Creativity and Money

One of the wide-spread beliefs regarding the combination of the spiritual and the material (creativity and money) is that creativity is motivated by money. Some say that this statement is a myth, others state that this materialistic statement is nothing but true. Our position and point of view here chooses the sensibly reasonable golden middle which hardly ever suggests any exaggerated extreme points and reflections.

Experimental research has shown that money hardly ever define the level of creativity of creative company workers. During this scientifically statistic investigation people were asked one single question: 'To what extent your current creativity i.e. work in general is motivated by money?' The answer of the majority implied that the material issue wasn't very important to them when it's about their creativity at work.

The results of the research showed that even the ones who were highly motivated by material reward for their creativity hardly ever produced lots of creative ideas and were way too pragmatic to get absorbed in any profound quality creativeness.

On the one hand, this approach is quite justified and relevant for truly creative people typically do not care much about their reward be it cash or fame, they are all flying in the sky of their ideas, thoughts, inventions or masterpieces which they create mainly for themselves in order to find realization to their creative potential and gift.

When it's about jobs which require creative approach, certainly, everyone should feel that their work and ideas are paid for to the fairest extent possible. Certainly, here a lot depends not only on material compensation but also on the surrounding where one's creativity is supported, appreciated acknowledged or not...

As a rule, highly creative people and i.e. good, sensible professionals strive to have considerable impact upon their sphere of work and achieve worthy progress in it. Under these conditions the directors should organize the working process in such a way so that certain workers' skills coincided with the level of difficulty of a task which is to be fulfilled for only in this harmonious situation it's possible to achieve maximum creativity.

If case the task is excessively difficult for the workers' potential (read as: the result is hardly ever reachable), they end up disoriented. On the contrary, whenever the task is too simple or unoriginal, the outcome suggests boredom and being uninterested in one's work. That's why the boss' task here is to find a balance, that same old long-waited golden middle which would let all the workers successfully reveal their creativity.

Certainly, if one works say at an advertising company as a creative specialist and states that (possible extra) material reward for the job doesn't matter to him or her at all, this is pure pseudo-altruistic exaggeration if not lies.

However, we can't state that a person is genuinely creative and is able to invent something unique and really worthy if he is motivated solely by money. The key words regarding the whole thing are balance and sense of measure.