At first glance rationality and creativity seem to be opposed to one another. If a business owner that customers want “X,Y, and Z” then it’d be “rational” to give it to them. Yet you don’t have to look far to see examples of “irrational” entrepreneurs and artists that are loved around the world.

Here are just a few examples of irrational ideas that have changed the world:

• Google rebels against Yahoo’s website directory strategy. “We’ll take you straight to the website you want… even though that means we won’t get to show you 20 adds while you click around a directory”
• Ikea takes “some assembly required” to a whole new level
• HP Bubble Jet (full story in blog 1) makes ink explode.
• iPhone denouces the “stylus” even though objectors argue that “you’re thumb would always be in the way and your screen would get dirty”
• Picasso rebels against realism. While trying to sell his painting, a prospective customer once said “I’d never pay money for something my 4 year old could have made.”

What Is “Rational” Anyway?

By definition, rational ideas are those that are logical or reasonable. One of the main problems with this definition is that it assumes that we know everything from the very beginning. That simply isn’t the case. Rationality is colored by both what information we have and our beliefs about that information.

An Irrational Bank Robber

Irrationality is easy to see in other people’s behavior because we simply don’t have the same information as them. For instance, an unarmed man robbed a bank for 1$ and then sat outside waiting for the police to arrest him. From most people’s perspective, that’s about as irrational as it gets. But according to the robber, he didn’t want the money… he didn’t even want to commit a crime. He wanted the health insurance available in prison because he couldn’t afford to pay for it himself. Whether you agree with the methods or not, his actions become more “rational” when we have that information.

Irrational Conclusions

The same is true about our beliefs about information. Take political news: 2 news networks can have the same information and yet come to completely different conclusions. Both sides would see their side as entirely rational while claiming the other side was either irrational or (more likely) flat-out liars. If you want a good example… turn on the TV… Now.

Were “Irrational” Companies Ever Being Rational?

It turns out a lot of the creative people that were seen as “irrational” early on were being rational all the time, they were just working from either different information or a different belief system.

When the founders of Google tried to sell the Google algorithm to Yahoo for 1 million dollars, Yahoo was being completely rational to turn them down. According to Yahoo’s beliefs about success in their industry, an algorithm was irrational. It’d be irrational to put the breaks on a highly lucrative directory-based system that allowed them to show multiple ads on multiple pages while online searchers navigated the directory. Today, we see Yahoo as committing one of the biggest blunders of all time… passing up an opportunity to buy up the company that would eventually over-take them… for mere pennies.

What’s interesting is that anyone looking back at this situation would have the exact opposite reaction. I don’t know any “rational” person who wouldn’t try to buy at least a piece of Google early on. Knowing what we know today, it’d be irrational to not invest. 

Creative Products Blend The Rational and Irrational

Rational and irrational thoughts can also lead to different types of creativity. You can group creative ideas into two different categories: those that accept the current paradigm (status-quo/belief-system/etc.) … and those that reject it.

When we talk about creativity being irrational we tend to use examples of paradigm-rejection, creative people that rejected the status-quo and built something entirely new.

When we talk about creative products that have taken a known idea and pushed it forward then we tend to use examples of rational creativity. A good example of this is the razor-blade industry. “Oh.. you like 1 blade… we’ll give you two… that’s TWICE as many razors… what? someone else is doing to razors too? … ok… now THREE! FOUR! TEN!!!”

Most creative ideas will lie somewhere in the middle, between the completely rational and uterly irrational.

Creative Process Blends Rational & Irrational

Not only will the product be somewhere in the middle, but the thinking process used to get there will be a mixture of rational and irrational thought as well. It’s a mixture of logically working your way through a problem, but also making room for the irrational ideas, such as your emotions or gut feelings to drive you forward.

However, you can’t really say that creativity is somewhere in the middle. Throughout the process the creative person doesn’t simply use a little rationality and a little irrationality. Usually they swing it from one extreme to the other.

This was shown by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who showed that the creative personality tends to bounce between extremes: A creative person can be both playful and disciplined, rational and irrational, responsible and irresponsible, conservative and rebellious, as well as subjective and objective.

What’s important is that highly creative people tend to swing from one high-end of the spectrum to the other with very little middle-ground. They are intensely rational for a time and then they switch gears and are extremely irrational, perhaps losing themselves in fantasy like Einstein was known to do.

This allows the creative person to spend time from both perspectives. The rationality allows them to logically think through all of the implications of an idea while their time spent in irrational thought allows them to break through mental barriers and come up with ideas that run against social norms or the status-quo.

This swinging from one end of the spectrum to the other is very important. Creativity does not work well when all of your thought is working from the same position. Intense rationality cannot be used to create breakthrough ideas, just as complete irrationality doesn’t result in a well-grounded idea. The two complement each other.

Jared Volle, M.S.

Creativity & Innovation