CREATIVITY

Creativity is a process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or

new associations between existing ideas or concepts, and their substantiation
into a product that has novelty and originality. From a scientific point of view,
the products of creative thought (sometimes referred to as divergent thought)
are usually considered to have both "originality" and "appropriateness." An
alternative, more everyday conception of creativity is that it is simply the act of
making something new.

Although intuitively a simple phenomenon, creativity is in fact quite complex. It

has been studied from numerous perspectives, including psychology, social
psychology, psychometrics, artificial intelligence, philosophy, history,
economics, and business. Unlike many phenomena in science, there is no single,
authoritative perspective or definition of creativity; nor is there a standardized
measurement technique. Creativity has been attributed variously to divine
intervention or spiritual inspiration, cognitive processes, the social environment,
personality traits, and chance ("accident" or "serendipity"). It has been
associated with genius, mental illness and humor. Some say it is a trait we are
born with; others say it can be taught with the application of simple techniques.
Although popularly associated with art and literature, it is also an essential part
of innovation and invention, important in professions such as business,
economics, architecture, industrial design, science, and engineering. Despite, or
perhaps because of, the ambiguity and multi-dimensional nature of creativity,
entire industries have been spawned from the pursuit of creative ideas and the
development of creativity techniques.

This mysterious phenomenon, though undeniably important and constantly

visible, seems to lie tantalizingly beyond the grasp of scientific investigation.
Yet in religious or spiritual terms it is the very essence of human nature.
Creativity, understood as the ability to utilize everything at hand in nature to
transform our living environment and beautify our lives, is what distinguishes
human beings from all other creatures. This is one way that human beings are
said to be in the image of God: they are second creators, acting in a manner
analogous to God, the original Creator.

Moreover, all people, regardless of their intellectual level, are co-creators of

perhaps the most important thing—their own self. While God provides each
person with a certain endowment and circumstance, it is up to each individual to
make what he will of his life by how he or she chooses to live it.
Definitions of Creativity
"Creativity, it has been said, consists largely of re-arranging what we know in
order to find out what we do not know." George Keller

"The problem of creativity is beset with mysticism, confused definitions, value

judgments, psychoanalytic admonitions, and the crushing weight of
philosophical speculation dating from ancient times." Albert Rothenberg

More than 60 different definitions of creativity can be found in the

psychological literature. The etymological root of the word in English and most
other European languages comes from the Latin creatus, literally "to have
grown."

Perhaps the most widespread conception of creativity in the scholarly literature

is that creativity is manifested in the production of a creative work (for example,
a new work of art or a scientific hypothesis) that is both "novel" and "useful."
Colloquial definitions of creativity are typically descriptive of activity that
results in producing or bringing about something partly or wholly new; in
investing an existing object with new properties or characteristics; in imagining
new possibilities that were not conceived of before; and in seeing or performing
something in a manner different from what was thought possible or normal
previously.

A useful distinction has been made by Rhodes between the creative person, the
creative product, the creative process, and the creative "press" or environment.
Each of these factors are usually present in creative activity. This has been
elaborated by Johnson, who suggested that creative activity may exhibit several
dimensions including sensitivity to problems on the part of the creative agent,
originality, ingenuity, unusualness, usefulness, and appropriateness in relation
to the creative product, and intellectual leadership on the part of the creative
agent.

Boden noted that it is important to distinguish between ideas which are

psychologically creative (which are novel to the individual mind which had the
idea), and those which are historically creative (which are novel with respect to
the whole of human history). Drawing on ideas from artificial intelligence, she
defines psychologically creative ideas as those which cannot be produced by the
same set of generative rules as other, familiar ideas.

Often implied in the notion of creativity is a concomitant presence of

inspiration, cognitive leaps, or intuitive insight as a part of creative thought and
action. Pop psychology sometimes associates creativity with right or forehead
brain activity or even specifically with lateral thinking.

Some students of creativity have emphasized an element of chance in the

creative process. Linus Pauling, asked at a public lecture how one creates
scientific theories, replied that one must endeavor to come up with many ideas,
then discard the useless ones.

History of the term and the concept

The way in which different societies have formulated the concept of creativity
has changed throughout history, as has the term "creativity" itself.

The ancient Greeks, who believed that the muses were the source of all
inspiration, actually had no terms corresponding to "to create" or "creator." The
expression "poiein" ("to make") sufficed. They believed that the inspiration for
originality came from the gods and even invented heavenly creatures - the
Muses - as supervisors of human creativity.

According to Plato, Socrates taught that inspired thoughts originate with the
gods; ideas spring forth not when a person is rational, but when someone is
"beside himself," when "bereft of his senses." Since the gods took
away reason before bestowing the gift of inspiration, "thinking" might actually
prevent the reception of divinely inspired revelations. The word "inspiration" is
based on a Greek word meaning "the God within." The poet was seen as making
new things—bringing to life a new world—while the artist merely imitated.

In the visual arts, freedom was limited by the proportions that Polyclitus had
established for the human frame, and which he called "the canon" (meaning,
"measure"). Plato argued in Timaeus that, to execute a good work, one must
contemplate an eternal model. Later the Roman, Cicero, would write that art
embraces those things "of which we have knowledge" (quae sciuntur).

In Rome, these Greek concepts were partly shaken. Horace wrote that not only
poets but painters as well were entitled to the privilege of daring whatever they
wished to (quod libet audendi). In the declining period of antiquity, Philostratus
wrote that "one can discover a similarity between poetry and art and find that
they have imagination in common." Callistratos averred that "Not only is the art
of the poets and prosaists inspired, but likewise the hands of sculptors are gifted
with the blessing of divine inspiration." This was something new: classical
Greeks had not applied the concepts of imagination and inspiration to the visual
arts but had restricted them to poetry. Latin was richer than Greek: it had a term
for "creating" (creatio) and for creator, and had two expressions—
facere and creare—where Greek had but one, poiein. Still, the two Latin terms
meant much the same thing.

Although neither the Greeks nor the Romans had any words that directly
corresponded to the word creativity, their art, architecture, music, inventions,
and discoveries provide numerous examples of what we would today describe
as creative works. At the time, the concept of genius probably came closest to
describing the creative talents bringing forth these works.

A fundamental change came in the Christian period: creatio came to designate

God's act of "creation from nothing." Creatio thus took on a different meaning
than facere ("to make"), and ceased to apply to human functions.

The influential Christian writer Saint Augustine felt that Christianity "played a
leading role in the discovery of our power to create" (Albert & Runco, 1999).
However, alongside this new, religious interpretation of the expression, there
persisted the ancient view that art is not a domain of creativity. This is also seen
in the work of Pseudo-Dionysius. Later medieval men such as Hraban the Moor,
and Robert Grosseteste in the thirteenth century, thought much the same way.
The Middle Ages here went even further than antiquity; they made no exception
of poetry: it too had its rules, was an art, and was therefore craft, and not
creativity.

Another shift occurred in more modern times. Renaissance men had a sense of
their own independence, freedom, and creativity, and sought to give it voice.
Baltasar Gracián (1601-1658) wrote: "Art is the completion of nature, as it were
'a second Creator'"; … Raphael, that he shapes a painting according to his
idea; Leonardo da Vinci, that he employs "shapes that do not exist in
nature"; Michelangelo, that the artist realizes his vision rather than imitating
nature. Still more emphatic were those who wrote about poetry: G.P. Capriano
held (1555) that the poet's invention springs "from nothing." Francesco Patrizi
(1586) saw poetry as "fiction," "shaping," and "transformation."

Finally, the word "creation" appeared in the writings of the seventeenth-century

Polish poet and theoretician of poetry, Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski (1595-
1640), known as "the last Latin poet." In his treatise, De perfecta poesi, he not
only wrote that a poet "invents," "after a fashion builds," but also that the poet
"creates anew" (de novo creat). Sarbiewski even added: "in the manner of
God" (instar Dei).

By the eighteenth century and the Age of Enlightenment, the concept of

creativity was appearing more often in art theory, and was linked with the
concept of imagination. There was still resistance to the idea of human
creativity which had a triple source. The expression, "creation," was then
reserved for creation ex nihilo (Latin: "from nothing"), which was inaccessible
to man. Second, creation is a mysterious act, and Enlightenment psychology did
not admit of mysteries. Third, artists of the age were attached to their rules, and
creativity seemed irreconcilable with rules. The latter objection was the
weakest, as it was already beginning to be realized (for example, by Houdar de
la Motte, 1715) that rules ultimately are a human invention.

The Western view of creativity can be contrasted with the Eastern view. For
the Hindus, Confucius, Daoists and Buddhists, creation was at most a kind of
discovery or mimicry, and the idea of creation from "nothing" had no place in
these philosophies and religions.

In the nineteenth century, not only was art regarded as creativity, but "it alone"
was so regarded. When later, at the turn of the twentieth century, there began to
be discussion of creativity in the sciences (e.g., Jan Łukasiewicz, 1878-1956)
and in nature (such as Henri Bergson), this was generally taken as the
transference to the sciences of concepts proper to art.

The formal starting point of the scientific study of creativity is sometimes

considered to be J. P. Guilford's address to the American Psychological
Association in 1950, which helped to popularize the topic. Since then (and
indeed, before then), researchers from a variety of fields have studied the nature
of creativity from a scientific point of view. Others have taken a more pragmatic
approach, teaching practical creativity techniques. Three of the best-known are
Alex Osborn's brainstorming techniques, Genrikh Altshuller's Theory of
Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ); and Edward de Bono's lateral thinking.

Creativity in psychology and cognitive science

An early, psychodynamic approach to understanding creativity was proposed
by Sigmund Freud, who suggested that creativity arises as a result of frustrated
desires for fame, fortune, and love, with the energy that was previously tied up
in frustration and emotional tension in the neurosis being sublimated into
creative activity. Freud later retracted this view.

Graham Wallas, in his work Art of Thought, published in 1926, presented one of
the first models of the creative process. Wallas considered creativity to be a
legacy of the evolutionary process, which allowed humans to quickly adapt to
rapidly changing environments.
In the Wallas stage model, creative insights and illuminations may be explained
by a process consisting of 5 stages:

1. Preparation (preparatory work on a problem that focuses the individual's

mind on the problem and explores the problem's dimensions),
2. Incubation (where the problem is internalized into the subconscious
mind and nothing appears externally to be happening),
3. Intimation (the creative person gets a "feeling" that a solution is on its
way),
4. Illumination or insight (where the creative idea bursts forth from its
subconscious processing into conscious awareness); and
5. Verification (where the idea is consciously verified, elaborated, and then
applied).

Wallas' model has subsequently been treated as four stages, with "intimation"
seen as a sub-stage. There has been some empirical research looking at whether,
as the concept of "incubation" in Wallas' model implies, a period of interruption
or rest from a problem may aid creative problem-solving. Wardlists various
hypotheses that have been advanced to explain why incubation may aid creative
problem-solving, and notes how some empirical evidence is consistent with the
hypothesis that incubation aids creative problem-solving in that it enables
"forgetting" of misleading clues. Absence of incubation may lead the problem
solver to become fixated on inappropriate strategies of solving the
problem. This work disputed the earlier hypothesis that creative solutions to
problems arise mysteriously from the unconscious mind while
the conscious mind is occupied on other tasks.

Guilford performed important work in the field of creativity, drawing a

distinction between convergent and divergent production (commonly renamed
convergent and divergent thinking). Convergent thinking involves aiming for a
single, correct solution to a problem, whereas divergent thinking involves
creative generation of multiple answers to a set problem. Divergent thinking is
sometimes used as a synonym for creativity in psychology literature. Other
researchers have occasionally used the terms "flexible" thinking or "fluid
intelligence," which are similar to (but not synonymous with) creativity.

In The Act of Creation, Arthur Koestler listed three types of creative

individuals: the "Artist," the "Sage," and the "Jester." Believers in this trinity
hold all three elements necessary in business and can identify them all in "truly
creative" companies as well. Koestler introduced the concept of "bisociation"—
that creativity arises as a result of the intersection of two quite different frames
of reference.
In 1992, Finke proposed the "Geneplore" model, in which creativity takes place
in two phases: a generative phase, where an individual constructs mental
representations called preinventive structures, and an exploratory phase where
those structures are used to come up with creative ideas. Weisberg argued, by
contrast, that creativity only involves ordinary cognitive processes yielding
extraordinary results.

Creativity and intelligence

There has been debate in the psychological literature about

whether intelligence and creativity are part of the same process (the conjoint
hypothesis) or represent distinct mental processes (the disjoint hypothesis).
Evidence from attempts to look at correlations between intelligence and
creativity from the 1950s onwards regularly suggested that correlations between
these concepts were low enough to justify treating them as distinct concepts.

It has been proposed that creativity is the outcome of the same cognitive
processes as intelligence, and is only judged as creativity in terms of its
consequences. In other words, the process is only judged creative when the
outcome of cognitive processes happens to produce something novel, a view
which Perkins has termed the "nothing special" hypothesis. However, a very
popular model is what has come to be known as "the threshold hypothesis,"
stating that intelligence and creativity are more likely to be correlated in general
samples, but that this correlation is not found in people with IQs over 120. An
alternative perspective, Renculli's three-ring hypothesis, sees giftedness as
based on both intelligence and creativity.

Neurology of creativity

Neurological research has found that creative innovation requires "coactivation

and communication between regions of the brain that ordinarily are not strongly
connected." Highly creative people who excel at creative innovation tend to
differ from others in three ways: they have a high level of specialized
knowledge, they are capable of divergent thinking mediated by the frontal lobe,
and they are able to modulate neurotransmitters such as norepinephrine in their
frontal lobe. Thus, the frontal lobe appears to be the part of the cortex that is
most important for creativity.

Creativity and madness

Creativity has been found to correlate with intelligence and psychoticism,

particularly in schizotypal individuals. To explain these results, it has been
hypothesized that such individuals are better at accessing both hemispheres,
allowing them to make novel associations at a faster rate. In agreement with this
hypothesis, ambidexterity is also associated with schizotypal and schizophrenic
individuals.

Creativity in various contexts

Creativity has been studied from a variety of perspectives and is important in
numerous contexts. Most of these approaches are unidisciplinary, and it is
therefore difficult to form a coherent overall view. The following sections
examine some of the areas in which creativity is seen as being important.

Creativity in art and literature

Most people associate creativity with the fields of art and literature. In these
fields, "originality" is considered to be a sufficient condition for creativity,
unlike other fields where both "originality" and "appropriateness" are necessary.

Within the different modes of artistic expression, one can postulate a

continuum extending from "interpretation" to "innovation." Established artistic
movements and genres pull practitioners to the "interpretation" end of the scale,
whereas original thinkers strive towards the "innovation" pole. Note that we
conventionally expect some "creative" people (dancers, actors, orchestral
members, etc.) to perform (interpret) while allowing others (writers, painters,
composers, etc.) more freedom to express the new and the different.

The word "creativity" conveys an implication of constructing novelty without

relying on any existing constituent components (ex nihilo -
compare creationism). Contrast alternative theories, for example:

 artistic inspiration, which provides the transmission of visions from

divine sources such as the Muses; a taste of the Divine.

 artistic evolution, which stresses obeying established ("classical") rules

and imitating or appropriating to produce subtly different but
unshockingly understandable work.

In the art, practice, and theory of Davor Dzalto, human creativity is taken as a
basic feature of both the personal existence of human beings and art production.

Creativity in science, engineering and design

Creativity is also seen as being increasingly important in a variety of other

professions. Architecture and industrial design are the fields most often
associated with creativity, and more generally the fields of design and design
research. These fields explicitly value creativity, and journals such as Design
Studies have published many studies on creativity and creative problem solving.

Fields such as science and engineering have, by contrast, experienced a less

explicit (but arguably no less important) relation to creativity. Simonton shows
how some of the major scientific advances of the twentieth century can be
attributed to the creativity of individuals. This ability will also be seen as
increasingly important for engineers in years to come.

Creativity in business

Creativity, broadly conceived, is essential to all successful business ventures.

Entrepreneurs use creativity to define a market, promote a product or service,
and make unconventional deals with providers, partners and lenders.

Narrowly speaking, there is a growing sector of "creative industries" —

capitalistically generating (generally non-tangible) wealth through the creation
and exploitation of intellectual property or through the provision of creative
services.

Amabile argues that to enhance creativity in business, three components were

needed: Expertise (technical, procedural, and intellectual knowledge), Creative
thinking skills (how flexibly and imaginatively people approach problems), and
Motivation (especially intrinsic motivation). Nonaka, who examined several
successful Japanese companies, similarly saw creativity and knowledge creation
as being important to the success of organizations. In particular, he emphasized
the role that tacit knowledge has to play in the creative process.

In many cases in the context of examining creativity in organizations, it is

useful to explicitly distinguish between "creativity" and "innovation."

In such cases, the term "innovation" is often used to refer to the entire process
by which an organization generates creative new ideas and converts them into
novel, useful and viable commercial products, services, and business practices,
while the term "creativity" is reserved to apply specifically to the generation of
novel ideas by individuals, as a necessary step within the innovation process.

For example, Amabile et al. suggest that while innovation "begins with creative
ideas, creativity by individuals and teams is a starting point for innovation; the
first is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the second" (emphasis added).
Economic views of creativity

In the early twentieth century, Joseph Schumpeter introduced the economic

theory of "creative destruction," to describe the way in which old ways of doing
things are endogenously destroyed and replaced by the new.

Creativity is also seen by economists such as Paul Romer as an important

element in the recombination of elements to produce new technologies and
products and, consequently, economic growth. Creativity leads to capital, and
creative products are protected by intellectual property laws. Creativity is also
an important aspect to understanding entrepreneurship.

The "creative class" is seen by some to be an important driver of modern

economies. In his 2002 book, The Rise of the Creative Class, economist Richard
Florida popularized the notion that regions with high concentrations of creative
professionals such as hi-tech workers, artists, musicians, and creative people
and a group he describes as "high bohemians," tend to have a higher level of
economic development.

Creativity, music and community

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania Social Impact of the Arts Project

found that the presence of arts and culture offerings in a neighborhood has a
measurable impact on the strength of the community. Arts and culture not only
attract creative workers, but also is a key element in the revitalization of
neighborhoods, and increases social well-being. They also found that music is
one of the key arts and cultural elements that attracts and retains “creative
workers.” To slow down the large emigration of young cultural workers from
Pennsylvania, this study proposed enhancing school-based music education and
community-based musical cultural offerings. This study discovered the
following traits in creative workers: individuality; creativity; technology and
innovation; participation; project orientation; and eclecticism and authenticity.
They found that music education helps foster all these traits to help Americans
realize their creative potential. As a result, the author claimed, music education
not only nurtures creativity but also plays a crucial role in the knowledge
economy, and in strengthening communities.
Measuring Creativity
Creativity quotient

Several attempts have been made to develop a "creativity quotient" of an

individual similar to the Intelligence quotient (IQ), however these have been
unsuccessful. Most measures of creativity are dependent on the personal
judgement of the tester, so a standardized measure is difficult to develop.

Psychometric approach

J. P. Guilford's group, which pioneered the modern psychometric study of

creativity, constructed several tests to measure creativity:

 Plot Titles where participants are given the plot of a story and asked to
write original titles.
 Quick Responses is a word-association test scored for uncommonness.
 Figure Concepts where participants were given simple drawings of
objects and individuals and asked to find qualities or features that are
common by two or more drawings; these were scored for uncommonness.
 Unusual Uses involves finding unusual uses for common everyday
objects such as bricks.
 Remote Associations where participants are asked to find a word
between two given words (such as Hand _____ Call)
 Remote Consequences where participants are asked to generate a list of
consequences of unexpected events (such as loss of gravity)

Building on Guilford's work, Torrance developed the Torrance Tests of Creative

Thinking. They involved simple tests of divergent thinking and other problem-
solving skills, which were scored on:

 Fluency The total number of interpretable, meaningful, and relevant

ideas generated in response to the stimulus.
 Flexibility The number of different categories of relevant responses.
 Originality The statistical rarity of the responses among the test subjects.
 Elaboration The amount of detail in the responses.

Social-personality approach

Some researchers have taken a social-personality approach to the measurement

of creativity. In these studies, personality traits such as independence of
judgment, self-confidence, attraction to complexity, aesthetic orientation, and
risk-taking are used as measures of the creativity of individuals. Other
researchers have related creativity to the trait, "openness to experience."

Fostering creativity
Daniel Pink, repeating arguments posed throughout the twentieth century, has
argued that we are entering a new age where creativity is becoming increasingly
important. In this "conceptual age," we need to foster and encourage "right-
directed thinking" (representing creativity and emotion) over "left-directed
thinking" (representing logical, analytical thought).

The following is summary of techniques to foster creativity, including

approaches developed by both academia and industry:

1. Establishing purpose and intention

2. Building basic skills
3. Encouraging acquisitions of domain-specific knowledge
4. Stimulating and rewarding curiosity and exploration
5. Building motivation, especially internal motivation
6. Encouraging confidence and a willingness to take risks
7. Focusing on mastery and self-competition
8. Promoting supportable beliefs about creativity
9. Providing opportunities for choice and discovery
10.Developing self-management (metacognitive skills)
11.Teaching techniques and strategies for facilitating creative performance
12.Providing balance

A growing number of psychologists are advocating the idea that one can learn
to become more "creative." Several different researchers have proposed
approaches to support this idea, ranging from psychological-cognitive, such as:

 Osborn-Parnes' Creative problem solving

 Synaptic;
 Purdue Creative Thinking Program;
 lateral thinking of Edward de Bono,

To the highly-structured, such as:

 Theory of Inventive Problem-Solving (TRIZ);

 Algorithm of Inventive Problem-Solving (ARIZ), both developed by the
Russian scientist Genrich Altshuller;
 Computer-Aided Morphological analysis
Social attitudes to creativity
"The man who invented fire was probably burned at the stake." (Ayn Rand)

Although the benefits of creativity to society as a whole have been

noted,[39] social attitudes about this topic remain divided. The wealth of literature
regarding the development of creativity and the profusion of creativity
techniques indicate wide acceptance, at least among academics, that creativity is
desirable.

"To be creative means to become profoundly individualized thus separating

one's self from the crowd." (Paul Palnik)

There is, however, a dark side to creativity, in that it represents a "quest for a
radical autonomy apart from the constraints of social responsibility." In other
words, by encouraging creativity we are encouraging a departure from society's
existing norms and values. Expectation of conformity runs contrary to the spirit
of creativity.

Nevertheless, employers are increasingly valuing creative skills. A report by the

Business Council of Australia, for example, called for a higher level of
creativity in graduates. The ability to "think outside the box" is highly sought
after. However, the above-mentioned paradox may well imply that firms pay lip
service to thinking outside the box while maintaining traditional, hierarchical
organization structures in which individual creativity is not rewarded.

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