How to manage mixed emotions in creative ventures

Photo by Ashkan Forouzani on Unsplash

Innovation is not a simple task. It brings with it a myriad of challenges and mixed emotions. The way we deal with these mixed emotions plays a vital part in how the outcomes of our creative efforts are shaped. 

Soon after starting, unexpected delays and complications will arise. Anticipated challenges may take different forms than expected. Planning biases appear different than anticipated due to various planning biases. This makes the innovation process both important and exciting but also stressful and challenging. 

The mixed emotions that accompany innovation as a creative process (both personal and social/organizational) are condensed or transformed into two critical elements, the innovation experience itself and wicked problems. Imagine it this way, you are a captain of star trek enterprise, the innovation experience is you flying in space, and the wicked problems are gravity warps, alien encounters, and other episodic disturbances that exist in the area you operate through, and that affect your journey and naturally your experience. There is a strong and complementary relationship between experiences and wicked problems. While Experiences (our own and others’) can potentially evolve into wicked problems, wicked problems by definition affect our experiences. 

The innovation experience itself, is a mix of flows and interruptions, halts and goes, problems and solutions that affect us emotionally. We get excited and discouraged, happy or sad during the innovation process as a result of events that occur during the process itself (challenges and problems) or unraveled as a result of the process (problems and wicked problems). 

Challenges are deviations from the norm. When we need or desire to change the status quo, we experience a challenge. By their departure from the standard, challenges require attention and effort, Some challenges require more serious effort and others could be rather mundane, but in general, a challenge won't be challenging if we are not required to exert some extra effort. Climbing a mountain or crossing a river is a challenge because it requires us some extra effort than walking on a plateau or moving in one type of obstacle (land, and now water). 

However, if we carry a heavy load, or don't know how to swim. We will have a problem. Problems are challenges that are harder to resolve, and require not just effort but also broader capabilities. To cross a river, we need to know how to swim; otherwise, we will not succeed in the challenge. Once identified, problems will require more necessary skills and efforts. This will, of course, delay us, but if we need to cross the river and understand that we need to learn to swim if we have the time to learn to swim, the problem will be resolved. However, what if we don't? 

What will happen if we need to cross the river in a hurry, what if our lives depend on it? We can run along the river and seek a location for easy passage or a bridge. Alternatively, we can take our chances. How do we decide? What would be a better solution? Do we run faster or swim better? Is there a bridge further down the river or perhaps the river gets broader and more challenging to cross. Our problem becomes a wicked problem. 

Wicked problems are problems that are hard to articulate, consist of many possible solutions to which no one answer presents an absolute path. There are many considerations to address when reaching a conclusion that will require some efforts that perhaps are not possible to us. The term wicked problems originated in the intersection of social studies and technology transfer in the late 1960s initially by Horst Rittel,  Mel Webber, and West Churchman. 

The intersection of challenges, problems, and wicked problems has a significant effect on the innovation experience and subsequently, the innovators drama. Too many challenges and obstacles may affect our ability to respond to all of them and will require prioritization that would affect the formation of wicked problems. Wicked problems that surface in an innovation process could be the result of process-related challenges and difficulties or residues from previous innovation processes. 

The accumulation of challenges, problems, and growing awareness of new or old wicked problems disrupts the innovation process and affects the innovation experience differently for each participant and stakeholder. Managing, all the mixed emotions in a creative process is vital to managing and responding to the innovators drama. Unfortunately, this requirement itself, to deal with the growing complexities of challenges and problems is also a key contributor to the innovators' drama, since it surfaces many challenges and obstacles that we wish were not there. 

To address the innovators drama, we need to respond to the growing complexities of challenges, and problems, before they aggregate into dramas, solidify them as wicked problems. This requires us to acknowledge and manage mixed emotions in creative ventures. Moreover, this is the challenge (or problem or wicked problem) we will explore in this project.