Hispanics, multiculturalism and creativity

If someone had asked me last week to share with my readers what proof did I have to support the statement that US Hispanics are creative problem solvers my answer might have been less than reassuring for many of you. Last week I would have said that the above statement was the product of 15 years of personal observation of US Hispanics’ behavior. That is the number of years I have worked in both the US Multicultural market and in Latin America and doesn’t include the over 30 years I have lived in several Hispanic communities in various cities around the country. In all those years I have seen Hispanics solving problems creatively over and over again. I must admit that a couple of people I knew used their creative problem solving abilities for less than legal activities…but they were very creative!

However, the fact that I have being observing Hispanic behavior for so many years does not mean that I was not researching this topic all along. Last week, in order to support or debunk the theory that Hispanics are creative problem solvers, I reached out to David Livermore www.davidlivermore.com, President of Cultural Intelligence Center. David is an expert on the topic of cultural intelligence and has written a couple of books on this subject (David has a book called “Leading with Cultural Intelligence” and is publishing another book on the same topic in May called “The Cultural Intelligence Difference”). In essence cultural intelligence, or CQ, is defined as the capability to function effectively across national, ethnic, and organizational cultures. Interestingly one of the traits of high CQ people is that they are better innovators.

From the moment Hispanics arrive in this country we, first generation and Bilingual / Bicultural Hispanics alike, are constantly negotiating between at least two cultures. I would add to the mix the fact that most Hispanics live and engage with Hispanics of other nationalities other than theirs on a regular basis due to linguistic and certain cultural similarities. This leads me to state that Hispanics in the US function effectively across national and ethnic cultures which to me is an indication that US Hispanics have a pretty high CQ. If this is true then it would also be true that US Hispanics are better innovators which would support my comments about Hispanics being creative problem solvers.

This was a great starting point but I felt I needed stronger scientific evidence in order to defend my comments about Hispanics and so I asked David Livermore if he would be able to help. David read my blog and commented that my theory resonated with him based on his personal experience but that he had not seen any study that looked at specific ethnic groups and their connection with creativity. He went on to tell me that what he had seen was a study that dealt with creativity and intercultural effectiveness which he was kind enough to forward on to me. I read the study and I found in essence what I was looking for, sort of.

The study is not ethnic group specific but the results of the study do support the fact that Hispanics in the US are creative problem solvers. The study states that “The evidence reviewed in the present article should reassure …that multicultural experience does indeed confer distinct beneficial effects on creative performance.” It also states that “…our research is the first to empirically demonstrate exposure to multiple cultures in and of itself can enhance creativity. Overall, we have found that extensiveness of multicultural experiences is positively related to both creative performance (insight learning, remote association, and idea generation) and creativity –supporting cognitive processes (retrieval of unconventional knowledge, recruitment of ideas from unfamiliar cultures for creative idea expansion).” In the absence of a study done specifically for US Hispanics I feel this study does include US Hispanics and to me its results are enough supporting evidence that Hispanics are creative problem solvers. Does it say that other immigrants are less so? Not really but I have never said that creative problem solving was a trait that could only be found in the Hispanic community. What I have said is that Hispanics are creative problem solvers and that we as a community have to leverage that trait in order to succeed and to help the US succeed in this new highly competitive world we live in. Does anyone disagree?

Hispanics as our nation’s builders

I found it interesting that as we are discussing Hispanic Creativity, President Obama would choose to talk about “…out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world”. Not surprising, but certainly interesting. I also thought it was interesting that he would talk about innovation in education. He shared the fact that about ¼ of today students do not even finish high school yet in the next 10 years ½ of all new jobs will require education that goes beyond a high school degree.

The reason I find this so interesting is that at the heart of it Obama’s comments address the future of Hispanics in this country. Today about 22% of kids under the age of 18 are Hispanics. This percentage is expected to continue to grow for the foreseeable future due to the higher percentage of Hispanics in the 5 - 12 Cohort. So roughly ¼ of all the kids that will be impacted by any changes to the current system of education are Hispanics. Also, when President Obama speaks about the failure of the current system i.e. kids not finishing high school, math and science scores below those of many other countries, etc., he is basically talking about how the system is failing our children and the future of the Hispanic community. And by failing the Hispanic community, it is failing the US.

Innovation requires creative minds. It requires that people find creative solutions not just to today’s problems but to tomorrow’s reality. And yes, I will say it once more, we Hispanics are creative problem solvers. So if we are already creative problem solvers, a new system of education that concentrates on improving our kids’ chances of becoming innovators feels to me as a system where our kids can excel. This is especially important since, as I stated on an earlier post, we Hispanics are inheriting a huge responsibility as we become a very large percentage of the labor force in this country.

When the President said “In America, innovation doesn’t just change our lifes. It’s how me make our living” and “That’s what Americans have done for over 200 years. Reinvented ourselves.” I thought “Those statements certainly describe the Hispanic community.” I discussed in my first posting how when our forefathers and even some of us arrived in the US had to work doing things we never did before and we became “experts” due to what could be categorized as on the job training. Engineers became house painters, farmers became plumbers, etc. We reinvented ourselves to meet an immediate challenge and to ensure that our children had a better life. And our children are living a better life. All indicators point to a higher average income for Hispanic families than what we had in the past (those indicators have suffered due to the recession but apples to apples they are still better than before.)

So, why am I writing about this? Because I think we have a great opportunity as creative thinkers to influence what the new system of education can look like and how it can help our children excel in the world of the future; a future that starts right now. Our children cannot wait for the next generation to figure this out. We need to improve today their chances of success in a new world. A world where time frames are a lot more compressed than ever before and where waiting for tomorrow to improve something critical to our competitiveness could put our children and consequently our country behind many other countries perhaps forever.

In South Korea teachers are call “nation builders”. Only Asian wisdom could articulate such a brilliant insight! In the next 5 to 10 years US teachers will be building our nation through our Hispanic kids.

Hispanic's creativity will help the US succeed in the 21 Century

Hispanics are creative almost at the DNA level. Just think about what our parents and grandparents or perhaps even ourselves had to do in order to survive when first arrived in this land of opportunity. I've known Hispanics who held two and three jobs and somehow managed to keep some sort of family life. Now that requires creativity! New arrivals are mostly nimble. They are here to work and to succeed for their families. They follow work where ever it can be found. Move from city to city, from state to state. They have side businesses or perform small jobs whenever asked if they can do this or that. They may have never done that type of work before but end up "learning on the job" and do plumbing, electricity, carpentry and all sorts of things. If that is not a creative way of making a living I'm not sure what is.

But that is not the extent of how creative we are. We are not only blue collar and agricultural workers. We are also a tremendous force in just about every profession there is in this great country of ours. And as the baby boomers retire in droves, Hispanics are entering the work force in a similar fashion. Let's face it: Hispanics are going to shoulder the future growth of our country in just a few years. And as prior immigrants have done before, we are about to impress in the US our fingerprints and in the process we are going to show the world that we still are and will continue to be for the foreseeable future a creative nation. And Hispanics are going to be in the driver’s seat. Mind you, not alone, but definitely in the driver's seat.

As I mentioned above, Hispanics are going to impress in the US our fingerprints. We are going to "touch" all aspects of life and infuse them with our creative essence. In fact today Hispanics are performing incredibly well by finding solutions to problems creatively. There are Hispanics working in government trying to solve issues that will affect America for the next few decades, Hispanics are working on creating the next "big thing" in the areas of new materials, digital media, ways of learning, green living, etc. Hispanics are also creating fresh new art, solving business problems and finding new medicines and new ways to fight and win the war on Cancer, HIV, Diabetes, Heart disease, etc.

To me and many others the 21st Century is the "Hispanic Century" and I in particular don't call it so to make us feel superior to others but more as a wakeup call to all of us to realize the tremendous responsibility that lays square on our shoulders and the great expectations that all of us have as a nation, irrespective of ethnicity and race, from all of those, yes, you included, who are working to ensure that this country remains the great, creative, entrepreneurial, empowering country our fathers and grandfathers strove so hard to get to.

So let’s show the world how creative Hispanics are. Let’s create new businesses, help create new jobs, new careers, new opportunities for all.

I would love to hear from the readers what are each of you doing in the area of creativity: whether solving a great engineering issue or creating a new painting, searching for the cure of a major illness or writing the next blockbuster movie. I realize there are lots of confidentiality issues to be concerned with but you don’t have to let us know the specifics. I just want to know how are Hispanics using our “DNA level” creativity to improve the companies we work on, the US and hopefully the world at large.