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

Creative (or creativeness) is a mental process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations between existing ideas or concepts. The products of creative thought (sometimes referred to as divergent thought) usually have both originality and appropriateness. Although intuitively a simple phenomenon, it is in fact quite complex. It has been studied from the perspectives of behavioural psychology, social psychology, psychometrics, cognitive science, philosophy, history, economics, design research, business and management, among others. The studies have covered everyday creativity, exceptional creativity and even artificial creativity. Unlike many phenomena in science, there is no single, authoritative perspective or definition of creativity. Unlike many phenomena in psychology, there is no standardized measurement technique.

Creativity has been attributed variously to divine intervention, cognitive process, soical environment, personality traits and chance ("accident" , "serendipity"). It has been associated with genius, mental illness and humour. 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 and is 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 most people.

Creativity and creative people have been regarded with wonder and admiration for most of human history. It is fair to say that without creativity, human beings would have remained in a palaeolithic existence. Creativity is a central and powerful mode of human activity and thought.

More than 60 different definitions of creativity can be found in the psychological literature, and it is beyond the scope of this article to list them all.


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.

Perhaps the most widespread conception of creativity in the scholarly literature is that creativity is regarded to have occurred when there takes place the production of a creative product (for example, a new work of art or a scientific hypothesis) that is both novel and useful.

Often implied in the notion of creativity is a concomitant presence of inspiration, cognitive leaps or intuitive insight as a part of creative thinking and acting.