What is Creativity?
Creativity is the act of turning new and imaginative ideas into reality. Creativity involves two processes: thinking, then producing. Innovation is the production or implementation of an idea. If you have ideas, but don’t act on them, you are imaginative but not creative.” — Linda Naiman
“Creativity is the process of bringing something new into being…creativity requires passion and commitment. Out of the creative act is born symbols and myths. It brings to our awareness what was previously hidden and points to new life. The experience is one of heightened consciousness-ecstasy.”
—Rollo May, The Courage to Create“A product is creative when it is (a) novel and (b) appropriate. A novel product is original not predictable. The bigger the concept, and the more the product stimulates further work and ideas, the more the product is creative.”
—Sternberg & Lubart, Defying the Crowd
What is Innovation?
Innovation is the production or implementation of ideas. The National Innovation Initiative (NII) defines innovation as “The intersection of invention and insight, leading to the creation of social and economic value.”
Innovation means making meaningful change to improve an organization’s products, services, programs, processes, operations, and business model to create new value for the organization’s stakeholders. Innovation should lead your organization to new dimensions of performance. Innovation is no longer strictly the purview of research and development departments; innovation is important for all aspects of your operations and all work systems and work processes. Organizations should be led and managed so that innovation becomes part of the learning culture. Innovation should be integrated into daily work and should be supported by your performance improvement system.
Systematic processes for innovation should reach across your entire organization. Innovation builds on the accumulated knowledge of your organization and its people. Therefore, the ability to rapidly disseminate and capitalize on this knowledge is critical to driving organizational innovation.
—2009-2010 Baldrige Criteria for Innovation
For innovation to flourish, organizations must create an environment that fosters creativity; bringing together multi-talented groups of people who work in close collaboration together- exchanging knowledge, ideas and shaping the direction of the future.
What is Creativity in Business?
Creativity is a crucial part of the innovation equation. Creativity requires whole-brain thinking; right-brain imagination, artistry and intuition, plus left-brain logic and planning.
Creativity is a core competency for leaders and managers and one of the best ways to set your company apart from the competition.
Corporate Creativity is characterised by the ability to perceive the world in new ways, to find hidden patterns, to make connections between seemingly unrelated phenomena, and to generate solutions. Generating fresh solutions to problems, and the ability to create new products, processes or services for a changing market, are part of the intellectual capital that give a company its competitive edge.
Creativity is the Most Crucial Factor for Future Success
According to the IBM 2010 Global CEO Study, which surveyed 1,500 Chief Executive Officers from 60 countries and 33 industries worldwide, CEOs believe that,
More than rigor, management discipline, integrity or even vision – successfully navigating an increasing complex world will require creativity.”
CEOs say creativity helps them capitalise on complexity “The effects of rising complexity calls for CEOs and their teams to lead with bold creativity, connect with customers in imaginative ways and design their operations for speed and flexibility to position their organisations for twenty-first century success.”
The excessive focus on analysis, targets and number crunching, and the absence of introspection and imagination has resulted in a crisis in management which is partly to blame for our current financial crisis.”
—(Henry Mintzberg, Globe and Mail, 03-16-2009)
Creativity and Economic Development:
We are living in the age of creativity.
Daniel Pink in his book, A Whole New Mind (2005) defines Economic Development as:
1. Agriculture Age (farmers)
2. Industrial Age (factory workers)
3. Information Age (knowledge workers)
4. Conceptual Age (creators and empathizers)
Pink argues that left-brain linear, analytical computer-like thinking are being replaced by right-brain empathy, inventiveness, and understanding as skills most needed by business. In other words, creativity gives you a competitive advantage by adding value to your service or product, and differentiating your business from the competition. Without creativity, you are doomed to compete in commodity hell!
The Creativity Gap
A 2012 Adobe study on creativity shows 8 in 10 people feel that unlocking creativity is critical to economic growth and nearly two-thirds of respondents feel creativity is valuable to society, yet a striking minority – only 1 in 4 people – believe they are living up to their own creative potential.
Can creativity be learned?
A study by George Land reveals that we are naturally creative and as we grow up we learn to be uncreative. Creativity is a skill that can be developed and a process that can be managed.
Creativity begins with a foundation of knowledge, learning a discipline, and mastering a way of thinking. You learn to be creative by experimenting, exploring, questioning assumptions, using imagination and synthesing information. Learning to be creative is akin to learning a sport. It requires practice to develop the right muscles, and a supportive environment in which to flourish.
Overcoming myths about creativity
Beliefs that only special, talented people are creative-and you have to be born that way- diminish our confidence in our creative abilities. The notion that geniuses such as Shakespeare, Picasso and Mozart were `gifted’ is a myth, according to a study at Exeter University. Researchers examined outstanding performances in the arts, mathematics and sports, to find out if “the widespread belief that to reach high levels of ability a person must possess an innate potential called talent.”
The study concludes that excellence is determined by:
- opportunities
- encouragement
- training
- motivation, and
- most of all-practice.
“Few showed early signs of promise prior to parental encouragement.” No one reached high levels of achievement in their field without devoting thousands of hours of serious training. Mozart trained for 16 years before he produced an acknowledged master work. Moreover many high performers achieve levels of excellence today that match the capabilities of a Mozart, or a Gold Medallist from the turn of the century.” (The Vancouver Sun, Sept.12/98)
Fostering Creativity at Work: Rules of the Garage
Follow these simple rules and you will foster a culture of creativity and innovation: These were defined by HP, which in fact started in a garage.
Believe you can change the world.
Work quickly, keep the tools unlocked, work whenever.
Know when to work alone and when to work together.
Share – tools, ideas. Trust your colleagues.
No politics. No bureaucracy. (These are ridiculous in a garage.)
The customer defines a job well done.
Radical ideas are not bad ideas.
Invent different ways of working.
Make a contribution every day. If it doesn’t contribute, it doesn’t leave the garage.
Believe that together we can do anything.
Invent.
-1999 HP Annual Report
Related posts:
Seven Habits of Highly Creative People
Reflections on Working with Centers of Excellence
How to Educate More Creative Problem Solvers
This post was revised Aug 10, 2012
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I really will like to be mentored on this subject ” creativity “. thanks
How can I help you Gurumtet? Please email me via this site http://www.creativityatwork.com/contact/ Thanks.
Thanks. Just borrowed some ideas from this site for use in a High School lesson in the UK. Great quotes!! TA!!!
Glad my website was useful to you Simon. Let me know how your lesson went.
I’ve found out today things that I didn’t even new, didn’t even think about. I always said I think at myself as a creative person. Now I get that, because of my mother, I am just imaginative. And my imagination is full of things that now, I can’t use, even if I struggle. Thank you for opening my mind about this!
Creativity is creativity
Don’t give up Catalina. Keep using your imagination and look for ways to take action on ideas. All the best to you!
i had an assignment on creativity and innovation and it has really helped me a lot but what are the barriers to both.
thanks
hi
i found this very helpful .
and i am writing assignment on creativity.
my topic is “do constraints kill creativity ?”
so i need help.
Constraints may kill creativity, but they also promote creativity. There is no design without constraints. Moreover necessity is the mother of invention. Good luck with your study!
Tnx for the insight and sharing your thoughts…May you continue to provide us more information.Godbless”)
thanks im able to gain more knowledge on this website and to understand creativity and innovation clearly, i will be having my exams on business creativity tomorrow, i hope i will write it well
Thanks
Hello Ms Naiman,
I am doing my masters at Northumbria University and working on my dissertation which has creativity as a topic at its core. I wanted to know your opinion on why is it that creativity has no standard definition? it is a term for which i have found a wide range of definitions and explanations. could you please share some of your thoughts on this? I would really appreciate it.
Hi Krishna,
Maybe there is no standard definition of creativity because there is no standard way to create! Creativity is approached differently depending on the discipline, be it art, psychology, science or engineering. If you examine definitions of creativity from these disciplines, you will find a common thread. Good luck with your studies!
thanks im able to gain more knowledge on this website and to understand creativity and innovation clearly…
thanks for giving us so good knowledge about creativity n innovation ..
I have chosen the topic of “mentor” for my college project on social change and this article just blows my mind!! Thank you so much for sharing as well as, reinforcing that which I already believe to be so very true!! WOW!
creativity eats away at the nonessentials till the quintessense is left behind in all its shining glory. it is the removal of the removable to discover the disc without the cover beneath.
Thank you Sarmad. Very poetic.
hi linda,
personally i would not include some of the ‘creative’ people that are traditionally thought of as being very creative- example: some of our ‘masters’ in painting that were simply painting subject matter as close to the ‘real thing’ as possible; architects who design buildings made of steel and glass that look like coffins for the masses; etc….
i would consider Picasso to be creative-for obvious reasons; as well as the first guy to build a hut on stilts in a marsh or river….
hope i have not offended, but these are some of my thoughts after reading some comments on not finding ‘one true’ definition of creativity’——-and of course, i think, this is so because we are trying to ‘lump’ people under this umbrella that do not belong.
Zolt,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I agree with you, if artists are merely copying they aren’t creative, however, the first artists who innovated (eg Renaissance perspective, or invented a new style like cubism, or developed new media such as oil paint, photography, computer generated images etc were and are creative. If you keep copying your own art, you become a manufacturer. Likewise with modernist architecture. The Seagram Building designed by Mies Van der Rohe was a breakthrough in architectural design..the rest are copies. The definition of creativity still applies-for something to be creative it must be novel or original, and it must be useful in that it solves or resolves a problem. In the case of art, the definition I like best is, something is a work of art when the producers and consumers of art say it is.
hi linda,
thanks for reply, i must admit i agree with you right to the ‘very end’. which is your last sentence. and i’m wondering if you were smiling when you typed these last words of your paragraph, as was i, when i was reading them.
i immediately thought of the ‘big red and blue striped monster’ called the ‘voice of fire’- i believe the nation gallery of Canada paid almost 2 millon for that ‘beauty’.
just to give you an idea of where my comments come from—i have a few degrees, including a masters, i have taught art, i have dabbled in various forms of art, i have invented a few useful items, and while teaching blacksmithing, i have developed, what i call, ‘flame painting’-using an oxy-acetyle torch to colour mild steel art pieces.
so anyway, that purchase was made in the eighties, i believe, but to this day, i, and i’m sure many others, still cannot get over it. and of course, the reason is, because the 8×18 ft. striped piece of canvas fits none of the following: original, innovative, novel, etc., and i guess we are still wondering why a ‘piece of art’ that has none of the qualities i just mentioned, commanded such a disproportionate sum of money?
i do not expect a reply, just writing down some of my thoughts…..
thanks for the opportunity to do so,
zolt
What can I say? Art is highly subjective, and so is its value.
the definition of creativity on this site is wrong .
Eckhart on Creativity
There’s a particular dimension where creativity arises. It’s a little bit like the wick burning the flame, and its sustenance is the oil – it’s in an oil lamp, and you are the flame. All the analogies, by the way, are very deficient, but it’s just a distant approximation to get you into a sense of what that place is. So you are the flame, and you feel your way into the very source – down the wick into where the oil is, inside yourself. That’s the place, the source, so if anything is new, creative, then it has a fragrance of the source.
http://www.eckharttolle.com/newsletter/november-2011
I am visionary ( third eye ) and Ecks definiton is the only true definition of creativity.
Hi Linda,
Great site. Agree with everything you say here.
Also my doctoral study is on Creativity and Film.
I’d be very interested in your thoughts on this post, if you have time:
What Is Creativity and How Does It Work?
http://storyality.wordpress.com/2012/12/06/what-is-creativity-and-how-does-it-work/
Best,
JT
Hi JT, thanks for your comment. Your own post presents a nice exploration of creativity. Have you completed your thesis?