Chapter 10 Question #2

As mentioned in the text, the five cultural barriers to creativity include: requirement for conformity, expectation of practicality and efficiency,particular arenas for competition or cooperation, an expectation of politeness and following the rules of social order, and reliance on expert knowledge. I believe there are various reasons that these barriers keep groups from being creative however, the one that stands out the most to me is the requirement for conformity. I have experienced many situations that have kept groups I've been apart of from being creative. In all honesty, I have been one of the group members who chose to conform instead of taking the creative route. I believe a big part in me not going the extra mile to be creative is simply because I did not think the rest of the group would appreciate or like my ideas as much as I did. Unfortunately, many people tend to not pay attention to anyone else's ideas besides their own so sometimes that makes the other people in the group just go along with whatever the rest of the group thinks to make things easier Also, in a recent experience, I had to do a group presentation involving a powerpoint. One person in my group had the idea to show a video within the powerpoint and I didn't really agree because I thought it was too much, and would probably be complicated to set up within our 8 minute presentation. Although I voiced my opinion, the group still decided to go along with the video. And as I predicted, when attempting to show the video, we had technical difficulties and did not end up playing it. This can tie into the expectation of practicality and efficiency because instead of being creative (using a video instead of just talking to the class) I wanted to be practical and efficient.