Thoughts About Creativity

I am currently taking a class on creativity for my doctoral program, and we had an interesting conversation last week concerning the challenge of defining creativity. Everybody has a differing opinion on how to define it, and the argument in the field is that the lack of a universal definition prevents serious research on the subject.

It was interesting to me to note that those making an attempt to define creativity for research and scientific purposes were all academics – a group not known for their own creativity. When you aren’t truly creative, I think it is next to impossible to understand creativity. And if you can’t understand it, how can you possibly define it? It is like the blind describing what a sunset looks like.

Now, you might say, “Wait just a second. We are all creative. It is just that some are more creative than others.” While it is true that we are all creative to a degree, I would argue that most people persist through life with relatively little real creativity. When I speak of real creativity, I am thinking in terms of true creation, the generation of something new and unique.

One measure that the academics used to define creativity was the production of a useful product. By their definition, if what you produce is not useful, then you aren’t creative.

I couldn’t disagree more. That is the non-creative person attributing a value to a product and mistaking it for a defining characteristic. To be creative is not about producing a useful product. For the truly creative, creativity is a compulsive act that comes from a wellspring deep inside, and it is akin to giving birth. Because for the creative individual, creating is giving birth. It is the act of creation itself that becomes the important factor, not whether the product will be found useful by anyone. For truly creative people, creativity cannot be denied and is very often so strong that the creative ideas come faster than the individual’s ability to seem them all realized. For every completed painting in an artist’s studio, there might be two dozen left unfinished; for every story written, a writer might have ten times as many started, mapped out, or conceptualized.

Think of this another way: if the usefulness of a product defines its validity as an example of creativity, then does it follow that man has no value unless he has similar meaning? After all, man is a product in much the same way a painting or widget is a product. Is a life unappreciated by the masses any less authentic than a life of distinction?

Sometimes the simplest definition is the best. Only non-creative academics are wringing their hands over the inability to define creativity to their satisfaction. Inventors, artists, writers, and other creative people do not lose sleep over the subject. It is sufficient to understand creativity because they experience it with their own hands and minds. The bottom line is that creative people and the function of creativity interest some academics because it is a subject that, by and large, they are incapable of understanding. And there is endless fascination in enduring mystery.