The Case for Creative Risk-Taking, Even When the Stakes Are High

Patients might want their surgeons to stick to standard protocols, but what if the opportunity to develop creative solutions to medical problems could ultimately save lives?

A recent study finds that while surgeons can produce a larger number of ideas than the average person, they rank lower than average in the ability to generate original or creative ideas. In addition, female surgeons tend to be more creative than male surgeons, despite representing a minority of all surgeons, and junior surgeon trainees are more creative than experienced surgeons, the study finds. As a whole, the standard operating procedures that surgeons follow may be eroding their capacity to generate creative ideas, which may stifle their ability to solve problems in the operating room and develop new, lifesaving medical breakthroughs, the research reveals.

“This suggests that while surgeons may be adept at generating and adapting ideas, they may struggle with coming up with truly novel solutions to complex medical problems,” says Goran Calic, a Harvard Business School visiting professor and coauthor of the paper Investigation of Divergent Thinking Among Surgeons and Surgeon Trainees in Canada (IDEAS): A Mixed Methods Study.

Businesses are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence for a variety of tasks, allowing humans more “head space” for creative problem-solving. The findings reveal lessons for how organizations in a variety of rules-driven industries beyond medicine—such as banking, consulting, and finance—might unleash more creativity among their top performers, Calic says.

“The same forces that make professions like surgery, banking, and accounting reliable and effective can also stifle innovation when it’s needed most,” says Calic, who’s also an associate professor at McMaster University in Canada. “With the advent of AI, better data, and better diagnostics, it could become more important for humans in these situations to make judgments and deploy creativity.”

Calic conducted the study—published in the journal BMJ Open—with six fellow researchers at McMaster University: doctoral candidate Alex Thabane, general surgeon Tyler McKechnie, Professor Jason W. Busse, Associate Professor Ranil Sonnadara, teaching assistant Vikram Arora, and surgeon-scientist Mohit Bhandari.

Read the full article at Harvard Business School: Working Knowledge.