see the world through the perspective of our own identity
shaped by our emotions. The interaction of experience, prior knowledge and
emotion leads to the formation of our beliefs, which lay the foundation of
our values and aspirations, expressed through patterning, and sets of
heuristics which guide our thinking and decision making. The above
dynamics fuels our imagination which translates our memory, into beliefs,
aspirations, and emotions into scenarios that create feelings of self efficacy,
motivation, energy, and drive. Our optimal position for learning is within
the present orientation where the influence of future fears and hopes, past
disappointments and successes are minimized and within our conscious
awareness. Too much past or future orientation may lead to personal
delusion such as unrealistic hopes that an entrepreneurial opportunity really
exists,130 or massive overconfidence in one’s ability to successfully
implement a complex strategy in the field. Alternatively too much future or
past orientation may lead to undue pessimism where the feeling of self
efficacy and motivation is low, leading to states of anxiety and inaction.
Orientation in the past will anchor one into previous patterns of success,
which promote rigidity, while too much orientation into the future may lead

37

to fantasy, thus leading to unrealistic objectives and the ability to consider
realistic scenarios.131
The impact of our past and future orientation and sense of self efficacy
upon our behavior is strong. Emotion is embedded within our culture and
forms part of our domicile outlook.132 Philip Zimbardo postulated that
people living in tropical climates where there is little change in the weather
and where a language has no future tense leads to an inept propensity for
action.133 Rural youth unemployment within developing and post industrial
societies appear to be developing a generation of youth that feels little hope
about the future, while societies in countries like Malaysia where sections of
the population seek to cling to the order of the past may do little to prepare
for the challenges of the future. Max Weber attributed the rise of capitalism
in Europe to the present and future orientated Protestant work ethic and the
relative backwardness of Catholic centered Europe to the past orientation of
Catholic doctrines.134 Our emotional orientation influences our pace of life,
belief systems, aspirations and propensity for action.

9. Energy

Recently, the concept of energy has been related to a person’s ability to be
creative.135 However there is very little agreement on the definition of
energy, what it really is, what it does and no way has been found to actually
measure it directly.136 A number of different types and terms for human
energies have been cited, but probably out of these, three are of importance
and are somewhat interrelated.
The first of three energies is our physical energy that is necessary to do
physical things like moving from place to place, running, sports, and any
other activity that requires kinesthetic movement. Our physical energy is
managed by food for fuel, rest and exercise to build strength and discipline.
The next energy is our emotional energy which enables the expression of
our general emotions like happiness, surprise, hate, envy, and jealousy, etc.
Emotional energy helps to give us focus, interest and attention to different
things we sense, encounter, or exposed to and is one of our primal
mechanisms to keep us alert to danger in the environment.137 Finally there is
our mental energy which fuels our ability to make calculations and
undertake judgments. Sometimes emotional energy and intelligences are
called psychic energy, but breaking them into two separate energies allows
us to understand the very different roles they play in our life.
The level of energy we have either supports or inhibits our creativity and
problem solving abilities. These three energies are all interrelated, where for
example a physically tired person will not perform mental calculations well,
or an emotionally tired person will not be able to undertake either physical
38

work or mental thinking very well. These different states show the
interconnection between our various types of energies.
Our energy is chemo-electric in nature, where proteins, enzymes and
other electrically sensitive chemicals produce and transfer electricity
through our neuro-system to make us move, feel and think.138 Our energy
links our cognitive and kinetic systems together as one interdependent
system something like the Chinese concept of Qi that governs our bodily,
mental and emotional disposition.139 Energy is a dynamic force that fuels all
our processes and like all energy behaves according to the first law of
thermodynamics where it can be stored, released, focused and drained
according to stimulation, demands, needs and distractions coming from the
environment and within our self.
Our physical energy is responsible for our kinesthetic movements.
However, like nutrients, rest and training; our emotional energy also effects
our levels of physical energy. Take for example an athlete overly nervous
before a race, feeling ‘butterflies in the stomach’. With extreme anxiousness
and fear (presumably an under-confidence bias and anxiety), the athlete’s
physical energy will begin to drain making the person feel lethargic, tired
and weak. This contrasts with the athlete who is ready to do their best,
focused and determined to perform well and ready for the challenge without
allowing doubts and anxiousness to drain his or her energy. Another
example is the inability to reason logically when one is in a state of anger
and the tiredness one feels after being angry.
Emotional energy helps a person deal with everyday frustrations,
conflict and pressure. Our emotional energy is influenced by the
surrounding environment, people, objects and events. Emotions in the form
of moods ebb and flow during the day, week, and month.140 We are mostly
unaware of our moods which tend to influence the way we think about
things141. Other emotions are triggered by a potential crisis, a crisis, our
health, our concern for something or general stress. A person with a high
level of emotional energy will be able to cope with the normal stresses of
the day while a person with a low level of emotional energy will quickly
succumb to any crisis, becoming stressed, anxious and/or frustrated very
quickly. Under such situations a person losses focus, where their attention
becomes diverted on other tasks that lower general energy levels.
Emotional energy is a source of determination providing a person with
the emotional motivation to get on with a job whether it is physical or
mentally orientated. Emotional energy provides our enthusiasm, drive and
resilience to do things. This is fine in a person who has a clear mission to
attend to, but where a person’s emotions are deluded with paranoia,
compulsiveness, depression, or other forms of neurosis, their emotional
energies are diverted into the fantasies these various pathologies might
generate142. For example, a paranoid person will spend all their emotional
39

and mental energies on suspecting conspiracies against them, leaving little
energy available for creative or other problem solving issues facing them.
These types of emotions lead to immense fatigue and inability to function
logically. Emotional balance is very important so that both our physical and
mental capacities are at their optimum.
Mental energy is very important for creativity and supports two types of
cognitive operations. The first is the ability to make mental calculations and
draw inferences from logical and spatial relationships. The second is the
ability to make judgments, recognize similarities across different categories
of information using induction and logical reasoning.143 We tend to slow
down in the ability to make quick and accurate mental calculations during
aging but on the contrary improve in our induction and logical reasoning
with age. Mental energy is created through our interest, desire, curiosity,
passion and concern for something. Our mental energy levels can be
affected by drugs, food, sleep deprivation and various levels of health.144
The tension between a person’s current identity and future aspirations
manifests as dissatisfaction. This dissatisfaction potentially creates the
energy and drive needed for action by an entrepreneur.145 The emotions
connected with dissatisfaction create a form of cognitive dissonance about
the current situation and a desired future outcome, thus channeling energy
and creating drive. It is an intensively emotional rather than rational
experience that creates the physical, emotional and psychic energy that are
required in new venture start ups and the pursuit of opportunity.

10. Intelligence

There is no conclusive agreement about what the concept of intelligence
really is. Some concepts of intelligence focused upon achievement, i.e., how
much a person really knows relative to others in an age group, or aptitude
orientated, i.e., the person’s ability to learn.146 Traditionally intelligence has
been considered as a general trait “g” where people would differ in the
level they possess. However as separate abilities (e.g. verbal, memory,
perceptual, and arithmetic) were recognized as intelligence, the concept of
intelligence widened.147
Howard Gardner took an interest in Norman Geschwind’s research
concerning what happens to normal or gifted individuals after the
misfortune of a stroke or some other form of brain damage. Gardner was
amazed at how a patient, counter to logic would lose the ability to read
words, but could still read numbers, name objects, and write normally.148
This suggested that different aspects of intelligence originate from different
parts of the brain.

40

Gardner synthesized his knowledge of the study of brain damage with
his study of cognitive development and believed that peoples’ endeavors
were not based upon any single type of intelligence, but rather a mix of
different intelligences. Intelligence needs to be applied in various ways for
survival in different environments and thus the abilities of a banker, medical
doctor, and Eskimo looking for fish are situational specific, all requiring
high levels of competence. Western society heavily values verbal,
mathematical, and spatial competencies while other competencies may be
more important in other cultures. Intellectual competence must therefore
entail the possession of a set of skills that can enable someone to solve
problems, resolve difficulties they may find in day to day living, have the
potential to find problems, and have the ability to acquire new knowledge
from their personal experiences.149 Every form of intelligence can be seen
as a specific paradigm having its own symbols and logic that will define,
enable evaluation, and solve problems.
Gardner hypothesized the multiple intelligence theory in recognition that
broad mental abilities are needed in society and that every person has a
unique blend of different intelligences.150 Gardner initially listed seven
types of intelligence, body-kinesthetic, verbal-linguistic, logical-
mathematical, visual-spatial, musical, interpersonal, and intrapersonal
intelligence. Gardner also affirmed that our separate types of intelligences
may not just be limited to the seven above and that others may also exist.
Brilliance and achievement most often depend upon the individual finding
the right vocation in life that suits their intelligence mix.
One of the other forms of intelligence that Gardner speculated about was
spiritual intelligence. Zohar and Marshall postulated that spiritual
intelligence is a moral base enabling us to question issues of ‘what’ and
‘why’ about things, and whether we should or shouldn’t be involved in
particular activities.151 Unlike general intelligence which is logical and
rational, spiritual intelligence enables us to question, which is central to the
concept of creativity.
Expanding upon Gardner’s concept of interpersonal intelligence is the
concept of emotional intelligence (EQ), which has become very popular
over the last two decades. Emotional intelligence places emphasis on a
number of characteristics that are important for creativity within a group or
social setting.152
However emotional intelligence may have a dark side. Some individuals
are able to utilize only the perception traits of emotional intelligence
without feeling the emotions of sympathy, compassion, and altruism. They
are better able to manage and manipulate others emotions better than their
own.153 This ability to manipulate and deceive others, albeit creatively, has
been dubbed Machiavellian Intelligence by Andrew Whiten and Richard

41

Byrne.154 This appears a primal ability in humans as primates have been
observed manipulating groups in order to gain support and rank.155
Intelligence and creativity are very different. The narrower definition of
intelligence tends to be the basis of convergent thinking, while creativity is
about divergent thinking in this regard. Creativity is a much wider concept
than intelligence. Our creative style has very little to do with our general
intelligence.156 Our creativity has more to do with the particular
characteristics of our intelligence and thinking styles we rely upon (see
figure 5). Creativity relies upon imagination to assist us see patterns and
similarities between unrelated things through metaphor and analogy, etc.
Creativity occurs across our various intelligences, bringing them into
synergy.157 Original thinking is about making these connections.
Based on experience, awareness,
Thinking Typologies reflection, mixed emotion and
imagination, very intuitive based
The basis of our skills and
thinking. Useful for strategic and
abilities used alone or
Wisdom visionary thinking and solving
supplement other thinking
(emotion & problems based on past patterns.
typologies (our most primitive
experience) Can be and is influenced by G and
type of thinking) – wider than
MI – more right hemisphere but
Gardner’s MI
uses both
Memory

Emotive

General
Multiple Instinctive Knowledge
Intelligence
Intelligences
Solution Application (Memory & I)
Connective

Fluidity

Frontal lobe and coordinated
right/left hemisphere thinking. Can
be greatly enhanced using specific Mainly developed academic
cognitive tools that can be learned. Cognitive processing learning which creates formal
Can be supplemented by other (creativity) knowledge. This formal
thinking typologies. Heavy use knowledge can supplement
imagination/metaphor/symbolic. other thinking typologies as it is
Problem solving & creating new fairly useless on its own. – left
ideas hemisphere

Figure 5. The four major thinking typologies

Multiple intelligence recognizes that different skills originate from different
areas of the mind and offers a different insight into how we think. There are
multiple paths of perception and reasoning patterns. A single form of
intelligence restricts the very way a problem is seen, what data is useful,
how the data is organized and analyzed, and what alternatives are
acceptable. In addition, domain paradigms that the majority of people have
been trained within, can act as barriers to breakthroughs and this is often
why a person from outside a domain may have an advantage. Prior
knowledge can be restrictive and anchor one to existing assumptions and
beliefs that prevail within the domain. This is why prodigious performance
is much more likely in fields where prior knowledge is not so important like

42

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