I feel like there are plenty of asians in high managerial positions... In Asia... Anywhere else theyre a minority anyway.

Last edited by blackbrich (2011 December 06, 1:29 pm)

I've always hated the way "creativity" was used in business.

Outside-the-box behavior is always touted, but how can you think outside the box when you don't have the basic and necessary skills to determine what the box is?

I think a lot of it has to do with the management positions.
While I think management is important, people place way too high a priority on management being the creative top-end job and they don't value their specialist/technical workers enough. That's why you have Asian Ph.Ds from Stanford working under a kid with a BS in English from Harvard, because the specialist workers aren't being compensated enough. And so they tell their sons and daughters "Don't do what I did! Be more creative!" when in reality it is the fact that their work is undervalued.

I'm speaking more for Asian-Americans than Asia; I'm not sure how business works in Asia yet.
(For some reason, the Japanese-Americans I meet tend to be... how can I put it... more accepting of American culture than most other Asians. Most of the other Asian-Americans tend to identify with their home country more, especially Koreans. That's just my personal, anecdotal experience.)

qwertyytrewq wrote:

On the internet, I often hear the claim that Asians lack creativity, at least, when compared to their Western (America, etc) counterparts.

This claim is usually made when there are breaking news of for example, Asians achieving college/university spots in high numbers or reports of Asians performing well on IQ tests or even in response to Asian parents driving their children to do well.

Does this claim have a genuine and solid base?

Or is it mostly driven by envy or perhaps fear (of Asian competition)?

Fear. We in the west tell ourselves a lot of bullshit about how awesome we are. When someone beats us, we rationalise it to somehow be a flaw on their part. Which is quite a bit of mental gymnastics if you think about it.

qwertyytrewq wrote:

And if Asians are not creative, then who or which group are?

But first, what exactly do people mean when they say Japanese people (this is a Japanese language board so we'll stick with Japanese instead of Asians in general, for now) lack creativity?

This point can be explored in three (most likely more) ways which I have heard of:

1) The first point is rote-learning in school by Japanese/Asian people, which Westerners view as negative. Well, who cares whether rote-learning is good or not, as long as the job gets done in the end. Rote-learning is sometimes unavoidable anyway and it is necessary to rote-learn the boring bits so that you get a solid basic foundation of facts before moving on and thinking creatively. If rote-learning is considered negative, then what's the alternative? And why is this alternative to rote-learning not being promoted?

Rote learning is fine for some things. And the west has drifted too far the other way i think. Sometimes you need to just shut up and study and not think about how it makes you feel. The japanese probably go too far the other way. Hard to say. Studying for a test is always a little dicey. When training AI, you try to keep your training set separate from the set of inputs you use to check to see if it works. Over-fitting is what can happen if you don't. You can pass the test, but only that test, and have no deep understanding of what's really going on (cue people ranting about the JLPT ).

qwertyytrewq wrote:

2) The second point is the supposed lack of Japanese/Asians in high positions (CEO, Manager, etc) with some sort of managerial role. Well, I agree that it seems that many of the high positions are taken by old white men but I think it has less to do with the "lack of creativity" in Asians and more to do with "it's not what you know, but who you know". I mean, be realistic. Who is Rupert Murdoch going to ask for help with running his business? His sons? Or a creative Asian?

In which country? Some of the biggest, most successful companies in the world are japanese, and most of the executives are japanese. Glass ceilings apply everywhere if you are not a member of the majority race of the country in question. America probably does better on that score than Japan does.

qwertyytrewq wrote:

3) When I think of the word "creative" or "creativity", I think of art and entertainment. I think of games like Shadow of the Colossus (PS2). I think of... actually, further thinking isn't required. The existence of just Shadow of the Colossus disproves this point utterly, as far as I'm concerned.

Well, that's all I have to say on the topic for now.

What follows is a poorly thought out generalisation based on my extremely limited experience. It seems japaense people are very good at improvement creativity, or creativity "within the box", whereas westerners have an edge in radically new concepts. Here's the thing though, not only is that a ridiculous generalisation, it's probably the case that "in the box" creativity is useful far more of the time than out of the box. Society doesn't reinvent everything every other month. The ability to take something that exists and creatively improve it (sometimes in big ways, other times in minute attention to detail) is enough most of the time. Too often westerners search for the next big thing, and try too hard to be brilliantly creative, instead of taking last year's model and actually fixing the damn stuff people are complaining about.

One thing i have noticed is that attention to detail as a cultural trait is a two-edged sword. I've noticed a tendency to get bogged down on details and lose track of the bigger picture. Discuss. lol.

I don't think this idea applies to Japanese, or Asians in general. It's the Chinese that supposedly "lack creativity." Google "China lack of creativity," and you should see why.

Also, one of my professors is Chinese, and she said that Chinese students are not taught to think for themselves. They're taught to memorize and replicate. The reason she explained this was to explain plagiarism, and this was probably partly directed toward a couple of the Chinese exchange students in the class.

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001 … 93100.html

EDIT:
One more thing, creativity isn't limited to art or entertainment. It can be innovation in pretty much any field of work or recreational hobby.

Last edited by prink (2011 December 06, 4:49 pm)

qwertyytrewq wrote:

On the internet, I often hear the claim that Asians lack creativity, at least, when compared to their Western (America, etc) counterparts.

I can't help but to LOL at that, Japan has its own vast engineering literature, and engineering is about innovation and creativity, maybe Sony and Toyota comes to your mind. Ever thought about American vs Japanese cars engines? especially fuel consumption?
Which is the most automated country in the world? Electric toilets?
Even if you search a bit in Japan's engineering research, you can notice the emphasis on introducing innovative solutions (mechanisms, devices,...) more than theory.

I'm not much into other Asian countries, but the recent release of Samsung Galaxy Note smartphone, shows a bold and creative decision coming from a Korean company.

qwertyytrewq wrote:

3) When I think of the word "creative" or "creativity", I think of art and entertainment. I think of games like Shadow of the Colossus (PS2). I think of... actually, further thinking isn't required. The existence of just Shadow of the Colossus disproves this point utterly, as far as I'm concerned.

Creative or creativity isn't just for art and entertainment, it's for "Solutions" in general.

Edit: As of the way of teaching in school, it indeed has an effect, but not necessary to be done the right way to graduate creative people. I have proof of this in my country, where learning is about memorizing all those topics and forgetting almost everything after the semester exams and where creativity is DISCOURAGED, yet from time to time you learn about a creative guy/girl.

Last edited by undead_saif (2011 December 06, 5:11 pm)

In my experience, Japanese people are much more creative on an individual private level than Canadians I know.

-Way more play musical instruments
-High drawing skill is much more common
-Way more do arts & crafts
-More enjoy experimenting with cooking
Plus there is the whole anime/manga/doujinshi/cosplay/fashion phenomenon.

I think the word people are looking for is lacking "inventiveness", but I think that is also misleading. America is still the world's largest economy, thus it tends to cause braindrain from other countries. Sure many important things are invented in America, but a large percentage are not by people born there. (Same thing with hockey players)
Japan also has a relatively high number of patents per capita iirc.

Last edited by Jarvik7 (2011 December 06, 7:57 pm)

Ya Jarvik touched it but did a lay-up instead of the slam dunk. What we are seeing in Japan is lots of creativity but little innovation. Not that it doesn't exist, it's a big place... but there is less that one would expect, considering how much cultural activity is actually going on...

-playing instruments for 99% of people is replaying others work in a mannered way... like singing vs. songwriting
-there is a real sensitivity to drawing, arts&crafts... but drawing/creating what exactly? I think we're really talking crafty more than innovative here. When I was in school there was a term 'virgo art' which was often applied to asians, virgo or not... anal-retentive, labor-intensive awesome yet like stuff you've seen before
-cooking I will give you ;D
-anime-manga-doujinshi etc... in the late 80s this was truly a renaissance, but now... well I don't have to retread how derivative 99.9% of this has become.

  Look at fine art. Japan basically recreated Chinese culture until the Edo period, where there was a stunning renaissance of innovative creativity for 150 years or so. After WW2 Japanese artists like Taro Okamoto remade what had been discovered in western modernism 20 years before... but added a little bit of what Takashi Murakami would later call the "superflat" tendency.
  Since then Tokyo as a venue and Japanese artists in general have been somewhat of a lapdog, following western trends and reinterpreting them. Murakami was the first post-WW2 Japanese artist to contribute something new to the western art world and his contribution was: anime modeled off of walt disney... I think that kind of sums up the whole point right there.

  Japan has invented some amazing things and the Japanese people have the capacity for tremendous invention. My gf went for an interview with a japanese company that had invented a technology that installs lots of huge springs in a building's foundation to allow it to be able to withstand an earthquake of any magnitude. She showed me their promotional meterials for it and I was amazed.
  The things that made most of us love japan generally came from those brief moments of flourishing innovation. But, 1) there is something in an advanced economy that slowly leeches the life out of original invention, and makes it pedestrian in pursuit of stable profit.
  2) There is also a very conformative tendency in Japanese companies that is stifling, if not impossible, for innovative thought. The case of Takafumi Horie is telling. The ex-Livedoor CEO showed a lack of respect for the staid ways of establishment Japan Inc. After years of meteoric success, and true creativity, he was jailed for what would usually generate a wrist-slap from the gov't.
http://asiajin.com/blog/2011/06/20/ex-l … ison-live/
  Generalizations are always problematic because there are so many exceptions... but that doesn't make them worthless either. I think most people here can agree that despite the amazingly prolific nature of japanese culture, 99.9% of it is bad specifically because it is unnervingly derivative. (even though our favorite cultural moments may be from the other .1%)

Last edited by dtcamero (2011 December 06, 10:22 pm)

undead_saif wrote:

I'm not much into other Asian countries, but the recent release of Samsung Galaxy Note smartphone, shows a bold and creative decision coming from a Korean company.

The vast majority of managers in top Korean companies receive their university education abroad in Western English-speaking countries.

I think that is a key reason why Korean companies have recently been clearing the floor of the Japanese in the last 8 years or so.

Last edited by kitakitsune (2011 December 06, 10:36 pm)

Keep in mind that Japan has been through it's financial woes in the 90s and now entities are probably slightly more conservative in their spending. This might impact negatively on innovation, but it's part of economic recovery. Let's see how the U.S's high score for innovation fares after its coming economic collapse.

With the rise of China, India and others will America remain a top destination for top researchers in years to come?

Well, it looks like this topic obviously covers many areas of society and life. And due to it's immense generality, it's hard to both argue for and against. But a good discussion nonetheless.

One other thing I'd like to add is that Japan has or had a reputation for making things smaller (particularly electronics), and better. So I think this would be another defense against the "lack of creativity" claim.

SomeCallMeChris wrote:

qwertyytrewq wrote:

Shadow of the Colossus

Well, I haven't played Shadow of the Colossus, so I don't really know,

If you played the game or seen videos of it, no matter what your religion, culture, or country, there is a high chance you would like what you see. Forget things like anime (which has likers and haters) or other things. SotC mostly has likers.

Basically, many gamers argue that games can be art.

Any self-respecting art-loving gamer would use Shadow of the Colossus as the number one example (among others) to support their argument.

SofC also happens to be a Japanese made work so if people made the claim of "Japanese lacking creativity" at least in terms of art, then SotC would be me defense against the claim. I have no problems with anime or manga, but SotC is a lot harder to counter-argue.

zigmonty wrote:

Fear. We in the west tell ourselves a lot of bullshit about how awesome we are. When someone beats us, we rationalise it to somehow be a flaw on their part. Which is quite a bit of mental gymnastics if you think about it.

I'm pretty sure there is a word or term to describe this phenomenon, but I can't remember what it is.

Basically, if you achieve something, then it's because of your own merits.
But if you don't achieve something, then it's because of someone else.

prink wrote:

I don't think this idea applies to Japanese, or Asians in general. It's the Chinese that supposedly "lack creativity." Google "China lack of creativity," and you should see why.

Also, one of my professors is Chinese, and she said that Chinese students are not taught to think for themselves. They're taught to memorize and replicate. The reason she explained this was to explain plagiarism, and this was probably partly directed toward a couple of the Chinese exchange students in the class.

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001 … 93100.html

EDIT:
One more thing, creativity isn't limited to art or entertainment. It can be innovation in pretty much any field of work or recreational hobby.

If the claim that "Asians have creativity" had any basis whatsoever, then I would agree that it would most befit China first and foremost than other Asian countries.

Another reason is that for various reasons, China' government is a lot more controlling (compared to liberal Western countries) so you see things like state censorship and self-enforced censorship (due to fear of the state). This can be seen by the banning of certain video games, movies, or in journalism.

In order for society to maximise their creativity, then need freedom to access information. Censorship negates that.

Jarvik7 wrote:

I think the word people are looking for is lacking "inventiveness", but I think that is also misleading. America is still the world's largest economy, thus it tends to cause braindrain from other countries. Sure many important things are invented in America, but a large percentage are not by people born there. (Same thing with hockey players)
Japan also has a relatively high number of patents per capita iirc.

nadiatims wrote:

Keep in mind that Japan has been through it's financial woes in the 90s and now entities are probably slightly more conservative in their spending. This might impact negatively on innovation, but it's part of economic recovery. Let's see how the U.S's high score for innovation fares after its coming economic collapse.

With the rise of China, India and others will America remain a top destination for top researchers in years to come?

I think this is another valid and important point.

When, for example, an Indian has a good idea, he might go to America and end up living there to share his ideas. Thus, the originally Indian idea is now an American idea, so what should have been India's creativeness now becomes America's.

Though I would say this is more of a symptom of the larger problems: Income inequality and the recognition of national borders and/or race. But that's a whole other topic.

kitakitsune wrote:

Also consider -

From ch. 5, In the Shadow of the Miracle, by Arthur J. Alexander

WORDSWORDSWORDS

Affirming that the US is a really special case and then basically only using comparisons between the US and Japan, followed by only using other countries' comparisons with the US to figure out how similar Japan is to other countries is backward. The text would have been much more enlightening, I think, if it had focused on direct comparisons of Japan with other non-US countries. After all, the US has (as mentioned before in this thread) a lot of brain drain so a lot of people from around the world do work that comes to be labeled "U.S. American". Japan, in contrast, is infamous for being bad at accepting foreigners in general and has - from what I understand - only a small portion of research that's done by immigrant/guest researchers. US research also gets more cited because it's all in the most international language, it is arguably part of the culture that's spread the most during globalization, a lot of researchers have friends that have published papers in the US, etc. Still, the argument that the focus on practicality might be becoming harmful is interesting. From what I've heard of Japanese universities and what I've seen through the OCW Toudai lectures it does seem like the Japanese higher educational system is very restrictive (not open to much discussion, more emphasis on simply accepting and learning from authorities) so I'm bound to agree with you on that point.

Re "Korean companies have recently been clearing the floor of the Japanese":  I think that if Japanese really are being systematically removed from Korean companies (first I've heard of it), I think that has more/a lot to do with the growing anti-Korean/anti-Japan sentiments in both countries.

That's not necessarily related to creativity though. It's no different from how Japanese companies took market share away from the U.S and Europe as its economy developed. Korea too will eventually lose competitiveness as other 'cheap labor' countries develop their tech sectors (places like vietnam, mexico I imagine) and the international playing field levels out.