Perspectives on creativity - part 1

Creativity is the process of challenging accepted ideas and ways of doing things in order to find new solutions or concepts. Being creative means seeing ideas in a different context either by recognizing their inherent potential to be used in a different way, or by putting previously unconnected ideas together to create something completely new. Everybody has the ability to be creative. Thus, creativity is anybody’s ability to generate something new. Creativity occurs whether or not this process leads anywhere.

Over the centuries, creative people have provided new solutions to the problems of their day. The ability of human beings to find creative solutions to problems is essential for the well-being of the human race. On a social level, collective creativity provides the opportunity to improve quality of life. In organizations, creativity is essential to ensure a firm’s ongoing effectiveness in a changing world. On a personal level, creativity can help you break out of routines you dislike.(1) People with ideas – people who own ideas – have become more powerful than people who work machines and, in many cases, more powerful than the people who own machines.(2)

Creativity is not necessarily an economic activity, because there are cases when the product of the creativity may not be put to practice or ever used. However, it is an economic activity the moment when the generated idea or solution has an economic value or when the new product is tradable. In this case, the result of creativity is a creative product. It can be defined as an economic good or service that results from creativity and has economic value

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(1) BOULDEN, George P.,“Thinking Creatively”, Essential Managers, Dorling Kindersley Ltd., London 2002   p. 5

(2) HOWKINS, John, “The Creative Economy. How people make money from ides”, London Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, London, 2001, p. ix