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OK, so we can get started it with a talk,
and I would like to see a few hands,
who of you has managed to walk
around the Congress center without
seeing a 3-D printer?
That's one. And that's what I thought,
because they're doing absolutely amazing
practical stuff.
And we were here a little bit
about some
background and this kind of technology
today, I think.
And also
I read a tweet earlier
am saying
suggesting something for cows,
communication, Congress, bingo.
And in the upper left
corner, there was something like 3D
printed sex toys.
And I was like, OK, the relevance of this
talk is pretty obvious to me right now.
So, um, uh,
Zosia, Zika is going to
talk about what we can learn about
creativity from 3D printing.
And he studied
industrial engineering in Berlin
and did his PhD
in Sangala
during this time. He also did a lot of
research at Stanford.
And currently he's a professor at the
University of Pittsburgh
at the.
He's a star. He's a professor for
management and ownership, and
he's just being in
for three more days and then he's moving
to Amsterdam, continuing
his work there. So let's
please welcome him.
Yes, hello, good evening, thank you.
That some people came at
this late hour, I appreciate it.
My name is Sasha. As we just mentioned,
as you just mentioned,
this is kind of an unusual talk for
me because usually I don't go
to conference where they talk about 3D
printing. I usually go to conferences,
what I talk about creativity.
And for my research, I looked at
3D printing for the past couple of years
and I thought this might be a good
opportunity to kind of give back and talk
to the people that actually are involved
in 3D printing.
And I bucked many of them and my
students, but many of them and asked them
questionnaires and maybe someone
interviewed you for a study and so on.
And I thought maybe this is the chance
for me to tell you what we're actually
doing.
This is all about and why anyone should
care.
So whenever I talk about 3D printing,
what I mean is basically household
3D printing.
So this is not like
what you have at your big manufacturing
facilities.
And I'm not looking into how we can
make aircrafts lighter and so on.
I look at like the tabletop 3D printing
and I look at communities that use
3D printing and I want to understand
how they how they deal with creativity.
But to jump back a couple of years ago,
we started with the phenomenon looking at
3D printing because everybody told us
that this is going to be the next
industrial revolution.
This was actually a cover on The
Economist. They said Next Industrial
Revolution. And there was a book by Chris
Anderson. And he said that in a
couple of years we will basically not go
to the supermarket anymore.
We'll print everything because that's the
thing that's going to be.
And when we looked around, when we talked
to people, this was absolutely not the
picture that we saw.
So the first thing that we did was trying
to find out what do people use 3D
printers for.
And that was a horrible research
question. And the results were scattered
all over the place.
And the only interesting anecdote
from that research on what people use
3D printers for was that a lot
of people that have 3D printers print
things for their 3D printers,
spare parts and so on.
And we spend like a year on it.
And then we said, well, screw it, there's
nothing coming out of that and we're
never going to publish anything about
that. And then I changed
jobs. So I went to this book and
found a new group and they were also into
3D printing. And they had the same issue
that they said, well, this is a really
interesting phenomenon, but we need to
find like an interesting angle in this.
And we we couldn't.
And at the time I was writing a book on
creativity and
in 3D printing, we looked at the platform
platform called Thingiverse, the world's
biggest 3D printing design platform.
And they have one interesting thing.
And on the platform you can upload a
design and every single design is under
an open license so anyone else can
download the design, change it, upload
it again, but has to quote where
it's from as to reference the original
design.
And this is in in creativity.
When we talk about creativity, we think
this is kind of just divine thing where
you give like an artist a white sheet
of paper and the science will come up
with something great out of nowhere.
And we have this concept like an epiphany
or an eureka moment.
When we look into the literature, the
literature is pretty clear about where
creativity comes from and what it is.
And it is usually the recombination of
known building blocks in a way
that wasn't known before.
So we consider a very creative if
something is deeply rooted
in things we know and someone brings
something into that deeply rooted thing
that has never been connected in that
way, that's what we consider as very
creative.
And the problem is, if you go somewhere
and ask people, well, how did you come
up with that?
They will either not remember
or they will have kind of fear over
intellectual property issues and tell
you, well, I came up with that on my
own and nothing has ever inspired me
or I don't recall, and so on.
So for people that try to study
creativity, it's really hard to find out
where ideas come from because we don't
quote the sources
as directly.
And then we looked at 3D printing
and we looked at the platform.
And what we found is that we can
basically look at all
all the things that people uploaded and
see the connections between them
and the black here.
This is not from me.
This is from the talk before.
So you have to kind of
think that it's out of sight.
So we see is this is basically like
a network structure on
Thingiverse of all designs in
one category. And the category is
fashion.
So these are all designs in.
Mama,
Mama Vivec.
Help me understand.
Christopher Cook,
Marlette's Norvelle Menendez of ViÃ°ga
on Desolations, OK?
OK, I'll try to be a bit louder,
then we'll see.
So basically, OK, this is
this is fashion is the first thing we
looked at.
And the singing of
us has a couple of categories, something
like 11 to 12 different categories where
people can upload designs and they
basically pick a category where it
is designer then and then people can
remix them and upload something else
also. And what we saw is simply
by looking at those categories that
they are vastly different.
So this is the first one was
fashion and this is the category
3D printing. What people upload, for
instance, spare parts for this for their
3D printers and what you can see simply
by looking at this universe.
And we had one that actually looked like
a death star, but that doesn't fit the
storyline. So I can't put that in.
But so simply
by looking at the structure, we saw that
there's something happening in between
the two. What's interesting is that the
fashion category is very hedonistic.
So people that upload something and
fashion want to have something very
individual.
They want to have like, for instance,
a ring that says their own name or
something that has that nobody else has.
And that's why you have those big
clusters in the middle were simply people
change things slightly.
So it fits to what it's an individual
solution.
Well, this year is very much the opposite
since the 3D printing category and the
solutions we see here are very
utilitarian.
So basically you have those little
scattered things all over the place.
You have oftentimes these things were
only a couple are related to
one another.
So someone developed a solution, someone
else saw it that could be done
a little bit better or we could tweak
that into something I would rather have.
And then that kind of had a final
solution and that was fine.
And then I went on to do something else.
So simply by looking at it, we found out
while the universe looks completely
different, that there might be something
to that in regards
to creativity.
So.
And then what we did is we interviewed
roughly 80 people, we had questionnaires
out for a couple of hundred, and we
looked at the entirety of all designs
on the platform. This a couple of hundred
thousands.
And then the first thing you do is try to
find out, is there is there anything
special to the process
that people do?
So it's the creative process in any way
remarkable.
And and the creative process that we
found basically has four aspects that
we can talk about.
The first one we called a trigger.
So any kind of creative process is
kickstarted by some form of a trigger.
And what we found is that when we
when we look into the literature, those
triggers are often described as a
problem.
So people have a problem and that starts
off the creative process.
What we found is that that's only half
the truth.
Half the people basically started because
they had an actual problem.
The other half started out as some form
of curiosities, for instance, that want
to learn something that wanted to get
better, that were interested in something
so that kick start the process.
The second thing we we found is kind of
the inspiration for this is this epiphany
moment. And this is what we will deep
dove into when we talk about remixing
a little bit more, because remixing seems
to be one of the cornerstones in those
creative communities in which way
people come up with novel solutions.
And then what happens is interesting is
when we talk about it's probably not that
interesting for people in this room, but
it's interesting for us as social
scientists because we don't develop
software often.
So what happens is they distribute very
early. If we think about physical
object, it used to be very hard to have a
form of distribution.
So distribution was always the
bottleneck. If you produced a CD
album, you had to find
someone who does the distribution for
you.
While here, it's very easy to distribute
and because it's very easy to distribute,
what happens is that kind of changes the
process people distribute earlier
and they distribute even when they
aren't that finished yet in order
to receive feedback on the basis
of that feedback, allow an iteration
of the process of the design of the
of the object that they that they did.
So basically in
like an analog world, you would have
the distribution at the very end of the
process. While here, when we talk to the
people, they said, well, even if I'm not
that sure if that's the correct way is
simply distributed, I asked people, I
gather feedback and with that I iterate
and make it better.
So the platform, the way the interaction
that we found in the communities changed
the creative process in
in a way that made distribution earlier,
which we kind of find remarkable.
But if you look at it and say, well,
that's probably what we do in software
development for 20 years.
So but it's
interesting in a way.
So and now
when when social scientists look at a
problem, one of the things they
oftentimes try to do is to categorize
the problem in such a way that you
can say, well, this isn't just one
problem.
This is actually a couple of things.
And as the Senate trick and if you are
if you are a management scholar, what you
usually do is you come up with a two
by two matrix and that oftentimes
solves problems and explains what it is.
And in this case, we found we kind
of zoomed in and wanted to find out those
remixes. How do they look close
up? Can we kind of find patterns
of how people combine things
into something new?
And what we found is that there are
actual patterns.
And that what that with a couple
of patterns we can
explain, basically the entire universe
zoomed in and
the first thing we found we call that
linear, linear
evolution, is that basically you have one
design.
Someone takes that design and remakes
us into something new.
So you have this bottle, someone sees
the bottle and makes a longer bottle.
That's kind of like a boring story.
And then we had more more complex ones.
And the more complex ones fall into two
categories. So the first category, we
call them convergent.
So what happens is several ideas
are remixed into something
new. The first one is
it's called the March.
So this is basically you see several
ideas in the case.
You see two ideas and you combine them
into one new one.
So one example we always use is
someone design a debate coin.
So they had a logo of a donkey and the
logo of an elephant, the US
of mascots of the parties, and
they merged that into a debate coin.
You can flip the coin and that kind of
decides what you're going to vote.
Or so on
the second one, we found, we call that
retrospect and it's kind of interesting.
So what we have is
this like a grant
father, basically, and that grandfather
has a child and that child has also
a child.
But the child's child inherits
something from the grandparents that
was not in the parents.
So this is basically going back
in its own history and finding something
that was left out in a generation before
and then bringing it back.
One Real-Life example that people told
me was there in Microsoft Windows.
Apparently they brought back the start
button after they abandoned it.
So basically it wasn't a modern version
and then they brought it back.
This is also something you see currently
in innovation management a lot.
I don't know if you've ever heard of Lego
Gronk Wonkiness.
So when I was a child, Lego used to
be like just bricks and you built
whatever you want.
And then they started to do like Star
Wars and Dragons and every kind
of story based things.
And last year they came out with like a
new box. And in this box there's only
bricks and you can build whatever you
want. And they call that the new thing.
It's called Gronk Warnke and was like a
big advertising campaign.
And as exactly that so inherits something
that wasn't the last generation but the
generation before.
Next thing we found we call siblings
and siblings basically is several
people looking at
a couple of ingredients and coming
up with vastly different
solutions.
So they are not directly related.
The two things on the left and right, but
they have the same ingredients.
And to think about that as something you
would, for instance, see in a
cocktail bar.
So in a cocktail bar, you have a very
limited amount of ingredients, but you
come up with completely different
cocktails, even though
you might not look at
one cocktail and say, well, I could do
something completely. But you look at the
ingredients and based on ingredients,
you'd come up with something new.
And the last one, we call it in this
section we call compilation and a
compilation. This is basically a best
stuff. People look at a couple of
things and then turn them into
one, a compilation.
One example we found is oftentimes
they're called like the ultimate or
something like that. So someone looks at
an entire collection of things and then
turns them into the final version
of it.
So one thing we found is like the the
ultimate Batman symbol.
So someone looked at every single Batman
symbol that was on the platform and then
combined them into like the ultimate.
That's the one. We don't need a Batman
symbol anymore.
It's solved.
So we found out.
So all of these patterns converge
and take several inputs and turn
them into something new, any other
patterns that we found that were
convergent.
So basically what converging means
is several people
look at the same thing and come
to different conclusions.
What to do with it?
The first one is it's a
fork. So two people look
at one thing and have a completely
different idea what to do about that.
This is I
don't know it where, for instance, be you
have an iPad and then you have an iPad
Mini and an iPad pro in the second
generation because people have a
completely different usage on it.
Next, when we found is it's
related to the fork.
We call it the book.
It's when one thing turns into a lot
of things.
And oftentimes this happens when the
thing in the middle, for instance, is
a gear or a tool or
wheels and so on is something that you
can have multiple uses for.
The next thing we found, and that's
very important for the platform itself,
is called a customizer.
So customizer is a tool kit
on the platform where people with no
knowledge can.
Simply tweak a design
in a way that they want and
customize where it kind of kickstarted
the growth of Thingiverse because many
people that don't have any knowledge on
CAD can very simply
come up with their own designs and
customize is also the thing that we saw
in the beginning of the fashion.
SLIVE the big flops, those
were customizes what people could
do, something very simply on the
platform, what their designs to
individualize it.
So now we found and we found an
eighth one and the eighth one is very
much related to the customizer,
but it has like it
has a parent and
someone looks at it at a design and says,
well, that's a cool idea and it will be
even cooler if other people could
customize it.
And once the customer those kind of
call that a template builder, once
someone turned that into a customizer,
you have a very successful design because
people can very easily
tweak it.
OK.
So when I tell this story, there's
always two questions that come up,
the first one is, well, if creativity
can be broken down
into patterns, can't we simply
use A.I.
to come up with new ideas?
And the emphasis is always on
simply
and I thought about this a little bit and
I have kind of like my relationship
to A.I. is kind of a mixed bag and
I don't see it any time soon.
So if you have that question, I
feel free to try.
I think the naughty secret about what I
just told you is that, yes, those
patterns can explain how creativity, how
reuse or recombination
works, but it cannot give
you the input things,
the things that you actually remix.
It can just show you the patterns in
which remixing is done.
So I don't think that creativity
will be outsourced by any time
soon.
The second question I always get
when I give this talk is that people
say, well, you kind of compare apples
to oranges because some of the things
they talk about are very, very simple to
do. You have, for instance, the
customizer, you give them
toolkits and a very simple website
to customize something.
For instance, they write their name and
then that name appears on a ring.
And that's not really as creative
as someone who combines multiple
objects in a very complicated
way. So isn't there
like a threshold for creativity?
Should everything be called creative
or is creativity only like the divine
complex thing?
And that's kind
of a hard question for me to answer,
because I have a hard
time like finding a cutoff and saying
well below that cut off, it isn't
creative and afterwards it is.
But what I can do, again, categorizing,
looking at all the things I see and
then kind of describing are those
creative or or are those
complex or not?
And what we found is that basically those
the designs we can
group in to on to access.
The first success is to look at the
parents and we'll look at the parents.
Those parents can either be from
the same category.
They can also be from fashion, they
can be from a different category, so
someone actually made the effort to
transfer knowledge from one Category
three other. So that seems to be more
complex or it could be from multiple
categories.
So people don't simply
merge or batmen signs, but they merge
something from fashion with something
from 3D printing, which is more
complicated because you need to find a
way to find a way to combine that.
And also we can look at what's
the origin of the remix.
So a very simple thing would be a
customizer. You simply have those
toolkits. You drag and drop your name in.
Very, very easy to do.
The next step, bit more complicated
would be if you only have one parent
use their one parent and turn that into
something new. And the more complex
thing would be if you have multiple
parents and combine them into something
new.
So we try to grouped
them into a way to show
that.
If you go to the upper right,
you have an increasing level of
complexity and
what we found is that the
one the platform allowed
people to customize that that basically
kicked started a lot
of traction on the platform.
And what we also saw is that
the idea of customization is a
way like like a foot in the door policy.
So people start customizing
and once they learn customizing,
they're kind of hooked on the thing.
It's a very easy way to get in.
They get more complicated over time.
They'll learn more.
And basically it's a way for them to get
familiar with with
remixing. It's a way of learning.
One interesting thing I wanted to mention
is a transfer remix that we found.
So someone someone designed
a little signs for potted plants.
So one would say, like Rosemary, one
would say time.
And someone else looked at it and said,
well, that's an interesting idea, but I
don't have potted plants, but I do have
an issue like this oftentimes in my
office.
And basically redesigned
those signs for potted plants
into paper clips and a paper clips.
Now read, please read, please sign
maybe interesting.
And so on. So basically the person
saw a design in a completely different
category and transferred it
into something that
wasn't that, that it wasn't intended
for a completely different category.
And that's kind of what we consider to be
more creative than simply
also making potted plant
signs. But they are round and not
rectangular.
OK, there's one more thing
we need to talk about, and that is the
initial question that we had, what
do people use three prayers for?
And one thing that we now
are currently discussing is
that it might be interesting to look
at the role that remixing plays in that.
And we have this little little graph.
Again, the black lines are drawn for me.
So you have on the x
axis, we simply have all the problems on
the world, on the Y axis, we have
the amount of demand for a solution
for this problem.
And what we argue is if there is a lot
of demand for a solution, for a problem,
then someone will probably mass
produce it.
So you have kind of like a mass
production threshold.
And the argument with this industrial
revolution of 3D printing oftentimes
was that people will not go to the store
anymore, but simply go to
the 3D printers.
And what we found is that that is not
really the entire story.
That's only part of it.
What we found is people design all
kinds of things.
And many of the things that people design
in 3D print, they 3D print
because they cannot buy
them. It's like an individual solution
that only a few people have, maybe only
them, and then they print it.
And that allows them to have a
solution at all.
And this is very much,
very much comparable
to what we would have if we have a
workshop and we simply
don't use the 3-D printer, but create
something out of, let's say what, you
would also have an individual solution
to a problem that wasn't available
before.
And what we see with remixing
is that people use
those solutions that someone else
did that might not be as interesting
as something that can be mass produced
and then remakes them into something
that also only a couple of people will
will need. So when we had
the figure. What the.
From fashion with lots of little
little dots, those were a multitude
of solutions that only very
few people needed, but allowing
all those people to very simply remix
them, allowed them basically
to have a little barcode in an area
where prior that would simply be
no solution.
You would have to do that by hand.
So maybe that is
one answer to the question
that I had at the very beginning.
What the hell do people with three
prentis for use, three
for?
Maybe it's not as elegant as I thought
in the beginning, four years ago, what
might come up?
But it might be an interesting approach
to that.
So
two more things I wanted to talk about
once.
So to wrap it up, when we talk about
creativity, maybe the interesting
thing is, is that creativity
in itself probably isn't as chaotic
as you might have thought before the
talk.
It follows, in a way, a couple of
clear patterns.
And we can see those patterns all over
the world and maybe that will help us
organize, hopefully in the future
creative processes.
And making
it easy for people
to have like a foot in the door to
make it very easy to start a creative
process is like a gateway
drug to more creativity.
And if we want to have people engaged
in some form of creative process, then
it might be useful to have a very simple
first step for them to do that.
And on on 3D printing,
the interesting story that I think is
that we found is that.
We have been through an extremely
creative community and the process that
we saw that people follow, there
might be something that other communities
can learn from and give them that here
are a lot of people that are active in 3D
printed. It might be interesting for you
to use the next couple of days and talk
to them and maybe get engaged their.
And if you if you are already
engaged in those communities, then please
keep doing it. If anyone sends you an
email with or with a question about an
interview and maybe to fill out
a questionnaire and be so kind and do
that for us, and
that is all that I have for
you today. Thank you very much for coming
out, even though it was that late.