What is creativity?

You will find creativity in the unlikely places, and that in fact tells you how to look for it. I found this one when I wasn't looking specifically for creativity, only risk-taking. 

Mark Gorkin writes in ‘Creative Risk-Taking’ (stressdoc.com):

No two variables are more influential to the climate and flow of new ideas than creativity and risk-taking. What are these two concepts and how can we harness their vital energy? Keep in mind, while they may be interactive, the two are not necessarily reciprocal. By definition, being creative involves taking chances and risks; being risk-taking may or may not be creative.

Let’s start with risk-taking. Taking risks means daring to try new approaches or ideas with no predictable control over results or consequences, ie, taking action when the outcome is unknown.

I myself will equate creativity with risk-taking, and risk-taking with creativity. I say they come from the same source, and they are both productive. Do we always like their products? No, but that does not negate the fact that they are creative. Do we always use their product? No, but that does not negate the fact they are productive.

Creativity should never be measured by either utility or likeability or both. Otherwise, we will run out of ideas. Let creativity run its course first, and then and only then can we dare hope to be enriched by it. 

As for creativity, according to Donald MacKinnon, long-time researcher in the field, it is ‘a process that is extended in time and characterized by originality, adaptiveness and realization.’ For me, the essence of creativity is ‘connection,’ the ability to relate or combine, through flexible persistence and insight, seemingly remote, contradictory or irrational ideas and elements with an elegant, unified and complex simplicity. ‘The creative concept, product or outcome is not only novel but has value and use’ (Gorkin). 

Characterizing as MacKinnon does is not helpful at all in trying to understand what creativity is. Besides, ‘originality, adaptiveness and realization’ are descriptions of the outputs of creativity, not of creativity itself.

Gorkin almost hits the nail right on the head when he says the essence of creativity is ‘connection’ – see ‘Nyet Thinking, My Way of Creative Thinking,’ this same blog. No, connection is not the essence of creativity; it is simply the result. You are creative if you can connect, relate or combine remote, contradictory or irrational ideas and elements and come up with something new or improved. It’s the connecting that matters, not the connection. There are many connections, but only one works out best.

When Gorkin says that the connection must be characterized ‘with an elegant, unified and complex simplicity,’ he is still describing the results of creativity, not creativity itself. I also cannot agree that to be called creative, the concept, product or outcome must be novel and has value and use – that is saying that if some people (critics) judge it to be not novel or has no value or has no use, therefore it is not creative. That is the tyranny of the critics who are notorious for not being creative. Criticism is anathema to creativity that mentoring is not. Creativity is too important to be left to the critics alone!